House Rules

Who sits at a Cityfolk table

You have to be 18 or older. There is no exception, and it is not a formality: the tables are in licensed restaurants, alcohol is served, and the people you are seated with are adults you have not met.

We ask for your date of birth when you sign up and check your age against it. Once given, it cannot be changed, because it is the only thing the age check rests on. A false date of birth is grounds for closing your account, and we close it whether or not anything else went wrong.

One person, one account. The name on your account is the name that appears on the guest list, because the people at your table are entitled to know who they are sitting with. A blurb that describes somebody else, a stand-in name, or an account two people share all break the same rule.

If you bring someone on a guest pass, they are your responsibility, they must also be 18 or older, and every rule on this page applies to them through you.

What we verify, and what we do not

We would rather tell you exactly where the floor is than imply a check we do not run.

What we do. We verify that your email address reaches you, because that is how a booking, a change of venue and an introduction get to you. We hold you to a date of birth you cannot revise. We keep one account per person. Every guest list carries real names, and a member who has been removed from the club does not appear on one again.

What we do not. We do not ask for a passport or an identity card. We do not run a document check, a selfie match, a criminal record check or a credit check. We do not interview you. Nobody at Cityfolk has confirmed that a member is who they say they are beyond the fact that they hold a working email address and have agreed to these rules.

That is a deliberate position, not an oversight, and it has a consequence you should hold on to: treat everyone at the table as an adult stranger, because that is what they are. Meet in the restaurant, not somewhere else first. Keep your own arrangements for getting home. Trust your read of a person over the fact that they are on a guest list.

If we ever add identity verification, we will say so on this page before it starts, and we will say what it checks.

Every table is in a public place

Cityfolk sittings happen in restaurants that are open to the public. Never in a private flat, never in a members-only back room that is not staffed, never at an address that only appears after you have booked.

You see the venue name, the district and the street address before you take the seat. There are staff on the floor all evening who do not work for us. There are other diners. There is a way out, and using it is always allowed: no one at a Cityfolk table has to explain why they are leaving, and the host will not ask you to.

The venue is somebody else's business. The food, the drink, the bill, the staff and the premises are theirs. Their own house rules apply on top of ours, and if their staff ask something of you, do it. Behaviour towards restaurant staff counts exactly as much with us as behaviour towards the people you are seated with.

What the host is, and what the host is not

Most sittings have a host: someone who arrives before you, holds the table, makes the introductions, and keeps the conversation from stranding anyone. Some sittings have an admin present instead. Either way, one person on that table is the one to speak to.

The host can: seat and reseat people, ask someone to change the subject or lower their voice, ask someone to stop drinking, ask someone to leave the table, and end the sitting early. If a host asks you to leave, you leave, and we take it up afterwards with everyone concerned.

The host is not: a bodyguard, a chaperone, a medical professional, or an employee of the restaurant. The host cannot vouch for anyone at the table, because nobody at Cityfolk can.

If something is going wrong and you do not want to say it out loud, tell the host quietly, or step away and write to hello@cityfolk.club from where you are standing. Both work. Neither is an overreaction.

How to behave at the table

The short version: be a regular. The longer version, because the short one does the work only for people who were never going to be the problem:

• Turn up on time, or tell the table you are late.
• Talk to the person next to you, not only to the person you find interesting.
• No harassment, no abuse, no slurs, no discrimination on account of anyone's origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or age.
• Do not pressure anyone about food, drink, money, politics, religion, their body or their availability.
• Do not use the table to sell, recruit, pitch, network aggressively, or run a side business.
• Do not repeat somebody's private business outside the room. What is said at the table is said to the table.
• Settle your share of the bill on the night. The membership never covered the food.
• Treat the restaurant's staff the way you would want to be treated on your worst shift.

Consent, and what "no" means

This is the rule we will not be flexible about.

No means no. Not now means no. A changed subject means no. Silence means no. Nobody at a Cityfolk table owes anyone an explanation, a second chance to ask, or a polite reason. "I would rather not" is a complete sentence, and pushing past it is the thing that gets an account closed, not the thing that gets a laugh.

Concretely, at the table and after it:

• Ask before you touch anyone, including a hand on an arm or a hug goodbye. If the answer is anything other than yes, the answer is no.
• Sexual comments, propositions and jokes about someone present are not a table matter. Do not.
• Do not ask a member for their phone number, their address, their socials or a private meeting after they have declined once.
• Do not follow anyone out, wait for them outside, or offer to walk them home after they have said no.

Contact after the night runs through the club, and only in one direction: mutual. If you would sit with someone again, say so in the app. A one-way note is never shown to the other person and never will be. Only when both of you have said it does it become an introduction, and only then do you exchange email addresses.

That is the whole of the consent design, and it is worth being blunt about the two edges of it. First, an introduction cannot be undone once it has happened: deleting the like removes our record, not the address already in someone's inbox. Like people back when you mean it. Second, an introduction is permission to write one email, not permission to keep writing. If they do not reply, that is your answer. Everything on this page still applies after the exchange.

Anyone who contacts a member outside the club after being declined, or who uses an introduction to press for something the other person has refused, is removed. That is unwanted contact, and in Switzerland persistent unwanted contact and sexual harassment can also be criminal matters, not only club ones.

Harassment and discrimination: what actually happens

We do not run a points system for this, and we do not average it out over how pleasant someone was for the rest of the evening.

