St. Petersburg bartender offers note to help fend off harasser, woman says
ST. PETERSBURG — Max Gutierrez, a bartender at the No Vacancy bar and restaurant in St. Petersburg’s Edge District, has gained fame on Twitter for using a note disguised as a receipt to protect two customers from harassment.
Gutierrez’ secret message: “If this guy is bothering you, put your pony tail on your other shoulder, and I will have him removed. He’s giving me the creeps.”
A tweet of gratitude from one of the women had generated more than 45,000 retweets and 210,000 likes by Monday morning.
According to the Twitter thread, a man was aggressively hitting on the two women at No Vacancy and Gutierrez could see how uncomfortable they felt. The second woman tweeted that the man had touched her.
“You need to get ... away from these girls who clearly are not interested,” Gutierrez told him, according to the tweets.
“That was a little aggressive,” the man responded.
“Well you’re aggressively hitting on them and you need to leave,” Gutierrez said.
The original tweet was posted June 13. Gutierrez responded a few days later, saying he was the man pictured in the tweet and the one who wrote the note. Gutierrez added that the man had come back to No Vacancy a few days later and Gutierrez refused to serve him.
To hide his message, Gutierrez handed it to the women on a clipboard normally used for receipts when customers close out their tab. Then, after the man had left, Gutierrez posed while one of the women took a photo.
Gutierrez posted a message on Reddit as well, saying he’s learned how to read people’s body language from his mentors in bartending.
“I honestly don’t like yelling at customers or embarrassing people,” he wrote. “But I find it’s one of the best ways to handle creeps.”
