Valentine's Day is supposed to be a day of romance, but the Eiffel en Eden café in Auckland, New Zealand seems to have missed that part of the memo with a chalkboard sign that drew a ton of criticism.
Yahoo! New Zealand
A Café Is Trying To Defend Its Creepy Valentine's Day Sign And No One's Buying It
And rightly so, I think.
The sign reads:
On Valentine's Day, open the car door for her.
After Valentine's day, open the car boot for her.
I don't know about you, but that definitely reads like you're supposed to stuff your girlfriend into the trunk.
The sign was shared by Women's Refuge New Zealand along with a big dose of reality.
Facebook | Women's Refuge New Zealand
"New Zealand currently has the highest rates of domestic and family violence in the developed world," the post says, "Nearly half of the homicides in our country are related to family violence, most of these are women and children."
They add that one in three women in New Zealand will experience some form of domestic violence.
Unsplash | Anthony Tran
And of those, 76% of the incidents will never be reported.
So yeah, a joke that evokes kidnapping or hiding a woman's body would be gross anywhere, but it's especially so in New Zealand.
It was also shared on Twitter, where commenters did not hold back.
Much like the post by Women's Refuge New Zealand, the tweet pointed out how awful the country's issues of violence against women are and how tone deaf the sign was regarding it.
Though they did eventually take it down, the café owner still tried to defend it.
He told Newshub, "It's about how you should always open the car boot when you're shopping."
Which okay, maybe it was an honest mistake, but the café doesn't have a great track record.
In the same article where they shared his defence, Newshub also shared another questionable sign.
Newshub
Clearly the place has been putting its foot in its mouth for years.
The owner even complained about a "very rude" woman who rubbed out the word "boot."
Unsurprisingly, many people said they weren't going to frequent the place anymore.
I hope they stand by that threat. Only through actually going through with it and hurting the business will they perhaps learn from their mistakes.
At the very least, maybe they should have a woman or two look at the sign before they put it out.
Because if this really is a legitimate mistake, then they really need to just stop trying to be funny.
h/t: Newshub
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