A Barcelona restaurant asks customers to give it a bad rating on Google.

Barcelona"I serve 10,000 people a year. 98% of the people who come here have a good time. Do you know how many of them leave a review?" says Mathieu Pérez. He's the owner and chef of Sra. Dolores, a genuine tapas bar in Barcelona's Sant Antoni neighborhood. And now, in an almost quixotic endeavor, Pérez has decided to fight the tyranny of online reviews by circumventing the system. He's asked all his friends and regular customers to give him the lowest possible rating. on Google Reviews, and that they accompany it with an absurd comment, as he finds many of the comments left to him "absurd" and "ridiculous."

"It's difficult to please everyone and there are people who get angry about everything, and even more so nowadays," explains Pérez. And he gives an example: eight people, who have a reservation at 8 p.m. and arrive when it's almost 9 p.m. They are told that they will have to leave at 10 p.m. because they had the table for two hours, and they take chairs from other tables, even more people show up, they end up spending ridiculously little and, when it's time to leave, they make it their time to leave. These will probably be eight negative comments that will arrive at the same time.

"Now I have less than a 4," he says. "I'm as bad as the kebab next door and I'm not the same." "The other day I went to eat atMarín Grocers, who have a great product. I ate very well. Well, they also have less than four. It doesn't make any sense," says Pérez. However, he admits that he can't completely do without the services of the American giant. "I need to go to Google to appear on the map, because there's a monopoly. I use Google Maps, and if I leave out the reviews, I wouldn't appear on the map either. There are comments on other platforms that I don't look at, but people do look at Google's. That's why I go back and ask everyone to give me a zero. And also to give me absurd comments, which is what people often give me."

Conflictive clients

Pérez continues to give examples of problematic customers. "There are those who speak badly to the waiters. I put a stop to them. And I'm happy not to see them again. That's my vision of the hospitality industry. The medieval era of servitude no longer exists. If I work fourteen hours, it's to give pleasure. I do it out of love. There are people who don't understand and they get angry, and they get angry. They're next to me or because they had someone smoking on the terrace," says the chef.

Mathieu Pérez admits that the solution he has found is "a little bit punk". And what's more, he's throwing a party next Sunday at noon to celebrate and garner even more bad reviews. "I work 90% with people from Barcelona; bad reviews don't affect me. That's why I've organized an event that's a political act. It's a way of telling Google, 'Fuck off and don't come bothering me anymore.'" And he ends with an interesting idea: "From now on, if anyone wants to bother me, they can give me five stars."