Much has already been written about The Red Hen, the Virginia restaurant whose owner refused to serve Sarah Huckabee Sanders, press secretary for President Trump, last month on the grounds that she represents a deeply unethical administration (and herself acts immorally by regularly lying on its behalf). Sanders is not the first Trump cabinet member to be kicked out of a restaurant recently (usually by impromptu protest), although she may be the last given the repercussions she has already faced. Backlash has ranged from the predictable (Trump's tweeting a personal review of the restaurant and its cleanliness) to the horrifying (public circulation of Wilkinson's home phone number and address).
The breakneck pace of the news cycle means that, by this point, we've churned through countless arguments for and against Wilkinson's decision and most people have either set up protest camps outside or completely forgotten and moved on. There are liberal op-eds and television monologues wringing their proverbial hands about the 'meaning of hospitality' and the danger of politically segregated restaurants, while stressing that they understand Wilkinson's predicament. Who among our tribe wouldn't have to grit their teeth while bringing that woman an appetizer. There are also plenty of restaurants like The other Red Hens that just want us to know they would never do such a thing. There are unavoidable articles comparing Sanders' expulsion to bakeries refusing to make gay wedding cakes, or more maddeningly to Jim Crow era segregation - ignoring the fact that these two cases are literally the difference between judging someone based on the color of their skin and the content of their character.
There are also plenty of people offering support for Wilkinson - many of whom work in restaurants or write for food and beverage publications like Eater. And on the topic of her hospitality or in-hospitality, these are the people I defer to: the ones who spend the most time and energy thinking about restaurants, what makes them good, what makes them great, and how they fit into society at large. The cafe owner on the corner may not be able to tell you whether refusing Sanders was strategic in this political moment. They may not be able to say if it made a racist administration more sympathetic, or will keep more left-leaning voters home during midterms. They don't have any more of an answer than I do about the butterfly effects of such an action, or whether anyone in this vitriol-saturated age will hear Wilkinson's distinction between Trump's voters and Trump's cabinet.
What that cafe owner can tell you is that asking a customer to leave is a decision never, ever taken lightly. Wilkinson undoubtedly knew that the backlash could be huge, and now she may lose her business as a result. Arguably, her very life is at risk because she listened to her employee's requests and refused to serve a person they found morally repugnant. People who work in this industry know that hospitality does not mean equal deference to every customer. Sometimes, hospitality demands removing a customer who is verbally harassing other guests, 86-ing a person before they become dangerously drunk, or stepping in for a woman on a date that might be going dangerously wrong. It is not a leap to say that hospitality also demands turning away public figures whose very presence makes a statement to your staff and clientele about their own humanity. Maybe Sanders is not that public figure, but I think most of us can imagine at least a hypothetical person who is. The customer is not always right (morally or factually), and our obligations to them as individuals do not exist in a vacuum.
I don't know what Wilkinson's conversation with her staff looked like, and I don't know what complicated blend of motivations propelled her that evening. Perhaps she would have been a better leader (or a greater boon to the left in general) if she had more forcefully reminded her employees of the consequences to their jobs and lives, and then icily waited on Sanders herself, giving her neither warm service nor twitter fodder. But at the very least, when we discuss the Red Hen for a handful of minutes before the next scandal, let's not grandstand about how much more diplomatic we would be in that situation. There may very well come a time when we all need to cut someone off after the cheese plate.