A white man was arrested after attacking two black female employees at a McDonald’s in St. Petersburg, Florida, on New Year’s Day. The man, 40-year-old Daniel Williams Taylor, yelled at Yasmine James over a plastic straw and proceeded to reach across the counter and grab her by the collar. Understandably, James defended herself. As caught on video by a spectator, she fought back by punching him in the arm and pulling his shirt.
What happens next is puzzling: Fellow workers pull James and Taylor apart, and then someone who seems to be a manager continues taking Taylor’s order. Why this happened, as opposed to the man being immediately removed from the store (or arrested) is unclear. What is clear, however, is that Taylor did not want to apologize and remove himself from the situation.
“And I want her a-- fired right now,” he yells in the video, instead. James replies that he’s going to jail for attacking her, to which Taylor replies, “I was just asking you a f--ing question, b---h.”
“You’re going to give me a goddamn refund,” Taylor then says to the manager.
Here is the video that first went viral on Facebook, posted by TJ Biandudi:
Brenda Biandudi (who originally filmed the video) later shared the Facebook post with an update of her own.
Update: The employee was not fired!
YES this really did happen last night for all those asking me... it all started because he wanted a straw !!!
The young girl said she used to box 🥊
After this fight he came back and went behind the counter & tried to fight the manager.
The guy left before the cops arrived.
And the other assault? Taylor was escorted out of the McDonald’s (by an employee) after his violent outburst. On his way, he decided to kick a different black female employee in the stomach.
As captured in security footage, Tateona Bell was holding the door when Taylor decided to assault her. (This footage has yet to be released because of the investigation, as the St. Petersburg police department told Yahoo Lifestyle.)
And how did this all begin? In a phone interview with the Washington Post, Brenda Biandudi explained that Taylor was initially upset because there were no plastic straws out by the condiments. “She told him that it’s the law now that they’re not supposed to have the straws in the lobby,” Biandudi told the Post. “He said there’s no such law.” (In St. Petersburg, there is.)
Why did Biandudi start recording? “I said, this is getting a little heated here,” she explained to the Post. “I better get my camera ready in case somebody needs to know what happened.”
Taylor was charged with two counts of simple battery, which is a misdemeanor. He is currently being held in the Pinellas County Jail on a bond.
McDonald’s has released a statement about the incident:
“Our highest priority is always the safety and well-being of our employees and customers at our restaurants. We have been in contact with the police department and are fully cooperating with their investigation.”
There’s a lot to unpack in this horrendous situation. Fundamentally, it comes down to a few despicable things: racism, sexism, and classism. Taylor, as a white man, reeked of entitlement in the way he put his hands on a woman of color. No matter where she was standing, it wouldn’t have been okay for him to reach out and touch her. But the considerable distance between them, with her arms folded against her body, amplifies his conscious decision to lean over the barrier in an effort to grab her. It wasn’t a mistake or a misunderstanding, as though they’d just bumped into each other or stumbled; it was a conscious act of violence.
The customer-employee dynamic is also important here. Even after the altercation was over and another employee approached to check on his order (in spite of his abhorrent behavior), Taylor could not resist shouting that he still wanted his victim fired. In this sense, he desperately wanted to assert dominance and “win” the fight.
This dichotomy reinforces the power imbalance that puts so many service workers in harm’s way, whether by sexual harassment, verbal abuse, or so on. The societal idea that employees deserve fewer boundaries and consideration than those they’re serving is toxic, but all-too-common.
Even though Taylor started the violence, he still wanted to see her punished by losing her livelihood. All of this was due to his frustration that a plastic straw wasn’t available. What will it take for white men to start realizing that women—and especially women of color, trans women, and other additionally marginalized women—are also people?