Waffle House is being sued by five patrons who claim they were the victims of racial discrimination. The suit has just survived a motion to dismiss.
While I think the denial of the motion to dismiss was the correct call, I think the arguments made for dismissal are going to turn out to be compelling. Waffle House would have to have kept a separate pot of fly-infested grits in order to have done what they are accused of: serve flies pre-cooked into the grits to only these customers. (Or, of course, have a supply of My Cousin Vinny-style “magic grits” availabe). That determination is a factual one, so it was quite properly resolved against Waffle House in the context of a 12(b)(6) motion. But I don’t see these guys winning at a trial, unless their complaint is different than what’s been outlined here…
So the question is, whether or not the files were given to them deliberately? Do we know whether or not it’s possible that the cook just tossed some dead flies into their plates AFTER they were taken from the “grit pot”? How do we know they were pre-cooked and not just tossed into a bowl and stirred a bit? Hot grits, and decomposing fly, could give the appearance of being pre-cooked.
Note: I’ve worked in an eatery and if I wanted to toss any manner of bits into a specific customer’s plate, I could do so quite easily.
Gah. That’s hokey beyond belief. I don’t think I’ve ever been greeted in a Waffle House, and I’ve certainly never been offered a seat. I just sat and waited until one came open. If someone were not black and happened to get a fly in his grits, can he pursue this same equal-rights strategy? Or does he just have to live with it? And spare me the, “Oh but whites have had it easy for centuries” crap. No white person has ever lived for more than one century, and lots of white folks have had hard lives.
I don’t really see them prevailing on the suit either. That being said, this certainly doesn’t paint Waffle House in a good light either. Can you imagine their defense? “Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I’ll have you know that all of our grits come with flies.” Either way, it is certainly not the best publicity available.
But Waffle House has always been a hole in the wall, with a reputation for hiring people who make Flo look like Einstein. That’s always been part of its charm.
I wonder if anyone checked to see that the flies were actually cooked. That’s one of the things that tipped off the cops in the Wendy’s finger case (the finger wasn’t cooked).
Is that right? No white person has ever lived past one hundred years? Someone should tell the Boston University School of Medicine to quit studying centenarians in New England.
Comparing the shitty lives of some white folks to the systematized cruelty that was inflicted on American blacks for over three hundred years followed by over a century of legalized segregation and humiliation which has led to waves of imbalance in everything from education to access to health care to job prospects is pretty stupid. You’ve obviously never had to escape the stigma of once having people like you considered property.
Maybe not. But I’ve dealt with having the stigma of being untrustworthy, of taking back gifts, and of being unable to hold my liquor. I’ve also lived among people for whom humiliation would be a step up. It is entirely possible that some of my ancestors were massacred by some of yours. But why you should be responsible for what they did is unclear. By the same token, no one at that table had suffered three hundred years of the crap you describe. And even if they had, why should they be entitled to sue for flies in their grits if no one else is entitled to sue for that?
