Boycott Long John Silver? Yum Foods (merged threads)

He violated policy

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He is still alive and so is his co-workers. I think he made the right move baised on the info given . As was stated above "He Violated Policy" So what! Self defence is a baisc human right. I'll give him the attiboy award. If I were him I would not want the job back if that is LJS policy

I have a question. LJS, like most all fast food places, is a franchise. That means they are owned by an individual who buys the rights to sell their product in a particular location.

Has anyone actually emailed Yum Brands to see if this a corporate policy or a policy of the local franchise owner?

Didn't we go through something like this with Applebee's where it was the local manager acting on his own biases and not the corporate entity?

I will continue to not eat their horrid food served in their awful "restaraunts". If they ask me why i will say that this is one of the reasons (along with the fact that they outright suck anyways).

I boycotted them long ago based on their atrocious food quality.......

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Ka-ching! What garbage.

However, henceforth, consider my continued 20 year avoidance of LJS as part of the boycott.

Yum Foods aka Pizza Hut, Long John Silvers etc...

Well, you may remember a couple months ago when a Pizza Hut driver defended himself during the course of work and was then fired for carrying. Well, Pizza Hut is owned by Dallas based Yum Foods. They own several other brands, including Long John Silvers. It seems another employee has defended themselves and the companies property only to be fired.

For those that want to research the parent company, Yum Brands

Here is the local news story.

FORT WORTHTexas - The manager of a Richardson fast-food restaurant is out of a job after defending himself and three teenage employees during a robbery attempt.


The manager, who did not want to be identified, said two men came into his Long John Silver's restaurant and demanded money. The manager handed over the money in the cash register, around $500, and then fought off the men with a hammer.

After giving the men the money the manager said he told the men to leave, but they resisted saying they wanted the rest of the money. The manager told them that there wasn't anymore money.

The 46-year-old Garland man said he felt like he needed to defend the three 16-year-old employees who were laid out on the floor. "It was going through my mind he was fixing to do something drastic to us ... so I started to look around ... I see his hands, you know, I don't see his hands on no weapon, but I see his hand ... and that's when I grabbed the hammer and I hit him upside the head," said the manager.

The two robbers left the restaurant without any money and none of the employees were hurt. Citing company policy, the manager said the restaurant fired him, after putting him on suspension for two days, for not following company policy and for putting the employees at risk during the robbery attempt.

"In my heart I feel like I did the right thing. There ain't no telling if I wouldn't have did it what the outcome might be ... somebody probably be dead," the manager said.

The Richardson Police Department has released photos (pictured, above, left) of the two men attempting the robbery and ask that anyone with information about their identities to notify the police.

You want me to boycott, fine, send me the videotape, the police reports

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I don't have the tape, but saw it on the "if it bleeds, it leads" local newscast (this happened a few miles away from Chateau Ruser).

My wife saw it as well & was royally honked off. She made a beeline for the PC, & determined who owned LJS (Yum) and said, ""We're not ever again eating at LJS, KFC and Taco Bell."

Hooo-boy, was she hot under the collar!

I love that woman.

BTW, earlier in the day I sent a nastygram to LJS va their website.

I'm not a big boycotter, but I have no problem sending a nastygram to the deserving.

Someone should hit Yum Foods upside the head.

"It was going through my mind he was fixing to do something drastic to us ... so I started to look around ... I see his hands, you know, I don't see his hands on no weapon, but I see his hand ... and that's when I grabbed the hammer and I hit him upside the head," said the manager.

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Sounds like the thug was going to pull a weapon and the manager defends himself and gets fired for this? I hope he sues the stupidity out of YUM.

Sounds like another place I'll have to curtail my spending of funds at... I have a local list that's starting to get quite long..... Darn, and I liked their stuffed crust pizza.

TRD...I am in the same boat. I love Hooters Wings and they are anti CCW, so I dont get to visit anymore.

Pizza Hut really makes me mad, I LOVE stuffed crust pizza.

"Yes, I would like some pizza with my cheese" is my motto.

Yum! Brands is larger than you may think...

NYSE > Listed Companies >Yum! Brands, Inc.
YUM! Brands, Inc. (YUM) is a quick service restaurant company with over 33,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries and territories. The Company is made up of six operating companies organized around the five restaurant concepts of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver"s (LJS) and A&W
www.nyse.com/listed/yum.html - 12k - 2004-09-30

I hope he finds this a good time to make a career change into something that has better pay/hours, no weekend work, no damn teenager mentalities to contend with, etc. etc

violated company policy

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Whoop-de-do!

It is MY policy not to be found dead in the back of a rat-infested grease trap with my head blown off. Sounds like it was this guys too -- in my opinion a sound, rational judgement. AFTER the fact, you deal with the company, and find a new job if necessary. Don't let self serving company "policies" slow you down, it might be fatal.

