Funny how people get offended by a baby hungrily nuzzling a bare boobie but don’t think twice about shoveling a processed, grilled, fat-fortified agglomeration of cow parts into their pie hole. autz, you’re fighting the good fight here, but IMHO[sup]†[/sup] BK’s reluctance to apologize directly to the woman may be out of the necessity to protect itself as a corporation, and in part, its franchisee. It’s much better for the corporation to defend against allegations of breaking the law and violating the woman’s rights (should she choose to take that onerous and expensive route) than it is to admit to wrongdoing.
Another notable case against BK in the news right now is about employees’ wanton contamination of food to be served to the public. The suit alleges employees contaminated BK food with urine, degreaser and saliva on a very regular basis.
In this suit, the presence of an apology letter from the management to one of the recipients of the contaminated food would likely be considered a “smoking gun.”
†My very first real job was with Burger King. I have many neat stories, from stupidity in management to outright cornholing of food product.
Many babies don’t like to be covered while they are nursing. They like to be able to look up at their mother and it is a bonding experience. Shutting them off from the parent during feeding defeats a good portion of the purpose.
Simply because someone could avoid doing something doesn’t mean they should be expected to. Especially if that something is perfectly natural, legal, and healthy. There is no reason for a breastfeeding mother to cover herself and the baby during nursing to avoid offending those who may feel the sight is offensive.
The interracial couple COULD avoid Burger King, or they COULD sit at seperate tables to avoid offending anyone who maybe offended by interracial relationships. But it is their right to be there and to be together. Just because they could do something else, also within their rights, and thereby avoid the situation doesn’t mean they would be one whit in the wrong for sitting together, even if it offends some other customers.
All that being said, autz, I think their apology was underwhelming, but as long as they change their behavior and don’t bother nursing mothers in the future I don’t think there is an issue here.
I would love to see an answer to the issue XJETGIRLX mentioned, as I have always wondered that. Do business owners have the right to evict someone from their business for any reason they decide? Is it considered private property? I assume in most situations I can kick anyone out of my house I want to, but would it be the same if ran a business out of it?
Seems to me autz that since you consider the act of breastfeeding in public to be no big deal, why do expect the nature of the apology to be out of proportion to it?
Most businesses reserve the right, somewhere in the fine print, to “refuse service to anyone for any or no reason”. The SDMB included. Now if this holds up in a court of law is a different matter. For the most part if you open a place up to the public, as a BK certainly is, then you accept the rules that govern behavior in public places(usually the laws of the state/city/county/etc) in which the business is located. In this particular case BK, by opening a public resturant in Utah, implicitly accepted the laws of the state of Utah regarding the right to breastfeed in public places. They violated that rule, and thus the bru-ha-ha.
If BK wanted to enforce this type of issue they would have to be members-only and have membership agreements which stated their objection to breastfeeding in the resturant. Even with such agreements there are some barriers you can’t cross and suits have been successful against private establishments which tried to restrict membership on basis of several “protected rights” such as race, gender, etc.
A “public facility” is "a wide range of entities, such as restaurants, hotels, theaters, doctors’ offices, pharmacies, retail stores, museums, libraries, parks, private schools, and day care centers. Private clubs and religious organizations are exempt from the requirements for public accommodations. "
They "may not prohibit a woman’s breast feeding in any location where she otherwise may rightfully be, irrespective of whether the breast is uncovered during or incidental to the breastfeeding. " Meaning if they kick this lady out of BK because she’s stealing from the other customer’s, then she doesn’t have a right to be there in the first place.
But they can’t kick her out (or ask her to go elsewhere) just becasue she’s nursing.
Think of it this way. If this lady weren’t nursing and didn’t even have a baby, is she allowed to be there? Unless she’s doing something weird, the answer is yes. So she may rightfully be there. So they can’t prohibit her from breastfeeding.
The referece to civil rights sit-ins has to do with the fact that lunch counters and other places tried to argue that they were private businesses and could restrict certain races from entering if they wanted. That’s where the idea of public accomidations comes in. It applies to keeping your facility open and accessable to the public
If Idiot Manager doesn’t like people in wheelchairs, in theory he could ask those people to leave his restaraunt, but he better have a reason apart from the wheelchair for doing so. Ditto for breast feeding.
A restaraunt is a public place. Just as they are required to accomodate persons with handicaps, they are required to tolerate them as well. Utah law states that women are alowed to breast feed anywhere they please, provided they would ordinarily be alowed there. Assuming the lady in question wasn’t doing anything besides breastfeeding, the manager could not legally ask her to leave.
