A group of American tourists are being called out for how they acted at a restaurant in Rome. In a video posted to Reddit, a couple explains what happened when tourists showed up for a meal but couldn’t pay with a card. They assumed everywhere in the world would accept US dollars, and they learned the hard way that it isn’t true.
“That guy just asked if they take American dollars,” the man filming the video of the tourists says. He goes on to explain exactly what happened.
“We’re sitting outside at a restaurant here in Rome and this group walked up. The restaurant isn’t taking card payments right now because their system is down, so it’s cash only.”
This was a problem for the tourists because they did not think to get physical Italian currency. “Their group leader said, ‘Do you take American cash?”” He says through giggles.
He went on to say that the tourists’ dumb questions gave him secondhand embarrassment. As a fellow American, he was mortified by their entitled behavior. “I didn’t think people like that were real,” he says. “Do they know that Euros exist?”
Although a restaurant employee told them the restaurant only accepted euros, the group went inside. They also told staff they were going to start their meal inside then expected to move it outside in the middle of the dining experience. “That’s rude, that’s entitled” the man in the video quipped.
He added, “I used to think Europeans were too harsh on Americans, but now, I don’t think they’re harsh enough.” He ended the video by criticizing the group and telling them to learn about the local currency.
Some Reddit users questioned the restaurant’s explanation that its card system was down.
Reddit Users Questioned Whether the Tourists Were Actually in the Wrong
“The system is not down. A local Roman tour guide clued us in on this common scam to get cash to avoid paying tax, mostly used by taxis but at some restaurants too. Maybe the American tourists are not entitled, maybe they are actually the smart ones who know this. That’s why they said well we only have American dollars. They’re probably going inside now because they were then told well our system may be working now,” one Reddit user wrote.
Others noted that it may not have been ignorance, but simple confusion, “I think the confusion is that many countries popular with US tourists or businesses would often accept dollars but usually we're talking smaller countries that either don't have their own currency or have a very unstable one, or it's just somewhere so tiny the tourist presence dominates the local economy (resorts, small islands only for tourists etc).”
Overall, several Reddit users suggested there may be more to the interaction than the video shows.
The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the circumstances surrounding the interaction beyond what is shown in the video and described by the people involved.
