A father who blamed smoothie shop employees for his son’s allergic reaction — then threw a racist, menacing tantrum in the store — is facing criminal charges and unemployment.
The man’s son has a peanut allergy, and shortly after he picked up an order of smoothies for his family, the kid was rushed to a hospital suffering from an allergic reaction, although the family’s attorney says he’s now “on the road to recovery” (which is good to know).
Employees later said the customer “never told them about the peanut allergy but only asked that there be no peanut butter in his drink,” CNN reported (read story here). His attorney says he “told employees it must not contain peanuts and his receipt reflected the order should not contain peanut butter,” which isn’t inconsistent with the workers’ version.
Anyway, CNN says, he returned to the smoothie shop “and confronted employees, yelling at them and demanding to know who had made the smoothie which contained peanuts …. When employees could not … answer he became irate, yelling at the employees using a number of expletives, … threw a drink at an employee, … [and] also made comments toward an employee referencing their immigration status.” Classy.
He also refused to leave, and “at one point allegedly [tried] to open a locked ‘Employees Only’ door leading behind the counter.” Which is why businesses have “Employees Only” doors that lock from the inside. The employees called the cops.
This didn’t end well for the customer. He was charged with criminal trespass, breach of peace, and intimidation based on bigotry or racial bias. When his employer found out, he was fired. He’d been working as a financial adviser for Merrill Lynch, a subsidiary of Bank of America, which issued a statement that it “does not tolerate behavior of this kind” by its employees.
I don’t know the guy, and don’t know if he has a short fuse or is a normally calm guy who’s stressed out by everything that’s gone on and lost his cool when his son experienced a medical emergency. I’ve heard of peanut allergies, and can imagine that if you’re a parent of a child with such an allergy you have to be constantly vigilant, and that would keep you on edge and wear you down after a while.
Also, having read many news accounts and watched many YouTube videos of racist encounters, I get the impression that many of these incidents start out with people getting upset about something, such as a parking space dispute, or in this case a child becoming ill from purchased food, and the upset person then vents their frustration and anger by resorting to hurtful language and it goes downhill from there. What you have there, obviously, is a parent being protective of his child.
So, people who use racist language might not normally be racist, but may use racist language against the object of their fury because it hurts, and in the heat of the moment they want to inflict hurt, in the same way that people flip others off or shout obscenities. There’s not much thought that goes into it; it’s impulsive behavior by people who may, or may not, have ongoing anger management issues (which is why judges often require these people to take anger management class as part of their sentence).
What I’m saying is a lot of this comes from the frailties of human nature. That’s not to excuse it. Actions that hurt others have consequences, and this father is facing consequences for being overly protective, or in the wrong way. He’s already lost his job, and he’ll have to go to court, where he’ll likely pay a fine and get sent to a.m. class. Whether that’s justice or not for the employees, it’s a lesson to think before acting.
I’m posting about it because I fervently believe in learning from other people’s mistakes. Better them than you. When I see someone screw up and pay for it, I think, well, I won’t copy that in my own behavior.
Parents and teachers are supposed to teach children the art of restraint, which is needed to function successfully in adult society, because daily adult life is full of petty irritations and shit sandwiches, and when things don’t go right, to successfully deal with the problem, you have to keep your cool and employ your powers of rationality rather than let emotion take over.
Some people are better at this than others. So you hear about airplane cabin meltdowns, store employees getting assaulted, people unleashing racist tirades, and other unhinged and sometimes violent behavior toward (often innocent) strangers. Yes, I know it’s hard for 330 million people (the U.S. population) to keep their cool, especially given how stressful life is currently, and given two years of accumulated cabin fever. There are a lot of short tempers right now.
But if you can’t keep your cool, if you feel close to your breaking point, maybe you’d better hole up in the cabin a while longer. Because if you go out in public and lose your cool over some incident, it’ll likely cost you. In the end, you’ll hurt yourself, like this guy did. So practice those self-restraint skills. Think before you act. Put your mind in charge of your emotions. It’s for your own good.