Do Wetherspoons pubs have a dress code?
'I think it’s twaddle,' Wetherspoons spokesperson Eddie Gershon tells The Independent.
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Your support makes all the difference.High street hallmark Wetherspoons has found itself at the centre of a Twitter storm after allegedly asking a female customer to put on more clothes when she was wearing a top that showed her shoulders at a branch in Leeds.
But despite a social media outcry at the idea of the humble 'Spoons actually having a written dress code, management insists that's not the case.
“I think it’s twaddle,” Wetherspoons spokesperson Eddie Gershon told The Independent.
A woman known as Liv Demure said she was told to "put some clothes on" by a Wetherspoons manager, who said her bare shoulders were inappropriate in a restaurant.
But while customers cannot be naked - and should wear shoes - during visits to the pub, Mr Gershon says there is no official dress code.
"I don't know where this came from, there's no dress code but errors are occasionally made as we have 40,000 staff across the country," he said.
However, Mr Gershon explains that customers may be told they cannot wear team football shifts on match day occasions where staff have been pre-warned by local police.
“Some pubs do operate a specific dress code at all or certain times. For information on these requirements, please speak directly to the team of the pub you wish to visit,” the company’s website says.
David Curry was also apparently asked to leave The Wallaw Wetherspoons pub in Blyth, Northumberland earlier this year as a result of wearing track suit trousers.
The first ever Wetherspoons was opened in Colney Hatch Lane, Muswell Hill, North London back in 1979. The 900th Wetherspoons pub opened in Poulton-le-Fylde in Lancashire in 2013 and two years later, the company’s annual sales exceeded £1.5 billion.
It seems the pub chain pays less attention to customer’s appearance and more to their own, with the little known fact that every single branch has a different carpet. The phenomenon has been documented by London blogger Kit Caless in a Tumblr account comprising photographs of the 950 Wetherspoons carpet designs.
Each Axminster carpet costs between £20,000 and £30,000 each, which may make you think twice next time a pint of cider gets spilt.
The origin of the pub’s name comes from founder Tim Martin’s former teacher.
Mr Martin told the New Statesman: "I decided to call it Wetherspoons after a former teacher – not because the teacher in question at my primary school in New Zealand had said I would never make it, as some people think, but because he was too nice a fellow to be running our particular class and he couldn't control it.”
“So I thought: I can't control the pub, he couldn't control the class, so I'll name it after him."
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