Taco John’s Employee Claims Insulting Nametag Forced On Him

A 16-year-old took a job at a South Dakota Taco John’s, but didn’t sign on for verbal abuse from his manager. Finally, he says, the worst insult came earlier this week when his manager handed him a nametag with “♡GAYTARD♡” printed on it and forced him to wear it for his whole shift, including in front of customers.

The word, a combination of “gay” and “retard,” should be offensive to all human beings, and certainly should never have been inflicted on a gay teen by his boss. The ex-employee claims that his manager was verbally abusive to him from the beginning. “I’ve been very vulnerable and I’ve been allowing him to say things to me that shouldn’t be said,” he told TV station KELO.

The blog NewNowNext, a publication of the GLBT-themed LOGO cable network, claims to have interviewed to the restaurant’s manager, who claims that the now-departed employee himself was behind the offending nametag. “Everyone has a nickname here, and he wanted a nickname. [Gaytard is] what he picked for a nickname,” the manager explained. He counters that the teen asked a manager to make a nametag with the nickname on it, then put it on himself before quitting on Tuesday. “The [other] manager didn’t force him to do anything,” explained the store manager.

In a statement to KELO, the CEO of Taco John’s called the alleged harassment and abusive nametagging “deplorable.”

At Taco John’s, we believe everyone should be treated with dignity and respect. We take any accusation of workplace harassment very seriously. The type of discrimination that reportedly took place recently in the Yankton, South Dakota restaurant is deplorable. Such actions will not be tolerated by our company. Taco John’s is committed to doing all we can to make certain nothing like this happens again in any of our restaurants.

The ex-employee wants to pursue legal action against the restaurant, and is now looking for a lawyer.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Police: Man Called In Bomb Threat To Southwest Airlines To Ruin Ex’s Vacation

(Chris Wilson)

There are plenty of immature ways that you could — but most definitely shouldn’t — get revenge on an ex. While most of them are, at worst, misdemeanors, a Seattle man is facing a much bigger penalty for allegedly calling in a bogus bomb threat to Southwest Airlines just to get back at an ex-girlfriend.

SeattlePI.com reports that the man has been charged in a June 18 incident in which police say the 26-year-old reported that his ex was planning to blow up the Southwest Airlines flight to Las Vegas that she’d just boarded at Sea-Tac International.

The man hung up on the police after delivering his brief message. The police called him back but he hung up on them again. Then the man returned the officers’ call, only to once again hang up when asked if he knew the woman he’d mentioned.

Because one can’t take bomb threats — even ones that appear to be pranks — lightly, the plane was evacuated and the woman questioned.

That’s when she explained to them that she’d recently broken up with someone and he’d sent her a series of 22 increasingly threatening messages in the days leading up to the bomb threat.

“Every day you will be unsafe,” reads one message. “Just because you’re in another state doesn’t mean I can’t get you.”

The man also mentions in the messages that he’d learned her flight number and was planning to spoil her Vegas getaway.

“If the pigs come after me because of you, you will live the rest of your life in fear,” reads a text sent minutes after the bomb threat calls.

Between the texts and the fact that the bomb threat was phoned in from her ex’s grandmother’s house, it didn’t take very long for the police to realize what was going on.

The man was quickly arrested at granny’s house, where he tried to argue that he hadn’t technically threatened to blow up the plane.

“I didn’t make a bomb threat,” he told police. “I just said my girlfriend had a bomb!”

The man denied being a terrorist and said he “he only wanted to delay (his ex’s) flight.”

The man faces charges of making a bomb threat and intimidating a witness.

Perhaps he should have just picked up a hobby to channel his anger.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Report: Amazon Launching Local Takeout Service To Compete With The Likes Of GrubHub, Seamlesss

(CaliCBL)

Hot on the heels of the news that the many-armed, grabby beast that is Amazon is set on providing local services for its customers, it’s reportedly working on another foray into the e-commerce world, this time with its test of an online local takeout service, similar to GrubHub, Seamless and others.

According to TechCrunch, the service will start out as part of Amazon Local, which offers customers daily deals, coupons and discounts from businesses in their community.

Sources tell TechCrunch that the takeout part of the equation was supposed to launch first in Seattle and on iOS devices went live last night on its app, but was taken down shortly after.

