What's Wrong with This Story?

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Joe Guy
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What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Joe Guy »

Buffalo Wild Wings staff fired after group was asked to move because customer didn't 'want black people sitting near him'

The Vahls went out on a Saturday night near Chicago in search of dinner.

But the family and their party, a mostly African American group of parents and young kids celebrating a birthday, say they faced discrimination head-on instead when staff at a Buffalo Wild Wings repeatedly ordered them to leave their table - all because another customer did not want to sit next to black people.

Now the incident has gone viral, the staff has been fired and the restaurant chain is facing a public backlash, in the wake of yet another troubling example of public discrimination captured online.

"If you don't want to sit next to certain people in a public restaurant then you should probably eat dinner in the comfort of your own home," Mary Vahl wrote on Facebook, in a post that's been shared more than 4,500 times as of early Monday.

Buffalo Wild Wings didn't immediately return a message on Sunday night, but a spokesperson from the chain told the Associated Press that it had fired the employees involved following an internal investigation.

The company "values an inclusive environment and has zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind," a spokesperson said in a statement to WBBM.

On Oct. 26, following a birthday party, the Vahls party showed up to a Buffalo Wild Wings tucked into in a strip mall in Naperville, Illinois, a racially diverse suburb about 40 minutes southwest of Chicago. Mary's husband, Justin, asked for a table for 15, but as a host began setting up their table, he quickly realized he had miscounted the size of the group and went up to correct his mistake.

Then the host, a young African American man, asked a question that took him aback: "What race are you guys?"

"Why does it matter?" Justin Vahl asked the host.

Sitting nearby was a regular customer who "doesn't want black people sitting near him," the host said. He labeled the man as racist.

The Vahls and their friends didn't want to give that other customer any satisfaction, so they sat at the table anyway and began ordering drinks and appetizers. All the while, they started getting glares from the man - who appears to be white in a photo Mary posted to Facebook - and noticed him talking to waitstaff. That's when a manager told them they'd have to get up for a new table.

"These seats are reserved," the manager told them, "and we will have to move your group." (Buffalo Wild Wings doesn't take reservations, according to the Naperville Sun.)

When they complained to their waitress, she told them she already knew what was happening: The regular customer is a racist, she said, though she couldn't do anything. When multiple managers attempted to order the group to move to a new table, the six adults in the party decided to leave Buffalo Wild Wings entirely.

As they got up to leave the restaurant, the host had tears in his eyes, and other customers got up to hug the group, Marcus Riley, a member of the party, told WBBM.

Reached by phone late Sunday, Justin Vahl declined to comment, saying that he still needed to meet with his lawyers. But in an interview with the TV station, Marcus Riley worried that the interaction inside the restaurant would make the kids question what their teachers and classmates thought of them.

"It's 2019. We're supposed to be past this," he said, noting that the kids at the table were of different backgrounds but all in the minority at their mostly white schools.

As they drove to a Hooters down the street, Riley's kids offered up a litany of troubling questions: Had they done something wrong? Why did the man not like them?

Riley told the station he answered with his own question: "If they don't value us as people, as human beings, would you want to pay them?"

Still, the incident seemed to weigh on some of them. Ethan Vahl, 10, would later tell the TV station, "No one should experience what we experienced that day with racism." His friend Dereon Smothers, also 10, said he had been thinking about the incident all last week.

"That was the most troubling thing for me," said Riley, who is also their basketball coach. "To have my children go through that, it brought me to tears."

He reached out to Buffalo Wild Wings, which later told the Sun that it was "in direct communication with the guest to understand their account of what happened and to offer our deepest apologies for any unacceptable behavior."

By Sunday, multiple employees at the restaurant had been fired and several others had quit, though local media did not report how many were dismissed or what role they had played in the incident.

In the meantime, however, the boys had a bright spot that Riley said he hopes they will remember instead: The day after the incident, they won their three-on-three basketball tournament in nearby Oak Brook.

"5 young boys of all different ethnicities worked together to achieve a common goal," Justin Vahl wrote on Facebook, according to the TV station. "Less than 24 hours after having to walk out of a restaurant where they weren't wanted because the color of their skin."
source

We know where we're not welcome. Let's take our kids to a more family friendly place and have some buffalo breasts...er....wings.

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Yes the Hooters bit threw me too.

This story doesn't make sense. I don't believe that BWW has any kind of discriminatory policy although of course they will be the object of a lawsuit. If the 'host' is a young black man, why did he ask them what race they were? if it wasn't obvious then why would they think that their local racist/white supremacist would object? If you are asked for a table for 15 why would you miscount the group? Would anyone go to a BWW on a Saturday night expecting to find a table for 15?

