The power of free publicity illustrated right here: This Instagram won more than 10,000 likes in the first 24 hours since Taco Bell posted it.
But it’s got a long way to catch up to the 54,000 likes this one’s received since it first appeared eight weeks ago:
A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 12:02 p.m.
TEXAS ROADHOUSE fired a waitress in Greeley, Colo., this week after she tweeted a threat to kill Mexicans, in a flash of roadhouse rage because a customer didn’t tip her. Texas Roadhouse spokesman Travis Doster told ABC 7 News: “Our managing partner was actually mowing his lawn when he was alerted. He immediately rushed to the restaurant, met with the employee who posted this disgusting Tweet, and she was terminated.”
Former waitress Megan Olson, who goes by the name Megatron on Twitter, wrote: “If we had a real life purge I would kill as many Mexicans as I could in one night. #learnhowtotipyoufuckingtwats.” ABC 7 showed an edited photo of the Tweet; photo, top.
Olson later apologized on Facebook: “I wrote hurtful, inconsiderate, insensitive and careless words and I understand the amount of people I have offended by that. There are no excuses for what I have done. . . . I want you all to know that I do not actually feel this way.” Her Twitter account is now password-protected. (ABC 7 News)
A Facebook user reported Olson’s Tweet on the Louisville-based restaurant chain’s Facebook page Thursday, and the company responded immediately, illustrating once more how quickly companies try to extinguish bad news before it goes viral on social media.
The Texas Roadhouse case was the fourth time in less than a month where Louisville fast-food chains were attacked for employees’ discriminatory behavior. There was last Saturday’s much-discussed Taco Bell employee in Phenix City, Ala., who refused to serve two uniformed sheriff’s deputies (story, below), and two Papa John’s restaurants where employees used racial slurs on order slips, in Denver last week, and in Louisville at the end of June.
TACO BELL: In Alabama, dozens of residents gathered Continue reading “Texas Roadhouse rage: As chains race to douse social media wildfire, chain fires waitress for ‘kill Mexicans’ Tweet”
A sports reporter who also aggregates Taco Bell news once a week for USA Today is clearly uncomfortable with negative news swirling around the Yum unit. The writer, Ted Berg, was especially unhappy with an incident last Saturday where a Taco Bell cashier in Phenix City, Ala., refused to serve two Lee County Sheriff’s Office deputies.
“These are emotional times, the nature of which extends far beyond the scope of This Week in Taco Bell,” he writes, apparently deadly-seriously. “But this site believes firmly that Taco Bell is for the people, and that no hungry would-be Taco Bell consumer of any race, creed or occupation deserves to be denied Taco Bell unless he or she represents an obvious and imminent hazard to the safety or well-being of the other patrons or Taco Bell employees.”
Berg continues: “There’s a lot to be made of what’s going on in our world right now, and perhaps a lot that needs to be done about it. But we don’t need to make any of it about Taco Bell. Taco Bell should be a sanctuary from the never-ending onslaught of heartbreaking and awful and terrifying news we seem to face daily, not the source thereof. That those two cops wanted Taco Bell better helps me identify with and understand them, as I also want Taco Bell.”
Berg is clearly a huge, huge Taco Bell fan. Last week, he wrote about visiting the company’s southern California headquarters in Irvine, where the fast-Mexican chain made him its honorary president for the day, set him up in CEO Brian Niccol’s office “and even decorated the desk with photos reaped from my social-media history.” Berg also got to wear founder Glenn Bell’s sombrero; photo, top.
Despite the warm welcome, Berg assured readers the visit “will not color the content of the ruthless Taco Bell journalism I aim to provide.”
Berg says This Week in Taco Bell is “the Internet’s foremost source of aggregated Taco Bell content.” But we haven’t launched Boulevard publicly yet; that’ll be Aug. 1. And then, of course, we’ll grab the top mantle for our minute-by-minute, wall-to-wall, scorched-earth coverage.
Related: Follow Berg on Twitter. He’s not alone among other over-the-top Taco Bell fans: UCLA psychology student Paige Dudek got to spend her 21st birthday in May at company headquarters after writing a letter to Yum CEO Greg Creed.
And speaking of bad news, let’s recall that former Taco Bell executive who sued an Uber driver for $5 million, after viral video showed him assaulting the driver.
Boulevard 