The details so far are hazy, but it apparently is going to be a “VERY gradual expansion unless things go gangbusters,” a source told TechCrunch, akin to the Amazon Fresh grocery delivery service rollout.

And while it’s been called a “takeout” service, we’re going to go ahead and guess that customers will also be able to order food for delivery, because really if you’re not willing to call someone to order your food, you might also be unwilling to walk anywhere to pick it up yourself.

Clearly Amazon is trying its best to carve itself a piece of the local pie across multiple service areas, from plumbers to pizza delivery. Which might make for some grumbling at companies already providing many of those local services like Angie’s List, Yelp and now GrubHub, Seamless, Delivery.com and the rest. But at the same time, we don’t mind it whenever consumers have more choices about where to go when they need something.

Amazon Is Quietly Launching A Local Takeout Service To Rival Seamless And DeliveryHero [TechCrunch]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Sears Appliance Installer Drops My Dryer, Shrugs – Then Everything Changes

(goggle5)

“Recently Sears had a serious competitive edge on a single aspect of buying a dryer,” writes Bedford. If you’re curious, that aspect is that Sears will set up a dryer to vent from the side while most appliance retailers won’t, but that isn’t really important: what matters is what went wrong when the delivery team showed up with his fresh new dryer, and how Sears dealt with the issue.

The transaction went through successfully and the delivery crew showed up, which is already pretty good by normal Sears standards. Then the time came to unload Bedford’s new dryer from the truck. Except by “unload” we mean “drop on the gravel driveway.” First it fell, and then one of the installers managed to make matters worse. “He quickly grasped the dryer with both hands and twisted the dryer as it sat on the gravel driveway, and you could hear my new appliance scream,” Bedford explains. When he asked why on earth the installer would have tried moving the appliance off the truck by himself, all he could offer to Bedford was that the damage was only on the bottom of the dryer. For some reason, Bedford was not placated.

He had his old dryer re-installed and sent the new one away. Delivery errors and accidents happen all the time, but a good retailer will make it up to the customer and make sure that they receive the undamaged appliance that they paid for, right? After the botched delivery, Bedford drove over to Sears to straighten this all out and asked to speak with a manager.

“The operations manager balked at even coming to speak with me,” he says. “Then he was so very flippant, it blew me away.” Someone who contacted him by phone from the delivery department was equally flippant, and Bedford closed his first message to us by wondering whether he should just go ahead and put up some clothes lines. He held off until the company’s next delivery attempt, the following week. When the truck arrived, Bedford got a surprise.

“Today, a delivery army brought my new dryer home,” he wrote to us earlier this week. “It consisted of 3 delivery men (if you can believe that) driving a lift truck and the manager of the [local store] delivery operations. The new manager that is.” There had apparently been a change in staff in the last week, and the store manager dispatched the small dryer-delivering army.

“So there we have it, Sears still has some spunk left in it,” notes Bedford. Maybe so: if they keep going with this whole “hiring people who aren’t actively hostile to customers” thing, they just might make it.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

July 4th Travel Traffic Expected To Return To Pre-Recession Levels

(Neff Conner)

Planning on loading the car up and hitting the road or hopping on a plane to a sandy beach this Fourth of July next weekend? Hope you don’t mind being accompanied by a few million of your closest friends.

USA Today reports that more than 41 million consumers are putting the recession behind them and hitting the open road to enjoy the holiday weekend.

That figure is up about 1.9% from the 40.3 million consumers who traveled last year, and represents the highest level of travel since the pre-recession holiday in 2007.

So, why the increase? According to AAA, consumers’ renewed willingness to take on credit card debt and the way in which the holiday falls on the calendar provide incentive to travel this year. The fourth of July falls on Friday, creating the perfect opportunity for many to get away.

Nearly 8 in 10 consumers are expected to travel by car despite the fact that gas prices are up roughly 20 cents per gallon compared to last year’s holiday weekend. The increase in price is a stark difference from previous year when prices actually dropped before the holiday weekend.

Higher prices won’t pose much of a problem for travelers because they are apparently more apt than ever to use credit cards at the pump. Officials from the auto club say consumers who’ve been hesitant to add to their credit card balances in recent years are taking comfort from an improving employment picture and rising home values this summer.

Vehicle travel isn’t the only mode of transportation to see a boost this holiday season.

