Nah, the manager clearly should have told the woman no. Regardless of how sincere the company’s inclusion policy is, complying with the woman’s request is a clear social media crisis, whereas rejecting it wouldn’t be. “Lowe’s says no to racist customer” just isn’t going to generate many shares.
If that’s what the company wanted, then the company should have trained its managers on the company policy when it comes to dealing with racist, sexist, homophobes, etc.
It’s a little late to fire someone who made an honest mistake trying to please a worthless carbon life form.
It may have been an honest mistake, but it was also a very stupid one. Stupid people tend not to make great managers.
I’m fairly sure that Lowe’s, like virtually all large companies, has some sort of diversity training for its managers. From what I hear, it’s pretty hard to avoid. The specific issue of how to respond to an absurd request by a racist customer may not have come up, but common sense would suggest the appropriate answer.
I’ve worked in retail before. It doesn’t really matter what the manager does; he or she is just cannon fodder. It’s a stressful job, many catch 22 situations come up like this all the time - in the end the only way to win is to get out of retail.
Since retail is not really high skilled employment, upper management does not really care about making the situation better for the employees; there’s always someone to replace them.
Good point.
I think it’s a good thing that certain behavior by businesses is illegal. It’s a great thing that it’s illegal for a business to not be legally allowed do discriminate on the basis of race.
Would this count as the business discriminating, though? The driver wasn’t fired, or paid less, or denied a promotion or benefits. He just drove to address X instead of address Y. Does catering to a bigoted customer, in a way that doesn’t actually disadvantage your employee, count as a form of illegal discrimination?
As an analogy, imagine you’re a manager at a McDonalds, and a skin head with a swastika tattooed on his throat comes in the front door. Your only cashier working at the time happens to be black. You think, “Tom’s a good guy, I don’t want to see him get hassled by this asshole,” so you tell him to go on break while you man the cash register yourself. Have you broken the law?
Well, Miller; that’s not the issue addressed in response to John Mace. Mace said he has no problem with a business discriminating. But to address your question: If a manager believes that a customer (or potential customer) is an asshole, there’s no reason to cater to that person. One would hope, though, that the manager would wait until there’s actual evidence of the person being an asshole before denying service.
Agreed although if the media got wind of it the manager would have been lauded for doing the right thing and the company would have to publicly agree.
You forgot about the 90% restocking fee.
Can one get steel-toed Crocs?
I’ll take the opposite tack like John Mace did earlier though without much conviction:
Three positives:
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Though I don’t have the transcript, her use of “black” instead of “nigger” is progress:rolleyes:.
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Since when are “deliverymen” a protected class!
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[rick perry] … [/rick perry].
Rules are rules. She wouldn’t have let Jesus on her property either.
And yet people drive on roads to get to private clubs every day, including delivery trucks. How is that?
True. He was neither Christian nor white, which rules him out as a delivery man as well as a volunteer lawn mower.
What’s the relevence of this? Allowing people to drive to private clubs doesn’t seek to deny anyone else the use of those roads.
In the original scenario, no one is being “denied” the use of roads either.
You said businesses that discriminate shouldn’t be allowed to use the public roads to make a profit. And yet private clubs can make a profit, and they and their members can use the roads to get to and from the club. They can use the public roads to transport profit making material to their club, hiring only members to do the driving. And private clubs can discriminate.
okay, since we’re all having fun here, I’d like to discuss one important aspect of the story that hasn’t been mentioned yet: The OP’s first link states that the woman " refused to let him into her home because he is black".
Now obviously the woman is a racist pig. But she owns her home, and has the right to refuse entry to her private property, doesn’t she? (Just like the example upthread about the non-Christian guy with the lawn mower.)
So wouldn’t it be legal to send the delivery guy to unload the box from his truck to the sidewalk in front of her house, and if she tells him to get the hell off her property,–just leave the box sitting there? It then becomes the woman’s problem how to carry it into her house.
Now, the poor manager would probably get fired in any case, because an irate customer would complain about poor service.
Ooh, ooh, ooh. I remember the third bit of progress. (post 52)
- Not too many years ago the delivery driver might have been lynched - so there’s that.
Actually, I would reserve judgment on the manager for a different reason. He was put into a difficult situation, but any halfway decent manager, being aware that a customer is racist, wouldn’t subject anyone that works for him to racism. That’s his job because he’s the manager. Now, I’m not a manager, and I’m sure exactly what was said, but he basically either had to put that employee in a situation to deal with that customer, which I’m glad he didn’t have him do, but the other two options would also get him in hot water, replace him with a white guy–which got him fired–or tell the customer to eat a bag of dicks, which while certainly satisfying, very well could have gotten him into similar trouble, possibly for exceeding his authority in refusing to deliver an item for which the delivery had already been paid, and that customer very likely would have painted the issue to still make him look bad.
Now, of course, that the manager is also an idiot and deserved to get fired, but as I do think it’s possible he was actually looking out for his employee, even if it didn’t come off that way, I’m loathe to judge him without actually hearing his side of the story. Regardless, we can all agree that the the customer is an unrepentant racist, and I’ve little doubt that having her picture out there associated with this article will probably get her so sort of retribution.