Taco Bell In Florida Has Language Management Problems [VIDEO]

Taco Bell In Florida Has Language Management Problems [VIDEO]

Taco Bell In Florida Has Language Management Problems [VIDEO]

It’s one of those “that didn’t really just happen?” stories. A Taco Bell in Hialeah, Florida, turned away a customer because she didn’t speak Spanish. Yes, you read that right. Spanish.

The craziness began when Alexandria Montgomery tried to order at the drive thru window. Montgomery, who is black, was refused service by the allegedly all-Spanish speaking staff.

“She was saying something in Spanish that I didn’t understand,” Montgomery recalled. “I replied and said, ‘No habla español,’ and she replied and said, ‘No habla ingles.’”

When she could not order through the speaker, Montgomery decided to drive up to the window and started recording video on her cell phone when the worker still refused to take her order because she wasn’t speaking Spanish.

“I simply wanted a quesadilla and that’s not hard to understand in Spanish, because I think it’s a Spanish word,” she said.

“Do you have a manager here?” Montgomery can be heard asking in the video.

The employee replied in Spanish, “She is in her house sleeping.”

The worker then told Montgomery to leave because there was another car behind her.

“There is no one who speaks English,” she said in Spanish. She then shut and locked the window.

When Montgomery continued recording and waiting at the window, the employee came back and again told her to leave the drive-through.

“This is Hialeah, I’m sorry,” she said in Spanish.

“This is America!” Montgomery replied.

Yes, this is America – and Taco Bell isn’t exactly a shining example of Spanish or Mexican cuisine. It’s cheap fast food, and everyone knows it. There’s no reason that a fast food chain based out of California should be doing this. Imagine the uproar if the Taco Bell had refused to serve a Spanish speaker because “there is no one who speaks Spanish” at the story and the manager is asleep. There would be instant headlines all over national media.

Instead, local media picked it up, and after Taco Bell corporate headquarters was asked for comment, the worker has now been fired.

This is an example of really lousy management. The employees do bear the blame for the actual interaction, but they never would have behaved like that if management hadn’t set the tone. I have no problem with a private company employing staff that can speak different languages in order to reach out to a larger customer base. I worked in a customer-facing service position in college, and my language skills came in handy a few times, which resulted in happy customers. And it really is all about making the customer happy, within reason. I say “within reason” because I have seen unreasonable in retail. But asking for someone who could speak English, in an American fast food restaurant, isn’t unreasonable.

When you refuse to take a customer’s order because you can’t or won’t understand them (the word “quesadilla” at Taco Bell should not be an issue), and there is NO ONE ELSE in the store who can speak the primary language of the country, then there is a problem. Management saw no problem having a Spanish-speaking enclave in the store, until they actually refused service to someone and thought they could get away with it. That’s bad management. I’m betting that this Taco Bell is going to have a manager and employee shake-up pretty quickly – and that any new employee there is at least going to be bilingual.

Featured image via Pixabay

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4 Comments
  • scott says:

    The dims are fine with this I’m sure.. mexicans rank higher than blacks in the victimhood hierarchy for the left…uneducated spanish speakers are the future of the dims, blacks, at least in some measure have come to realize that the dims just want to keep them on the plantation, so they have to find new “useful idiots”…

  • Brian Brandt says:

    Forget what language they speak. I just wish my local Taco Bell had tacos that looked as good as the ones in your photo.

  • GWB says:

    When … there is NO ONE ELSE in the store who can speak the primary language of the country, then there is a problem.
    Yeah, a problem that ICE should be called to solve.
    I’m going to bet that if a check were done, there was no e-verify done for any of those employees.
    On top of that, no shift manager on duty violates company policy, I’m betting.

    If I were Taco Bell corporate, I would dump the franchisee. Entirely, every store they operate. Reclaim the stores, find a new franchisee to run them, and hire new employees – ones that are citizens and legal residents.

  • Linda Fox says:

    Ho-boy! Many problems with this:
    – extremely unlikely that an AMERICAN employee would not have at least a little familiarity with English – even Puerto Ricans, whose island language is Spanish, and who are citizens, speak reasonable English (I used to teach PR kids). Fluency varies, but most can make themselves understood. So, yeah, E-Check the whole place. And, fine the franchise for EACH violation.
    – If the employees cared about service, they could have used the numbers on the menu board to facilitate the order, holding up fingers – not difficult, guys.
    – This strikes me more about anti-Black prejudice – many Hispanics are quite biased against Blacks – think them dirty and violent. Where is the NAACP when you need them?

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