No, that was giving in to racial harassment.
Same thing if a customer came in and made the request to only be helped by a non-black employee.
I wouldn’t be protecting my black employees by not having them help her. I would be protecting them by refusing to do business with that person.
I’m wondering if someone shook her family tree and slaves fell out.
- Lover of the beast.
I thought that was General Tso’ Chicken with extra egg roll (old 69 joke there).
If I found out Matt Damon’s ancestors had owned some of my ancestors I’d be pretty crabby too.
How so? How would he be screwed by telling the customer “Sorry, we won’t accomdate your request. Here’s your refund”?
There’s not a national retailer out there that wouldn’t stand behind the manager’s decision.
And yes, it probably was a spur of the moment call. A very easy one to make.
Delivery team calls “This lady won’t let Jerry deliver her TV cause he’s black. What should we do?”
You reply “Okay, don’t attempt the delivery, bring it back to the store.”
They ask “Should we reschedule her?”
You reply “No way. She can come get her refund.”
667, fax number of the beast.
He could have taken the high road. “No mam, we do not offer the race of your choice for delivery.”
If she complained to his higher-ups and they hassled/fired him over it he can take his story to the press.
One of the things a manager should know is that his boss has his back and will help him thru difficult situations like this, so he should have passed the buck.
Then he didn’t think well, since what he did not only seems to have violated company policy, it violates the law.
Maybe not, but then I doubt they brought up how to load plywood in a '73 Camaro, and I bet he’da figured that one out.
It’s really only your first sentence that is worth responding to, because it shows that your being a blinkered idiot about this: Lowe’s was fucked over. You know, his employer? The people who have a policy (and follow the law) about not discriminating in assignation of job assignments because of an employees race? They looked bad in national media coverage of this, prolly international media coverage with the internet and the focus on America’s continuing racial problems. Do you not understand that Lowe’s was fucked over by this guy’s decision?
No, he just catered to the whims of a bigot in such a way that he, acting in his employers name, broke the law and created an avalanche of bad press. It wasn’t like he forgot to put paper in the copier tray; he fucking broke the law while acting as his employer’s agent.
Aye, it could. Because it was a HUGE fuckup, not a little fuckup. YMMV but I have the law on my side. And ya know what? Most things that are illegal are illegal for good reasons. And there are many good reasons that we made it illegal to do what this manager did.
Are you the manager in question? Because your strident denial that he did anything really wrong and that he doesn’t deserve to be treated this way continue to give the impression that you have something at stake here.
Exactly. “I got fired because I refused to subject my deliveryman to a racist” would be just as good.
You gonna bet your career on the fickle press?
What the fuck does that even mean?
Oh, I admit. It was me that got fired.
Good grief.
Ooooo, that’s even better.
Can I use it?
I bet the damn thing is always busy though.
Upper management could quite easily fire him for not accommodating the woman. He’s turning down a paying customer (the holy god of retail). True he could go to the press with it and maybe something would happen, but he’s also out of work and possibly not likely to get another job in some locations until there is sufficient cultural outrage against what the company did for him. In a lot of jobsites the delivery driver would be considered an asshole for costing a manager in a no-win situation his job.
Unfortunately, in the wonder world of retail this isn’t frequently the case. A boss will stab employees in the back or screw them over for any number of corpulent reasons. There’s a good chance this guy knew passing the buck was only going to get him screwed.
If it frequently isn’t the case, then it also frequently IS the case. But thanks for popping in to let us all know that it isn’t a perfect world that we live in.
Why the hell should the driver be ashamed? He’s been dealing with Virginia racists all his life. The manager went with Community Culture–as a Virginian. Too bad Lowe’s has a Corporate Culture that is based in the 21st century.
I haven’t watched the video but am guessing the old woman is lower class. The “better folk” of the Old Dominion have been used to having blacks do the heavy lifting for centuries. Even if they have to pay them nowadays…
Not gonna happen. Not accomodating a customers request for a non-black driver? You won’t find one retailer out there that would fire a manager for that. Upper management can make dumb decisions but they wouldn’t make that one.
Bullshit. “Customer refused delivery” is all that needs to be said, and it’s a situation that Lowe’s Corporate put on their own website as an acceptable way for a customer to cancel an order.
What is this old racist lady going to do, call corporate and complain that the manager didn’t send out a proper, white, delivery boy upon request? Riiiight.
After the update Kayaker just posted, “racist old troll” has a nice ring to it.
I know people like that exist, but it still always horrifies me to hear about it.