Airfare is currently 5% lower on average than it was a year ago. However, hotel rates are reported to be about 15% higher for AAA Two Diamond hotels and 9% higher for Three Diamond hotels.

AAA: Fourth of July travel rises 1.9% [USA Today]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Kittens Accidentally Shipped 130 Miles In A Box Are Ready For You To Adopt Them

(San Diego Humane Society)

Because you might as well call this site Catsumerist considering the all-consuming love we have for the furry little felines, we thought our readers should know that Mouse and WiFi, aka the kittens who survived 130 miles packed in a box as newborns, are now up for adoption. Ready, set, awwwwww you’ve got a new cat. [via San Diego Humane Society]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Cops: Guy Punched Woman In The Face For The Crime Of Blocking Whataburger’s Drive-Thru Line

(frankieleon)

If there’s one thing we know here at Consumerist it’s that not only is violence against your fellow man and consumer never the answer, but it’s also a lose-lose situation. For example, a man who so badly wanted to get his car into the drive-thru line at a Texas Whataburger, that cops say he punched a woman who got in his way right in her face. And does he have any Whataburger food after that? Nope. No one wins.

Police in Corpus Christi, Texas are trying to calm ruffled feathers in town after a series of incidents with consumers behaving badly: Earlier this week a woman was punched in a restaurant parking lot in a driving dispute, and now cops say a 57-year-old man punched a woman whose parked car was apparently blocking him from getting into the drive-thru line, reports KrisTV.com.

Cops say she was taken to the hospital with injuries to her face and head, while he was arrested and is facing charges of aggravated assault.

This happened just months after a man was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and sentenced to two years in prison for punching a man in a Whataburger parking lot last year. That man fell, hit his head, and later died.

So if you’re feeling the rage coming on while waiting for that fast food, cops urge you to just take a second and step back from the situation, before engaging with anyone who might be ready for a fight.

“The best situation is to move on,” a Corpus Christi police officer advises. “Get yourself out of that situation, call the police, (and) let us go over there…Get a good description of the (suspect) and let us contact him. Don’t put yourself in the situation where you’re out of the vehicle confronting him.”

CCPD Warns Public to Keep Cool in Midst of Road Rage Disputes [KrisTV]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Verizon Realizes 2 Years And 12 Months Are Not The Same Thing

When the Chromebook Pixel went on sale in mid-2013, it came with two years of free 100MB/month data from Verizon, but owners are now finding out that Verizon pulled the plug on the free data after only 12 months.

Months after Chromebook Pixel owners began complaining that they had been shortchanged on the free Verizon Wireless data that was supposed to be included in the purchase price of their laptops, and days after national news reports called out Big V for its failure to understand how calendars and contracts work, the company has finally admitted that it screwed up and will be doing something vaguely nice to make up for it.

As we mentioned on Monday, ComputerWorld’s JR Raphael had called out Google and Verizon for failing to honor the promise of two years of 100MB/month of free LTE data for the people who purchased the Pixel during its initial launch in the spring of 2013.

Verizon didn’t have an answer and customer service reps were telling angry Pixel owners that they must have been mistaken, in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Google, presumably not wanting bad publicity on the same week it announced its new Android TV platform and other developments, then tried to intervene on Verizon’s behalf, saying it couldn’t do anything about the free data, but hey… here’s a $150 gift card for your troubles.

But last night, Verizon finally admitted that maybe it wasn’t the paragon of customer service that it believes it is in its own deluded mind.

“We understand that a very small number of Chromebook Pixel customers may have had a promo end prematurely,” VZW told the UK’s Register in an e-mailed statement. “We apologize for this, and will work with these customers to address the situation.”

Again, 100MB of data won’t get you very far over the course of a month. But it will allow a laptop user quick access to a few web-browsing sessions or allow them do some work on the fly without having to rely on sketchy and sluggish public WiFi hotspots.

[via TechSpot]

Thanks to Paul for the tip!

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

73-Year-Old Veteran Says He Was Fired From Cracker Barrel For Giving A Muffin To A Needy Person

(gumbyliberation)

No business could survive on a model that allows employees to give away its products willy nilly, but does a few free condiment packets a corn muffin mean someone should lose their job? A73-year-old greeter at a Florida Cracker Barrel says he’s out of work after passing a muffin, a tartar sauce and a mayo packet to someone who looked needy.