The response from BK is pretty damn lame, but no more or less than I’d expect from a big corporation.
As a breastfeeding mom who does nurse in public frequently (my walking, talking 15-month-old - horrors! :rolleyes: ) I carry a card with me at all times:
*California Civil Code 43.3
Breastfeeding Rights
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a mother may breastfeed her child in any location, public or private, except a private home or residence of another, where the mother and child are authorized to be present.*
it seems that the mom and baby in question were authorized to be in the BK having been served and permitted to seat themselves, so had they been in California the resturant would have been breaking the law asking her to stop breastfeeding. They card I carry doesn’t address the question of being asked to relocate to private area however, so that request on the part of the BK employee might be more murky legal question.
You know, most of these restaurants do have policies against bringing in outside food. Why couldn’t this lady have just ordered her kid a Super Sized Similac like everyone else?
Just curious, does anybody’s opinion change if it’s not a big, evil corpoorate entity like BK, and instead (just for fun) we said the incident occured at a small locally owned coffee shop (or something)?
Oh Jesus Christ, you’d think the lady stood on a table, stripped to the waist and danced around, all while holding the child up to one breast.
She fed her child. If she’s anything like I was when she was nursing, she was pretty discreet. Sure, someone could catch a tiny glimpse of skin, if they really tried, but for the most part, they’d see my baby’s head in front of my breast with my shirt covering any skin above that. Sure, I tried covering her up completely with a blanket at first, but since we didn’t do that at home, she hated it and would throw the blanket off, often turning her head in the process and then my breast would actually be exposed.
Here’s a suggestion: You don’t like the look of someone breastfeeding their child, don’t look. Unless she stands in front of you with baby and breast at eye level, I’m sure you can find a way to avoid it.
Why do you keep expounding on the idea that the restaurant has no **right] to ask the mother to cover up or move? BK certainly has every right to ask her. I mean, do we know did they ask politely, or forcefully? Is the mother’s response reasonable or unreasonable?
My guess is that heads are rolling in BK’s public relations department. If they’d just issued a straightforward apology, this wouldn’t be making the news; as it is, I doubt Burger King is happy about how they’re making the news. Big time PR screwup from the very people who are supposed to be helping their PR.
Would BK have the right to ask a black woman to leave because she is black? Would they have the right to ask an Scientologist to leave because he’s reading “Battlefield Earth?” To ask an epiletic to leave because she had a siezure?
No.
Does it matter if they ask politely or forcefully?
No.
How could the mother’s response be unreasonable if she’s in a public place doing a legal activity?
Well, Thank GOODNESS I read this post! I asked for no Onions on my whopper on Nov. 10… and I got frickin’ onions on it like they were just giving onions away!
And now they apologized.
That’s sweet
Long story short on this one folks: Breast feeding is okay. BK shouldn’t have said anything. Stupid kid’s fault trying to please another customer (who obviously fears breasts).
Change the situation to NOSE PICKING. It’s perfectly legal to pick your nose )And wipe it into your handkerchief that you then place in your pocket). but it MAY offend someone, who may say something, and something might be said to you.
BK did just enough of what it had to do to amend the situation. The woman was too sensitive, BK employee was too insensitive, the person that complained needs to get laid.
Not really, it is still pretty straightforward. The woman has a right to be in the public area, therefore she has a right to breastfeed in the public area. The language of the laws in both California and Utah make that clear. Being asked to re-locate out of a public area is a request which the nursing mother has absolutely no obligation to honor. She can simply sit there and nurse anyway, they have no standing on which to force her to move. Call the cops? They know the law and they won’t arrest her for nursing in a public place. Strongarm her yourself? Then the cops come for the person doing the strongarming and the money in the pockets of their employer.
Because they DON’T have the right to even ASK in any sort of official capacity. If the manager came up and acted as an agent of the BK corporation when he asked her to cover herself or remove herself from the public area, then the manager was acting illegally because the relationship the corporation has with the state expressly disallows them to discriminate on this basis. It doesn’t matter how politely or impolitely it was worded. No entity which creates a place and opens it to the public can put rules around that place which are in violation of the state’s laws governing public behavior. That is simply one of the rules of doing business in the US.
Even by ASKING they violated their agreement with the state, and the citizens thereof, which they agreed to when they opened the resturant. They had no right to ask. Period.