I don't disbelieve the bones of the story but some of the details don't add up. May be just shoddy reporting.

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BoSoxGal
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by BoSoxGal »

What a bizarre story. How could one regular patron exert so much power over the entire management and waitstaff of this eatery? I don’t care how much he spends, that’s just nuts. They should have told him to hit the road and called the cops if he made a scene.

This is one for the psychology textbooks, to be sure. It’s like the bar fly is Trump and the employees are Trump supporters - from the wildly enthusiastic to the shame-filled but still grateful for the tax cuts.

What a mess this country has come to. :(
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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Econoline
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Econoline »

It does seem weird that the manager apparently thought it would be harder to move the 1 racist than to move the 15 non-racists.
:loon :shrug
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TPFKA@W
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by TPFKA@W »

The guy needs to eat a a Cracker Barrel. In a community that is otherwise very diverse, I have never seen a POC in the local Cracker Barrel. Nothing but wall to wall crackers.

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Joe Guy
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Joe Guy »

Someone should suggest to the racist that Cracker Barrel is more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

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TPFKA@W
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by TPFKA@W »

You are going straight to hell for that.

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Bicycle Bill »

ex-khobar Andy wrote:Yes the Hooters bit threw me too.
Besides the double-entendre of the name and the attire of the waitresses, Hooters is also known for serving some pretty good chicken wings as well.
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Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?

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Joe Guy
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Joe Guy »

TPFKA@W wrote:You are going straight to hell for that.
oops.

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Gob
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Gob »

We'll have our own PlanB table reservation in hell.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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TPFKA@W
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by TPFKA@W »

Gob wrote:We'll have our own PlanB table reservation in hell.
And if it happens that we are unhappy with our accommodations down under, we always have the good MGM to put in a word for us upstairs.

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RayThom
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What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by RayThom »

TPFKA@W wrote:... And if it happens that we are unhappy with our accommodations down under, we always have the good MGM to put in a word for us upstairs.
Maybe not all of us.
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“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.” 

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Bicycle Bill »

TPFKA@W wrote:
Gob wrote:We'll have our own PlanB table reservation in hell.
And if it happens that we are unhappy with our accommodations down under, we always have the good MGM to put in a word for us upstairs.
"Heaven goes by favor.  If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in." ........ Mark Twain
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Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?

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BoSoxGal
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by BoSoxGal »

Image
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Long Run
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Long Run »

Twain did not often express positive thoughts about dogs, but that quote appears to be accurate. More Twain-like:

"When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life."

"Of the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go any length for it -- risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself. And what do you think he has done? In a thousand years you would never guess -- He has left it out of his heaven! Prayer takes its place.

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BoSoxGal
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by BoSoxGal »

Image
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Long Run
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Long Run »

"By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a "noble" animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward -- you can never get her full confidence again." Mark Twain, A Biography, Paine.

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Long Run
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Long Run »

So, yes, Twain thought dogs were better than people, but that ain't sayin' much.

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Long Run wrote:So, yes, Twain thought dogs were better than people, but that ain't sayin' much.
Another Twain quote:  “I believe our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey."

He then went on to say, "I believe that whenever a human being, of even the highest intelligence and culture, delivers an opinion upon a matter apart from his particular and especial line of interest, training and experience, it will always be an opinion of so foolish and so valueless a sort that it can be depended upon to suggest our Heavenly Father that the human being is another disappointment and that he is no considerable improvement upon the monkey.”

The more I read Twain, the more I am convinced the man was an American genius.
Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?

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BoSoxGal
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Re: What's Wrong with This Story?

Post by BoSoxGal »

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood...to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel...And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man"--with his mouth. - What is Man?
Isn't human nature the most consummate sham & lie that was ever invented? Isn't man a creature to be ashamed of in pretty much all is aspects? Is he really fit for anything but to be stood up on the street corner as a convenience for dogs? Man, "Know thyself--& then thou wilt despise thyself, to a dead moral certainty.
- Letter to William Dean Howells, 31 August 1884
I suspect that to you there is still dignity in human life, & that Man is not a joke--a poor joke--the poorest that was ever contrived--an April-fool joke, played by a malicious Creator with nothing better to waste his time upon. ...Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was before; & so I have lost my pride in him & can't write gaily nor praisefully about him any more. And I don't intend to try.
- Letter to William Dean Howells Howells, 2 April 1899
Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass.
- Mark Twain's Notebook, 1898
A genius, indeed.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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