Posted on 05/04/2004 10:20:25 AM PDT by dead
Washington: The country-wide Cracker Barrel restaurant chain has agreed to overhaul its training and management practices after the US Justice Department accused it of discriminating against black diners at about 50 restaurants.
A civil rights investigation found that black diners at Cracker Barrel restaurants in seven southern states were routinely given tables apart from whites, seated after white customers who arrived later, and given inferior service, the department said.
Managers allowed white servers to refuse to wait on black patrons, and blacks were given less favourable treatment than whites when they complained about service, investigators found. Interviews with dozens of employees suggested that managers "often directed, participated in, or condoned the discriminatory behaviour", the department said.
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, a Tennessee-based chain that has 497 locations throughout the US and is known for its country-style cooking and folksy retail stores, denied the allegations contained in the lawsuit.
But the company agreed to several wide-ranging steps aimed at combating discrimination against blacks.
The agreement "moves Cracker Barrel forward in a direction we were already moving", a company spokeswoman said. She said that while Cracker Barrel did not believe the accusations were true, it had agreed to the six-point plan to avoid protracted litigation.
About 100 blacks are pressing discrimination claims and seeking damages from the chain in four lawsuits. One black diner said that when he complained that whites were getting better treatment, he was told he should go to a Burger King down the street.
"It's shocking that something like this still happens 40 years after the passage of civil rights legislation," said Heidi Doerhoff, a lawyer representing customers in Arkansas. "It harkens back to the back-of-the-bus treatment of African Americans."
I would suspect that the reason that CB settled so quickly that they knew that Jesse Jackson, the NAACP, The Rev Al and all other race pimps would get involved and do what they always do....shake down the company, start a boycot and do as much damage to CB that they could.....
No offense, but IMHO, this whole thing will be found to be an action by a few American hating, white people hating, big business hating "civil rights activists" probably from the Rainbow coaliation or the NAACP.....
I've been representing corporations for years, and you would be shocked at the stupidity of management. (I'm not talking about the board of directors and officers -- althought they can be pretty stupid also -- but rather, store managers and regional managers.) For example, a few years ago on Long Island a major brokerage house was nailed for sexual discrimination and harrassment, for essentially turning the office into a frat house/strip joint, where females were regularly groped and subjected to sexually explicit comments, and stippers were brought in to the office to entertain the boys and favored clients. Not only was management aware of the situation, but it was also an active participant. Who would have thunk they could be so stupid, but they were.
I wonder how many CB managers are people of color?
Not many, I bet.
I dunno about store managers, but they've had a black VP of Human Resources for something like a decade.
Another example of the stupidity of management: About five years ago, I was involved in a federal lawsuit against the owners of a chain of greek diners for sexual harrasment. What was obvious to everyone was that the primary, if not the only qualifications for employment as a waitress was the applicants' age and the size of her breasts. The manager of one of the diners was accused of sexual harrassment, which he denied of course, even after he was seen on the security video grouping waitresses in the stock room, and standing so close to the waitresses in the public areas of the diner, that the young ladies could not possibly pass by him without brushing their breasts against his body. Even with the video evidence, he refused to settle, and claimed that the waitresses were at fault because they wore tight pants and showed lots of cleavage. The waitresses admitted to the tight pants and cleavage, but claimed that management threatened to give them the worst hours or even terminate them if the dressed more conservatively. The manager laughed as the allegation and insisted on going to trial, where the plaintiffs presented a former manager who produced email from the regional manager reminding him of the company dress code for waitresses. The jury awarded each of the plaintiffs something like $50,000.
Does discrimination still occur? Of course. There are plenty of idiots out there of all colors. I guarantee you I've been discriminated against by black employees in restaurants, flagrantly. I've had fried chicken that had sat for hours shoved at me, while the black customer beside me received carefully selected just-cooked chicken. And as is the case whenever I have a complaint about food or service, I complain to the manager. If the manager doesn't rectify it, I call the owner. If they don't rectify it, I don't go there anymore. I don't call lawyers.
MM
Exactly. We eat in Cracker Barrels all over the country and have for years, especially in the south where we live. I have yet to see one iota of evidence for these claims. We are often seated alongside black patrons, and we are always seated after black patrons who were ahead of us are seated, all of which is of course as it should be. The last time we ate breakfast at a Cracker Barrel, which was in south GA, we were served by a black waitress and paid our check to a black cashier. In every CB where we have been black and white employees appeared to be working together amicably without any sign of racial discord.
Of course this is just anecdotal evidence, and it is entirely possible that at some time and somewhere in the large CB chain someone has been discriminated against. But IMHO it is far more likely that a few lawyers are taking a break from chasing ambulances and decided to drag out the old racial discrimination gig that worked so well for the Denny's plaintiffs and play it for a few million more bucks.
That perception is wrong. My son partially worked his way through college by working at a posh restaurant. The waiters were paid practically nothing by the restaurant, their pay consisted almost entirely of gratuities.
Apparently restaurants are exempt from minimum wage laws in regard to their waiters and waitresses. Since learning that I always tip 20% unless the waiter/waitress was rude or the service was lousy.
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