Two employees were fired and a complaining customer was reportedly “banned for life” from all Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants after the customer tried to force a large party to move because he “[didn’t] want black people sitting near him.”
The families that were asked to move in an incident at a Naperville, Ill., location are seeking new policies and training for the restaurant chain as well as a hotline to handle reports of racism.
All good. The employees were wrong and apparently incapable of even acting in the restaurant’s self-interest (alienating a party of 18 to kowtow to one guy? Really?). The main point the families are raising is that BWW apparently doesn’t already have policies in place. They found it surprising, and I do too, given the number of racial incidents nationwide and our hate-whisperer-in-chief.
Here’s a breakdown of what happened:
On Oct. 26, following a birthday party, the Vahls’ party showed up to a Buffalo Wild Wings in a strip mall in Naperville, Ill., 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, the host said, was a regular customer who “doesn’t want black people sitting near him.” He labeled the man as racist.
The Vahls and their friends didn’t want to give that other customer any satisfaction, so they sat down 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.
They refused. Two employees tried various B.S. ways to get them to move. Finally, the families left ….
… and went to Hooters.
Didn’t see that one coming.