What happens when a Harvard Business School professor orders from a Chinese restaurant? The restaurant ends up embroiled in a major legal issue, of course. What did you think was going to happen?!
This is a story that's been circulating around the cybersphere pretty prominently, but we'll briefly sum up what happened:
- Harvard Prof. Ben Edelman orders takeout from a small Massachusetts Chinese restaurant called Sichuan Garden.
- Sichuan Garden overcharges him $4.
- Edelman unleashes wrath of biblical proportions, threatens a lawsuit, and just generally makes life miserable for this small, local establishment.
That is not a biased telling of the story. It's exactly what happened. A man got overcharged a few bucks and went absolutely, certifiably bonkers. Now granted, he teaches at Harvard, so all his ranting and raving were done in a highfalutin, legal jargon-laden tone. But beneath Edelman's practiced superiority lies a simple truth: he's a jerk with a lot of time to kill, and he chooses to waste other peoples' time, too.
Get Ready For The Onslaught
A quick look at Ben Edelman's LinkedIn page tells the average reader quite a bit. First, the guy went to Harvard for undergrad. Then, he went to Harvard for law school. After that he picked up a PhD at Harvard. And now, he's an Associate Professor at, well, you get the idea. Under Edelman's "Experience," there are only two entries: A consulting business he founded, and his present professor role at Harvard. If Edelman ever worked a job in the service industry, or knew what it was like to deal with angry customers, that was a long, long time ago – and hasn't made it onto his CV.
For the better part of 20 years he's been spending his days walled up in one of the country's most prestigious institutions, which is commendable to be sure, but evidently hasn't prepared him to lead a normal life in the world at large. This fact became evident one recent evening after Edelman received a takeout order from Sichuan Garden that cost him $4 more than what he'd expected. The issue turned out to be a discrepancy between the prices listed online and the updated ones the restaurant was using.
To his credit, Edelman had a right to be a little annoyed, and to ask for a refund, which he did. But when the restaurant rep gave a little bit of pullback, that's when Edelman put his Harvard degrees to work.
"I suggest that Sichuan Garden refund me three times the amount of the overcharge," he wrote to the store's representative, Ran Duan. "The tripling reflects the approach provided under the Massachusetts consumer protection statute, M93a, which…"
You know what, we'll just cut his quote off right there, because his point has already been made: He went to Harvard Law. Okay. We get it, we get it.
The email thread continued as a back-and-forth between Edelman and Duan, in which the latter calmly explained that his restaurant was a family chain and only trying to do the right thing, and the former seeming to hear none of that and threatening legal action. While Edelman claims he launched the tirade out of a sincere commitment to rectifying the problem of overcharging, a look at his emails suggests he's more interested in merely winning in an argument against Duan. In one email, he states, "The more you try to claim your restaurant was not at fault, the more determined I am to seek a greater sanction against you." Vindictive much?
So if you're a restaurant out there and you pick up the phone and Edelman is on the other end ordering takeout, consider hanging up.