Some of you seem to agree with and support such "policies."

The only reason such policies exist (and they do, all over the place!) is that the corporate lawyers have decided that it is far cheaper to have 5 employees dead in the meat locker than it is to sanction any kind of resistance on the part of the employees that might lead to the company getting sued.

Any worth you have to your employer ends immediately when you might become a financial liability. They don't care if you are "terminated with extreme prejudice", just as long as the bottom line is healthy.

Ate one meal at a LJS once -- never again! I will e-mail them with my opinion of this "policy" but I don't think it will do any good at all. The lawyers and accountants will win this one, even if the one guy gets his job back.

The problem with company policies is that they cannot cover every conceivable situation.

They are guidelines and are not engraved in stone. Unfortunately your average unimaginative HR person - backed by the written word is everything I don't care if it doesn't make sense lawyer - believes that company policies are engraved in stone.

People aren't programmable robots. The universe isn't digital and policies no matter how detailed and numerous cannot cover every situation.

Sometimes - just sometimes - people have to use their minds and make judgements. Corporate lawyers and HR weenies seem however incapable of doing that. As a result human beings reduced to paper policies have to occasionally suffer the consequences of that failure.

Here's a prime example. About 15 years ago one of my employees had a problem with tardiness. She was counseled concerning the situation both verbally and in writing. She had gotten to the point that the next infraction meant termination. That got her attention. She went almost 6 months with no problems but didn't get in until 10AM one day. She called and told me she was going to be late and why. Her son had been in a car accident the night before and she was up at the hospital with him all night (verified by Hospital).

The HR weenies wanted to fire her. It didn't matter why she was late. The policy said she was to be fired. It took an hour of my time and an hour of the site manager's time and many overt and covert threats with the HR puke to convince him to lighten up. Needless to say we never got along after that and I've had little or no respect for HR types since and none of them have given me cause to change my low opinion either.

Unfortunately for the LJS supervisor he seems to be in the same situation without a boss courageous enough to take a stand for him.

I wish him luck and would advise him to find a good employment law lawyer (though that might do little good one never knows what a clever lawyer might accomplish).

The BEST reason to boycott Long John Silver is because of the LOUSY FOOD!!

KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver"s (LJS) and A&W - aha! AN epicurian cesspool.

I can't tell what really happened from all the noise, but my emotional response (assuming that what has been presented as "company policy" is more or less true), is that senior members of Yum! 'management' needs to be led to the back of one of their establishments, pistol whipped, sodomized, and then asked if they'd care to reconsider their policy on employee self defense. The flogging should continue until their heads are 'right', but that's just me. What on Earth are these people thinking?

All n'all, better to lose the job than your life, yes?

Has anyone actually emailed Yum Brands to see if this a corporate policy or a policy of the local franchise owner?

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I tried the LJS and Yum brands websites. I couldn't find any "Contact Us" information. A search on the Yum website with the word "contact" yielded "No matches found for contact"

A boycott isn't much good unless the company knows about it & why.

IMHO, this proves they're chickens, fit for the Colonel's fryer.

Forgive me, Tharg, but you are mistaken..

A kitchen is full of potetial weapons...
A Navy seal/cook in a movie said it best:
"Nobody beats me in my kitchen!"
Various knives, long metal objects, pots and pans full of steaming foods, hot surfaces, slippery floors, brooms and mops, CERAMIC AND GLASS!!!
Granted, I won't have time to make the microwave bomb, but if you think the only way to defend yourself from a gun is to have another, bigger gun, you're dead already...

I don't need to carry at work...
I got a meat tenderizer that'd make a medieval mace shudder and a few 10" chef's knives that're sharp enough to cut a week into 9 days...
The hammer I can understand, as any of us here who work/have worked foodservice can attest to. (They're handy for prying open grease traps, and working on Hobart dishwashers)

It really confuses me when people say that to interfere with a criminal is stupid and even if you are armed you shouldn't do anything...

What's the point of carrying if you aren't willing to defend yourself or those around you from the scum of humanity?
This guy did what anyone should have done....
Recognize a threat, choose your battleground, and use the elements of surprise and deception to overwhelm the enemy.
No luck. No mojo. No magical potion.
Just a quick assesment, and moral conviction.
If I worked there, I'd quit.

jim

Suspect's grandma backs fired manager

Suspect's grandma backs fired manager
Teen worker grateful ex-boss hit assailant; man surrenders in case


08:09 AM CDT on Wednesday, October 6, 2004

By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News


The teenage worker didn't get a chance to thank her supervisor on the night he foiled a robbery at a Long John Silver's restaurant by hitting one of the attackers with a hammer.

