Dear Prudence,
About a month ago, I went out to dinner with my girlfriend to celebrate her birthday. The restaurant was perfectly fine, but the dinner was a disaster. We spent the entire time in awkward conversation, with occasional jabs and criticisms of each other thrown in the mix. Toward the end, I tried to tell my girlfriend that we got off to a bad start and that I wished that she could have dialed back some of the criticism and hurtful jokes that night. She became extremely upset, asked to leave right away, and then went to the bathroom for several minutes. After telling me how upset she was at me the entire car ride home, she broke up with me two hours later. It turns out while she was en route to the bathroom, our waiter told her that “she should be spending her birthday with someone who cares about you—not that guy,” and that contributed to her breaking up with me. I think offering unsolicited advice to a customer about her relationship is outrageous and unprofessional. If you agree it was wrong, what’s the best way to go about addressing it? A letter to the manager? A Yelp review? Nothing?