On the night. The host or an admin removes the person from the table. They do not get to argue it at the table. If anyone is in danger, the venue's staff and the police are the right call, and the emergency numbers in Switzerland are 117 for the police, 144 for an ambulance, and 112 for anything at all.

Afterwards. We suspend the account while we look at it, which means the person holds no seats and books nothing. We speak to whoever reported it, to the host, and where it helps, to others at that table. We do not put the two people in a room together, and we never ask the person who reported something to justify it to the person they reported.

The outcome. For harassment, discrimination, a sexual advance pressed after a refusal, or any threat or violence, the outcome is permanent removal from the club. Membership ends, future bookings are released, waitlist entries drop. For behaviour that was bad but recoverable, being repeatedly dismissive, a joke that landed as a slur, one aggressive evening, we say so directly, and a second one ends it.

We are the club, not a court, and there is a limit to what we can establish. What we can do, we do: we decide who keeps a seat, and we will use that rather than wait for certainty that never arrives. Where an account of events is credible and a member's safety is the thing in the balance, the seat goes.

Nothing here replaces your own rights. You can go to the police whatever we decide, and reporting to us does not sign anything away. In Switzerland, victim support offices under the Victims of Crime Act give free, confidential advice independently of us and of any complaint, and you do not have to have decided anything before you call one.

Reporting something

Tell us. It does not have to be a formal complaint, it does not have to be about you, and it does not have to have happened at a Cityfolk table for us to want to know.

• During a sitting. Tell the host or the admin present. Quietly is fine. Leaving first and writing after is also fine.
• After a sitting. Write to hello@cityfolk.club. Say which sitting, roughly when, who was involved, and what happened. Detail helps, but a rough account is better than nothing sent.
• If someone is in danger right now. Call 117, or ask the venue's staff to. Tell us afterwards.

What we do with it: a person reads that address and we reply to every report. We tell you what we decided. We do not pass your report or your name to the person you reported without asking you first, and if you ask us to act only on the pattern rather than on your name, we will tell you honestly what we can do on that basis. Where we cannot act without naming you, we say so and leave the choice with you.

Reporting in good faith never costs you your membership, even if we end up unable to act. Using a report to punish someone is itself a reason we remove an account.

Alcohol

Every table is 18+ and the venues are licensed, so drinking is your business. Three things are the club's business:

• Do not push it on anyone. No rounds someone has to opt out of, no comment on a glass of water, no asking why. Plenty of people at these tables do not drink, and the reason is theirs.
• Do not arrive drunk, and do not get there. The host can ask you to stop and can ask you to go home, and being drunk excuses nothing on this page. Behaviour is judged on what happened, not on how much you had.
• Drink is never a route to consent. Do not buy drinks for someone to move them somewhere they have not agreed to be, and do not read a drunk yes as a yes.

Drinks are on your own bill, like the food. The membership never covered either.

Photographs and privacy

• Ask first, every time. Before you photograph or film anyone at the table, ask them. Someone who says no does not have to be cropped out; the photo does not get taken.
• Posting is a separate yes. Permission to take a picture is not permission to publish it. Ask again before it goes anywhere public, and take it down if someone changes their mind later.
• The guest list stays in the app. Do not screenshot it, publish it, or forward it. Names, blurbs, professions and origins are on that list because members gave them to a club, not to the internet.
• Diets and allergies are health information. They are on the list so the kitchen can act on them. They are not a topic, and they are not yours to mention anywhere else.
• What is said at the table stays with the table. People at these dinners talk about work they cannot discuss, family they are not over, and money. Take the evening away with you. Leave the specifics.

Recording a conversation without the consent of the people in it is a criminal offence in Switzerland, and we treat it as an immediate removal regardless of what the recording was for.

Cancelling, and not turning up

An empty chair is not a neutral event. The kitchen cooked for it and the table left a gap for you.

• Give the seat back before the sitting's join deadline and nothing happens. If no deadline is set for that sitting, you can give it back until the sitting starts.
• Give it back after that point, and the booking records a strike.
• Do not turn up at all, and the booking records a strike.

A strike sits on the booking, not on your character. One is a bad week and nobody will mention it. A pattern is a different thing, and a pattern lets us suspend or end a membership. We tell you when we do.

If we cancel or move a sitting, a venue closes, a kitchen fails, too few people book, the seat comes off your record with nothing held against you and we tell you as early as we know.

If you are running late, say so. A late regular is worth more to a table than an empty chair nobody explained.

Losing your seat, or your membership

An admin can take someone off a table before or during a sitting, and can suspend an account, and will do it when the table needs it.

We warn first where the situation allows it. A rule broken once, carelessly, and put right usually ends there.

We act immediately where it does not. Safety, harassment, discrimination, a sexual advance pressed after a refusal, threats, violence, a recording taken in secret, or a false age. In those cases the account goes first and the conversation happens after.

When a membership ends, future bookings are released and waitlist entries drop. What happens to your data is set out in the privacy policy. If a fee has been paid for a period you can no longer use, section 04 of the terms covers it, and where we ended the membership for a reason that is not your fault you get that part back.

You can also leave whenever you like, without giving a reason. Ask us and we will cancel.

How these rules relate to the terms

These house rules are how the club is run at the table. The Terms of Membership are the contract, and where the two overlap, the terms are the ones with legal force. Nothing here takes away a right the mandatory law of the country you live in gives you, and for most members reading this, that is Swiss law.

We update this page when the club changes. The effective date at the top tells you which version you are reading.