By the time she returned to work a few days after the Sept. 18 robbery in Richardson, her boss had been fired. Company officials said he had endangered the employees' lives – including hers – by violating rules that require cooperation with robbers.

"I can understand the company policy saying that he shouldn't have put our lives in jeopardy, but we were already in jeopardy," said the young woman, who asked not to be identified while one of the robbers remains at large. "He did what he had to do, and I'm thankful. There's no way to know what would have happened if he hadn't. I was shocked when they let him go."

Police say two men – one with a mask – burst into the Long John Silver's on Belt Line Road, forced employees to the ground and then led the supervisor to the back of the restaurant. Fearing for his life, the supervisor picked up a hammer and hit the masked man. Both men fled, and the money was recovered. Days later, the manager was fired.

On Tuesday, 21-year-old Raymond Demond Clayborne of Dallas surrendered to Richardson police and was being held at the Richardson jail on suspicion of robbery. His bail was set at $50,000.

"We brought him over there about 3 a.m.," said Charlene Miles, Mr. Clayborne's grandmother, who said she helped raise Mr. Clayborne.

"We saw him on TV; they had him on camera in that robbery," she said. "I know that when the police are after you like that, they take no chances. I didn't want the police coming in here with their guns or getting him on the street. We didn't force him; he wanted to get this off his chest. He was raised in church. It had been eating at him."

She said even she is dismayed over the company's firing of the restaurant supervisor. "I don't think he should have been fired," Ms. Miles said. "I think I would have done that too, if it had been me. That's instinct."

Ms. Miles said the robber who was masked is an acquaintance of her grandson's.

"The boy that got hit, he came by here a day or two later," Ms. Miles said. "He said, 'Boy my head hurts!' He was scared to go to the doctor because he thought they would report him."

Richardson police Sgt. Keith Cannon said officers are searching for the man.

Mr. Clayborne was sentenced to a year's probation after he was caught in July 2003 stealing a television, stereo and cellphone from a Fry's Electronics in Dallas.

Authorities were in the process of revoking his probation when he surrendered Tuesday morning.

"I've done all I could to keep him out of trouble," Ms. Miles said. "He's in the Lord's hands."

E-mail [email protected]


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Online at: http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/100604dnmetlongjohn.a2c48.html

Werewolf,

Good example, but look at it from the HR standpoint: She had already burned any goodwill she may have had coming by her prior actions. If you have one employee who was never/seldom late, and one who had a chronic problem, albeit in remission, who "deserves" the break?

It is easy to criticize management, if you have never done it. It is a real delicate balance between what is good for the employees and what is good for the company. What might motivate LJS to have such a policy? Could someone have played hero in a different case, but without the positive results? Could it be because the majority of robberies do not involve injuries?

Things just usually are not as clear-cut as they appear at first blush. Policies are not developed in a vacumn. Who wants to bet that if things broke bad and the guy was'nt successful, and the robbers killed everyone, that the estates would be suing LJS for failing to control their employee? My first reaction was to think that LJS was nuts for firing the guy, even if only from a PR standpoint. But whats the backstory?

I think the issue and the desire to boycott companies with policies like this is not neccessarly to resolve the firing of an employee so much, as point out to these companies that stupid policies like that need to be changed or abolished.
And that we the consumers can and due have the power to make our point by withholding our precious dollars.

Personally if I was the employee I'd plead my case in the public eye.
I'd be willing to bet he'll have multiple job offers shortly after.

He may not have a case for keeping his job. But that doesn't mean his arguement against the policy isn't valid.
And a consumer boycott could help him make this point.

Yes please tell YUM all about what you think.

I did it's fun!

Here is a link for you to use.

http://www.yumbrands.com/contact/default.htm

Did Pepsi sell them off, or is YUM a subsidiary?

I didn't read the story in the Dallas Morning Snooze, but I did see it on the local NBC affiliate.
And to those of you who say "He knew the company policy and worked there anyway"...he resisted with a HAMMER. But he still resisted. Still in that situation I think "Fight or Flight" kicks in and since he had 4 or 5 16 y.o. employess on the floor he chosse to defend his life AND theirs instead of running away like a Blissninny.

And those of us who are going to boycott need to call the locations where we're Not going , tell them why, and get the corporate # or Website addy to tell them why we're boycotting, i.e. we disagree with their no resistance policy, and we think this employee was unjustly fired for being a brave man.

I told them what I thought.

Isn't if funny when things like this are brought up, people say "I hate their food anyway" or "who cares, their service sucks"? SO WHAT! That's not the point.

Like when a Home Depot posted a sign banning guns. "so what, they suck" or "it's their property" or the "concealed means concealed" crap. It's my money, and you need my money to stay in business.

Start acting like our rights mean something guys.