The veteran has been working at Cracker Barrel for the last three years, and while he admits he’s been written up for violating company policy twice before — for getting a fountain drink without paying for it and giving a customer coffee (which he claims she paid for — this time he’s out of a job.

According to WWSB News, the worker said he thought a man who might be homeless walked into the Cracker Barrel where he works as a greeter, and asked for mayo and some tartar sauce because he was going to cook a fish.

“I got it for him. As I walked out I put a corn muffin in,” he tells the station.

Afterwards, the general manager took him aside and let him know that he’d been let go.

“It’s a rule. They legally can do this because I did break the rule. I completely forgot about it,” he explains. “I am a host at Cracker Barrel with a little above minimum wage job.”

And now that he’s out of work, he says it’s going to be tough to supplement his Social Security, so he’ll need another job. But that doesn’t mean he’s angry, necessarily, at Cracker Barrel.

“I feel badly. It shines a bad light on the company,” he says of some of the backlash against Cracker Barrel now that the situation has come to light. “I would not want that on any company, but it happened.”

A Cracker Barrel spokesperson issued a statement on the situation, noting that he’d been employed since April 2011 with the company.

“During the time he was employed, he violated the Company’s policies regarding consuming food without paying or giving away free food, on five separate occasions. [He] received multiple counselings and written warnings reminding him about the company’s polices and the consequences associated with violating them. On the fifth occasion, again per Company policy, [he] was terminated.

Cracker Barrel is grateful for and honors [his] service to our country as we honor all service men and women and their families.”

Venice veteran says he lost job after giving muffin to needy person [WWSB News]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Hospitals Now Use Consumers’ Personal Habits To Predict Health Issues

(Santa Barbarian)

By now we know that every purchase a consumer makes is added to a list detailing one’s spending and life-style habit, which is used to target people for marketing campaigns and other services. But how would you feel if that information was used by your doctors to keep tabs on your health?

A new report from Bloomberg details how hospitals are using our habits such as buying cigarettes or skipping the gym to create patient profiles in order to identify those who are most likely to get sick.

The information, complied by data brokers from public records and credit card transaction, is already being used for marketing purposes by a number of companies. And now, officials in the healthcare field say they plan to apply the data toward something good.

Already, several hospitals around the country are using the information to get to know their patients better and provide preventative care when possible.

Bloomberg reports that the largest hospital chains in the Carolinas – Carolinas HealthCare System – is using the data of 2 million people to identify high-risk patients.

An official with the hospital expects that within the next two years the information could be regularly used by doctors and nurses to suggest interventions before patients become ill.

For example, the system could score the probability of someone having a heart attack by considering factors such as type of foods they buy and if they have a gym membership.

“What we are looking to find are people before they end up in trouble,” the officials tells Bloomberg. “The idea is to use big data and predictive models to think about population health and drill down to the individual levels to find someone running into trouble that we can reach out to and try to help out.”

Similarly, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center uses household and demographic data to try to improve patients’ health by making predictions about which individuals are most likely to use the emergency room or urgent care center.

While the information could prove helpful in providing preventable measures to patients with the risk of developing diseases, consumer advocates and patients say the data could also threaten privacy.

Two of the largest data brokers, Acxiom Corp. and LexisNexis, tell Bloomberg the information is supposed to be used for marketing purposes only, not for use in medical records.

Additionally, advocates say the process could alter the relationships consumers cultivate with their physicians.

Irina Raicu, director of the Internet ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, says the strategy is inclined to see people as simply the sum of data points instead of human beings.

Not to mention the fact that many patients view the new strategy as just plain creepy.

One North Carolina resident with Type 1 Diabetes says she already receives phone calls from her health insurer to try to discuss her daily habits, something she feels does nothing to help her.

“It is one thing to have a number I can call if I have a problem or question, it is another thing to get unsolicited phone calls. I don’t like that,” she says. “I think it is intrusive.”

Data brokers and the information they compile on consumers has been a hot topic lately.

Last month, the Federal Trade Commission urged Congress to require more transparency from data brokers. The FTC reported that most consumers aren’t even aware that their information is being culled and used to target them for services.

Additionally, the information collected by data brokers can be an appealing target for hackers and identify thieves. The report found that this risk is elevated because some data brokers store consumes data indefinitely, even if it’s outdated.

Hospitals Spy on Your Purchases to Spot Bad Habits [Bloomberg]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist