Monday, September 17, 2007

Dinner at Denny's.

At El Triple the sole inhabitant keeps strictly to a rigorous dietary regime of feeding.
Consisting of minimum amounts that are low in calories and high in vitamins and proteins.

With this specific awareness of food and health and consequent feeding habit, it is fascinating to learn how other people handle the necessity to eat.

To respond to the necessity to eat, in towns, there are restaurants.
Today we focus on one in particular.

A chain of restaurants in the USA called “Denny’s”.


It is America's largest family-style restaurant chain in terms of market share and number of units.
The Denny's brand consists of 1,545 restaurants, 521 of which are company-owned and operated and 1,024 of which are franchised/licensed restaurants.

A hungry person can buy a dinner at Denny’s for $ 9,99 (7,20 Euro).
It consists of three courses: an appetizer, a main dish and a dessert.
This is an unbelievable low price for a dinner in a restaurant and we may wonder how they can make any profit.
But they do!
In the second quarter of 2007, Denny’s profit was $ 11.5 million.

However, part of Denny’s profit probably will go now to the Green family from St. Louis.

The Green family, 15 members of them, decided in November 2003, to all go and have a bite in the local Denny’s restaurant.
Quite a party to invade a restaurant.

They probably had not enough just having one booth.
Probably the staff of the restaurant even had to re-arrange some tables to comfort the big party.

It is not known yet how the Green family entered the restaurant.
Were they polite and respectful?
Or were they loud and cheering?

Whatever the situation was, the 15-member family was served by one waiter, so the story goes.
Quite a job.
Serving everyone a glass of cool water.
Taking the orders.

But according to the Green family, the waiter ignored them.
While he did attend other patrons of the restaurant.

Obviously there was interaction between the waiter and the 15-member family.
What the Green’s said to the waiter is not known.
But they claim the waiter used racial slurs.
The Green family is African American.
They say themselves: “We are a black family”.

What did the family do after this experience?

They went to a lawyer who sued Denny’s.
And after 4 years there is a verdict.
Each member of the Green family gets $5,000 in compensatory damages and $35,000 in punitive damages.
$ 600.000 goes into the pockets of the Green family.
Good appetite!

"It's not really about the money,” says family member Charles Tart Sr.
“We don't want another black family or our children to have to go through what we went through".


Denny’s has fired the waiter and is considering now appealing the verdict.
They should.




.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Denny's has a history of racial discrimination. They've been sued before and lost. I have no idea who is in the right WRT this suit, but I wouldn't be so quick to denounce the Green family.

Anonymous said...

I haven't eaten at Denny's in many years because of their history of racial discrimination. They've lost many lawsuits over the last 10 years or so. Apparently the fines are not sufficiently large enough to make them change these illegal and immoral practices. This loyal and fervent reader is suprised and disappointed that someone as worldy as you would support something so despicable.

Anonymous said...

I think Denny's bought out the SAMBO's chain back in the 1970's. I remember the pictures in the entrance of the Sambo chain, The cartoon images of little black Sambo being chased by the tiger in circles until the lion turned into butter,, for pancakes or something. I always thought Denny's was targeted because of thier past connection with the "Little Black Sambo" images. It's hard for me to believe that a chain as large Denny's would cultivate a practice of intolerance towards minorities,(A) it's bad for buisness, they spend millions on advertising. (B) It would cost them $$$ in court settlements.
I'm sure there are hundreds if not thousands of such complaints every year, Ignorant people work everywhere, not just Denny's, I think they just get more media coverage because they still have people pissed off about those politically incorrect images of Sambo hanging in thier lobby.
Robert