Off The Cuff

Denny’s Pays Up For Racial Slurs

Posted by: From Arkansas in Are You Kidding Me? on Sep 15 2007

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In E. St. Louis, Ill., a jury awarded a black family $600,00, 15 members of the family each getting $5,000 in compensatory damages and $35,000 in punitive damages because a waiter at that particular Denny’s ignored the family in order to wait on white people as well as giving racial slurs to the family.

The family had to get their own utensils, drinks and napkins. While they were doing that, the waiter was attending to all of the other patrons at his station. He was later fired for these actions. The family says that it’s not about the money in their lawsuit about a Nov. 2003 incident at a Denny’s. They say that it’s about not having other black families going through what they went through.

It certainly seems that the company that owns Denny’s would be a little more attentive to such things but I recall other times in other places where Denny’s had similar problems. Our family went to a Denny’s one night in North Little Rock after a meeting. The kids were with us. We were all tired but needed to have a meal.

The place was a bit crowded but I’ve been in restaurants with more people than that before. We were told to sit and wait. We waited for over 3 hours to get a table. Others were taken ahead of us. When we finally got to a table, it still took them another hour to get our food to us. This place was racially mixed, wait staff and customers. This was not about racial anything. It was about bad service pure and simple.

Denny’s has a bad reputation for racial problems and just plain bad service. Every time I think of them I also think of an old song by Peter, Paul and Mary….the last line of the lyric says “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?” I’m guessing when they go out of business.

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