Fired for what?
Ansley Brock, Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of unsplash.com
The customers are always right, or at least that’s the epitome of good customer service, right? Well these few employees must have missed that memo.
The most recent case happened at a Taco Bell in Hialeah, Fla. Alexandria Montgomery drove to the Taco Bell, which is located near the international airport in Miami, expecting to get her meal in a timely manner.
As Montgomery went to order, an employee of this particular Taco Bell said “No hable ingles” to Montgomery and even asked for her to move on so that she could get to the car behind her. Montgomery asked to speak to the manager and the employee answered back, in Spanish, with “she is in her house sleeping.”
According to Montgomery, there were two other employees that came to the window and neither of them helped the situation. The employee even said to her, “There is no one who speaks English. This is Hialeah, I’m sorry.”
Montgomery’s recording of the event has gone viral over multiple forms of social media, with Facebook earning the most recognition. Many Facebook users even left their opinion on the situation via the comment section; most of them stating the opinion of: “This is America, we speak English.”
Hialeah is in a location in which 89% of residents speak Spanish as their first language. According to the 2010 census, it is still located in Florida. Taco Bell came forward, explaining that that employee did not represent their brand, and that she has since been let go.
This is not the first time Taco Bell has been in the spotlight for some sort of customer discrimination. Back in 2016, Taco Bell was sued for allegedly discriminating against a deaf customer.
Gina Cirrincione said she was discriminated against two times at separate Taco Bell locations in New Jersey. In one incident, she drove up to the window to hand over a sheet of paper with her order on it since she communicates with sign language and is unable to order through the speaker system.
She claimed the employee simply shut the window in her face. She then parked and tried to go in to order, but the manager was not compliant with her. The incident left her embarrassed and still hungry. Taco Bell released a statement saying “We do not tolerate discrimination in any form, and we have a strong policy to provide accessible service to all of our customers.”
Taco Bell is not the only restaurant that has discriminated against their customers as of lately. In April 2018, Starbucks was under fire for an employee calling the Philadelphia police on two black gentlemen who were simply just waiting on a friend to join them.
The CEO of Starbucks stepped forward to apologize to the two gentlemen and the rest of the customers. Again, a video was released via social media and again it went viral. The public not only scrutinized Starbucks for the company’s actions, but also scrutinized the actions of the Philadelphia police department.
There is a trend that is noticeable with each of these instances: social media. Many customers can record what is happening and release it in hopes of gaining more attention. The issue with this is that there have been cases of false allegations due to fake videos being created and released.
It happened in January of 2018 in Atlanta, GA when a lady released videos of her spitting in the cups of customers and putting pet feces in the drinks. A lady named Shanell Rivers released these videos causing the store to close two hours early.
A spokeswoman for Starbucks came forward to say that the actions that occurred in the video were false. The spokeswoman went forward to say that there is no employee by the name of Shanell Rivers for Starbucks. The police came forward after investigations to back her statement. They released their own statement about how common and easy it is for videos like this to be released to simply cause digital outrage and spark controversy throughout the community. More can be read about this story here.
