Imagine heading out for a night of good food and drinks, only to find yourself potentially scammed.
That’s what happened to Jiyoon, who shared her odd experience at a Robson Korean restaurant recently on Tiktok.
The Night That Wasn’t
“So something crazy happened to me and my friends the other night,” begins the tale of an evening that started with laughter and ended with befuddlement.
Jiyoon and her group of friends, tipsy but not drunk, ventured to a Korean restaurant on Robson Street, looking forward to capping their night with delicious food and a bottle of soju.
@jiyoonc Stay safe everyone 🥲 #fyp #storytime #scam #soju #koreanrestaurant #vancouver ♬ original sound – Jiyoon
But as the cap came off the soju bottle, the expected kick of alcohol was suspiciously absent.
“It was water,” Jiyoon shares, her voice tinged with disbelief.
The first sip, expected to be the smooth, fiery essence of soju, was nothing but H2O.
The realization wasn’t immediate—after all, they were in good spirits, ready to chalk it up to their inebriated taste buds.
But as each friend confirmed the watery taste, confusion set in.
The friends noticed the missing metal strip from the bottle cap, a telltale sign the bottle had been tampered with.
“Our first initial thought was that they were scamming us,” she explains, “taking advantage of us because we looked drunk.”
A theory that, while jarring, isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.
The Tale of Two Servers
The response from the restaurant staff only added layers to the mystery.
The first server suggested it was a prank by other servers, a claim that raised more questions than answers. “She was going to bring it up in the group chat,” Jiyoon recalls, the solution seeming both comical and odd.
A second server brought a new twist, blaming the mix-up on a new hire’s inability to distinguish between new and reused bottles.
“the old soju bottles, apparently, they were being washed, so they filled them up with water,” she adds.
But why?
Why would a busy restaurant have a protocol that involves filling empty alcohol bottles with water and screwing the caps back on?
“We drank dirty dishwater,” they concluded, feeling scammed or, at the very least, grossly overlooked.
The Aftermath
The evening ended without a resolution, with the two servers seemingly trying to avoid Jiyoon and her friends after the confrontation.
“they were not sorry about what happened…”
The group paid for their meal and left, their concerns unaddressed and their disappointment palpable.
“We actually paid for every single thing that we ordered,” she notes, her voice reflecting the frustration and bizarreness of the incident.
It is kinda wild that nothing was comp’d by the staff.
Jiyoon stated that this was the first time she and her friend had left a one-star Google review.
In the video, Jiyoon did not name the restaurant directly.
This story isn’t just about a night gone awry or an alcohol bottle filled with water. It’s a reflection on the staff and management on how they handled the situation.
This incident serves as a cautionary tale to stay vigilant.