The UT Frat Behavior

A bit ago Alyson and I had an appointment with our wedding coordinator in the Soho (South Howard) part of Tampa. Knowing we'd be down there we paired our visit with a lunch and some errands in the area.

Alyson had a hair appointment so we split up for a bit and I wandered up/down South Howard playing Ingress on the variety of portals there. I walked by this one restaurant and saw what had to be ~100 college guys all being seated on the outdoor patio. I presumed it was some frat and went about my day playing Ingress waiting on Alyson.

As our errands ended we went off to our wedding appointment and spent about an hour and half going through the details, vendors and learning more about the hotel in preparation for our wedding. As we solidified our dining options I was happy to learn we get to design our own sushi rolls for the sushi station. The caveat was the rolls have to be pretty basic so anything that was a "specialty" roll at a restaurant was probably not in the books.

So I went off to AI with my favorite type of rolls with a few less ingredients and asked Claude to visualize them in an image.

I was happy with this presentation and pretty funny visualization and hopefully the crew responsible with the sushi creation can make this happen. I don't think any of the rolls fall into the complex category.

With the wedding appointment over we started a walk back into the restaurant area to grab some lunch. We stopped at a place forgetting this was the same place I saw a bunch of presumed frat guys at ~3 hours earlier. We thought nothing of it, then sat down for some drinks and late breakfast / early lunch.

I couldn't help but notice instantly that this large group of people not only had the majority of all outdoor tables, but also the private room inside and a few tables near the bar. The hostess confirmed to us it was a frat, because our original reservation was for outside which she urged against us sitting out there.

So as I enjoyed a Hot Honey Pizza I still couldn't believe how much activity there was in this restaurant all from these different frat tables. Huge groups of people leaving to walk to another table, go to the bathroom, disappear outside or any combination of that. It was around noon on a Saturday and I couldn't believe how loud and disrespectful this group of frat guys could be. Knowing I saw them hours earlier getting seated they had presumably been drinking for 3 hours.

When a group of them walked by they grabbed another one of their boys and said "come to the bathroom" and I knew that couldn't be good. Curiosity got the best of me and when the bathroom is full of noise and people basically yelling you know something is going on. Sure enough when you see 3 guys shove themselves into a single stall - there is some behavior going on that probably isn't legal.

Some of this behavior could probably be semi-normal at a bar near a college, but at a brunch restaurant in the morning seemed ridiculous. Thankfully as all of this was going down I saw the staff holding like 40 credit cards and they were carefully stacking receipts and cards as people were charged. I was excited as this meant the restaurant might quiet down with the group gone.

As those large groups stood up to leave they bothered quite loudly a table full of women which is where we could overhear the frat and school (University of Tampa) as they talked. This is where we had a quick conversation with our server about this large group of annoying people.

Turns out they visit nearly every weekend for the bottomless mimosas ($30). I felt bad for the staff that might have to deal with that behavior weekly. I thought back to my college time (but I didn't join a frat) and couldn't fathom being that disrespectful and obnoxious at a restaurant.

Thankfully the food was great - even if the only thing I was focused on was the obnoxious frat guys.