Most of us have a story about a dreaded first date that was awkward from the minute it began. Or a random interaction in a bar that left you feeling uncomfortable and looking for an escape.

Now patrons at several bars and restaurants in Arlington can easily find that escape by going to the bar and asking if “Angela” is there.

As reported by NBC 4 this week, Arlington County rolled out the “Ask for Angela” campaign in October 2018 as part of the Bar Bystander sexual assault intervention training provided by the Arlington County Police Department and the Office of the Commonwealth Attorney to employees at restaurants and bars across the county. Much like D.C.’s Safe Bars program, the training teaches restaurant and bar staff to spot potentially unsafe situations and intervene.

“Bars are a social setting for harassment. You’re allowed to get close to someone, you’re allowed to be in their personal space,” says Autumn Jones, program director for the Arlington Commonwealth Attorney’s Victim/Witness Program. “If someone was doing that in Whole Foods you’d have a completely different reaction.”

The “Ask for Angela” campaign goes beyond depending on the restaurant staff to spot harassment—though the Bar Bystander program trains staff in that, too. Here’s how it works: Anyone who finds themselves in a vulnerable situation—whether they’re on a Tinder date gone awry or with a partner whose behavior has turned aggressive—can go up to the bar and ask for “Angela.” Trained staff will then pull the person aside and discreetly ask what kind of help they need. The next step from there varies: Sometimes it’s providing a safe way to leave the building and asking the perpetrator to leave, other times it’s calling a taxi for a safe ride home.

The goal is to offer help as discreetly as possible “without too much fuss,” as the posters touting the initiative make clear.

“Ask for Angela is a discreet way to try to get help without out it being a scene or escalating,” Jones says. “And then that person can go and process what occurred and if they need to, they can access the resource we provide if they need additional support.”

For many Arlington restaurant managers, participating in the initiative seems like an obvious choice.

“Our bar is well set up for a first date,” says David Glass, assistant general manager at Courthaus Social. “We get a lot of influx of people meeting here for the first time. But we recognize that it’s something that can go south very quickly and we wanted to offer people a way to say ‘I don’t want to be here’ or get out of the date if they didn’t want to do it anymore.”

Participating restaurants and bars display the “Ask for Angela” posters behind the bar and in the women’s restrooms to alert patrons that they can turn to staff for help. And even though the number of patrons who have asked for Angela have been “few and far in between” since Courthaus Social rolled out the program last fall, Glass says that his staff takes the responsibility very seriously.

“A good chunk of my staff have been in uncomfortable situations or are female and want to protect their own,” Glass says. “All of our staff has been very receptive to it and want to help out if they can.”

“Ask for Angela” started as a local initiative in a pub in the eastern England county of Lincolnshire in 2016 and quickly spread to become a global campaign. Currently, nearly two dozen restaurants and bars in Arlington County participate:

• Bar Bao
• Barley Mac
• Courthaus Social
• Crystal City Sports Pub
• Don Tito
• Federico Ristorante Italiano
• Freddie’s Beach Bar
• G.O.A.T.
• Liberty Tavern
• Lyon Hall
• Mexicali Blues
• Nam-Viet
• O’Sullivan’s Irish Pub
• Pamplona
• Ragtime
• Rhodeside Grill
• Samuel Beckett’s Irish Gastro Pub
• Spirits of ’76
• Whitlow’s on Wilson
• William Jeffery’s Tavern
• Wilson Hardware