Pizza Hut apologises after demanding a group of black players pay in advance for their bill

Burnsy2023 said:
A days training doesn't give you the skills to profile potential criminals. It's a highly specialised skill that people on Pizzahut pay won't have.

Bars are different in the fact that it's perfectly obvious who is drunk/aggressive and shouldn't be allowed to enter.
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I sometimes work at a bar and criminal profiling is a bit of an exagerration. It's not just about who looks aggressive or drunk. You can refuse to serve anyone you like for whatever reason. Some people you just know are dodgy, who are there to say, try to cheat the gambling machines, or scope out the place thinking of how to rob it. When I've worked the door the same applies. You don't need to be a criminal psychologist, just use your head. I don't let anyone in I think looks dodgy.

That Pizza Hut probably had gangs of young, rowdy black men not paying for food beforehand. So they made a judgement call that wasn't necessary this time but may have been another time. The whole thing is PC ridiculousness. Paying first for fast food isn't a big deal. I've been asked to do it myself for not fitting into the usual clientele at a restaurant. No problem - as I understand their reasoning and agree with it as I would (and do) practise it myself
 
FoxEye said:
In an effort to appease (and apologise) to the African American community, Pizza Hut have unveiled a new fried chicken & watermelon pizza.
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Sounds like you think "black" people are "African-Americans" regardless of where they're from...
 
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"smartly dressed" is a good choice of words because it leads readers to insert their own idea of what "smartly dressed" means. It doesn't really say anything about what they were wearing other than that it probably wasn't ripped, stained or dirty. Trainers, jeans and a hoody are "smartly dressed" to some people if the clothes have the "right" labels on them.

So all we know is:

The police advised this Pizza Hut to have customers pay in advance in some undefined circumstances due to the number of people leaving without paying.

An unknown number of people paid in advance after this change in policy.

A group of young men disliked it and refused to either pay or leave.

While this incident was in progress, another group of people were not asked to pay in advance.

The first group is described as "black". The second group is described as "white". Such labels are obviously always inaccurate, so there's no way to be sure what the people using them saw or how they interpreted it. There's no way to know if it was of any relevance anyway - the employee says it wasn't, the first group say he's lying.

So really, we don't know anything.

It might have been their age and sex. It might have been what they were wearing. It might have been an employee being told that pay in advance was the new policy for everyone and these people were just the first customers after that or the first who made a lot of fuss about it.

The other group might not have been asked to pay in advance because they were older, or dressed differently, or they were served by a different employee who interpreted the (probably very badly defined) new policy differently, or were treated differently because the "pay in advance" policy was causing so much fuss in a very obvious way (the first group of men were still right there refusing to pay or leave).

Or it might have been racism. Racism is one of the many possible explanations. Racism is also a possible explanation for why this story is a story at all - if some "white" men had been asked to pay in advance, it wouldn't have been an issue. It only matters if the customers are in an approved group.
 
they had an issue of customers running out and had been told to ask for payment up front when they are suspicious of rowdy groups of men

these guys came into the pizza hut and the manager had one of two thoughts

1) these guys look rowdy so better charge them upfront
2) these guys are black so better charge them upfront

we will never know which thought he had, so its pretty stupid to speculate
 
Cherries Fans Call for Pizza Hut Boycott

A boycott of Pizza Hut indeed, oh dear! Also calls for the club to rename itself 'KFC Bournemouth' :D.

Quote from Anton Robinson, one of the players involved:

"We ordered our food. The manager came up with the bill and said: 'Would you mind paying first?'

"We asked if that was the policy and he said 'no'.

When we asked why he`d asked us, he said: 'It's the way you look.'

"We had a good idea what he was trying to get at.

A group of white kids came in straight after us and they weren`t asked to pay before they had their food.

The only thing that was different was the colour of our skins..."
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http://www.bournemouth.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=223830.

So it was due to 'the way they looked'. Of course it was, the manager couldn't have asked them to pay in advance based on their smell or taste, could he. Also the group of white lads that followed probably weren't asked to pay in advance, because the manager was distracted by it all kicking off with the initial group, as hinted by someone else in this thread.

Here's the discussion on the AFCB forums: http://www.bournemouth.vitalfootball.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=31056&start=1.

It seems there was at least one white player in the group. Some posters are stating that the group was being rude and obnoxious. I can picture these arrogant over-inflated footballers walking in with a swagger and giving the wrong impression. That could be all that's happened. If it was racist it's obviously disgusting, but there's a fine line here and even if the thought did cross the manager's mind, he may have had other reasons for the decision.

I just don't like people calling racist so readily. It could devalue the effect of genuine clear racism with people just shutting off due to hearing it all the time. That manager might be about to lose his job right before Christmas, when all he's tried to do is enforce Pizza Hut's policy on asking possible crims to pay in advance.

Maybe he does deserve to lose his job for handling it so badly. Saying 'the way you look' obviously leaves you open to all sorts of things as he's now discovered. I bet he wishes he'd said something like, 'policy is not to give a reason and I am not required to do so'.

On the other hand, people on the board are also saying that the branch manager is an ******** and a simpleton.

I've been to some decent-ish places for lunch where everyone has to pay in advance, such as the Hand Made Burger Company in Solihull (sit down waiter service just like Pizza Hut); maybe Pizza Hut should just adopt this policy? It seems to work well. The problem then though, is that they might compromise people's perception of them as a restaurant and increase it as a fast food chain, which is what they really are. Also introducing a policy like that to an existing customer base, is much harder than having it as a policy from the outset.

Finally - no there's not really enough information or evidence to make a clear opinion on who's to blame, nor is there likely to be a Pizza Hut will be schtum on the actual events, at least until any investigations and disciplinary procedures have been completed. But it's still an interesting discussion I think.
 
Just make it a blanket policy and you wouldn't have this problem.

Give someone the discretion to use this at will and it can blow up in their face if their judgement is called into question.

Nandos is a sit down fast food but you have to pay before you eat there, so if Pizza Hut have this widespread problem of people not paying for their food, then look for a solution that doesn't involve deliberately or inadvertently risk offending groups of people by singling them out for pre-payment.
 
Just as another point, if you had gone in to Pizza Hut and been singled out for pre-payment when other customers hadn't, would you be offended?

I don't think it was deliberately racially motivated, but by singling out a group, judging them, asking them to pre-pay - it's a slight against your character and it's offensive to be asked to pre-pay when other customers around you haven't.
 
It's against blacks so it got to be racism, the fact none's heard the other side of the arguement yet is irrelevent. Definately racism!

I hate white people so so much!....oh wait.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
Bars are different in the fact that it's perfectly obvious who is drunk/aggressive and shouldn't be allowed to enter.
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It's not just about drunk/agressive as people have said, it can be about anything except race. That is pretty much the wording of the SIA training on the matter. It wouldn't be too hard to decide on a policy which essentially was based on race, but was legally ok though.

It doesn't sound like this has been targetted at black people anyway, pizza hut are in the habit of apologising for literally anything to make it go away, so that doesn't hold much weight towards the suggestion that it's true. It might even be that this policy was applied to absolutely everyone except the group of white lads, maybe they were friends with the staff/regulars, without being there it's very hard to know why it was applied differently to the two groups.
 
daz said:
Just as another point, if you had gone in to Pizza Hut and been singled out for pre-payment when other customers hadn't, would you be offended?

I don't think it was deliberately racially motivated, but by singling out a group, judging them, asking them to pre-pay - it's a slight against your character and it's offensive to be asked to pre-pay when other customers around you haven't.
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Not in pizza hut, but a group I was with (IT dept from work) were singled out to pre-pay at a chinese buffet. I wasn't particularly bothered as it doesn't make any difference to me, my boss was pretty offended though.
 
daz said:
Just as another point, if you had gone in to Pizza Hut and been singled out for pre-payment when other customers hadn't, would you be offended?
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I answered this in my OP and no, I don't think I would be. I'd wonder why, but that would be about as far as it got. The only way to prove them wrong is politely agree and carry on.
 
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