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In outragous move, custard shop owner requires customer speak English

bshole

bshole

Diamond Member
This just erupted here in Milwaukee yesterday.


The owner of Leon's Frozen Custard, a favorite treat location on Milwaukee's south side, acknowledged Wednesday that he has a rule in place that prevents his employees from speaking to customers in Spanish, but he said it doesn't come from a place of discrimination or racism.

Instead, Ron Schneider said his policy is more a matter of business and speeding up sales.

"I'm trying not to encourage it because this is going to be a problem down the road," he said. "We can't be the United Nations. They got translators. We don't."


Schneider recalled a time years ago when the neighborhoods around the shop at South 27th Street and West Oklahoma Avenue saw a great influx of Hispanic people. Customers, he said, would come to the window and reach a communication roadblock with his English-speaking employees.

"I would prefer if the employees would simply speak English, and encourage those customers who can to speak English, and if you don't speak English, trust me -- we can come up with some way to communicate with you," he said.

But customer Joey Sanchez said his Tuesday visit to Leon's wasn't as accommodating as Schneider lets on.

Sanchez said he was in line behind a Spanish-speaking woman who was told by an employee to place her order in English. When it was his turn to order, Sanchez, who speaks both English and Spanish, went to the window and proceeded to order in Spanish.

"She confirmed it to me in my face. She say, 'I'm not allowed to speak Spanish to you,'" Sanchez said, adding that the experience left him frustrated because Leon's makes "a good profit out of the Spanish community."

He said he believes it could only help Schneider if he relaxed his policy.

"I believe if I can ask for a product in my language and have somebody there that can speak it and understand me better, it's going to be better for him," Sanchez said. "It's going to attract more Latino customers and at the end he's going to show a better heart about how he feels about the Hispanic community."

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission permits employers to adopt English-only rules, but only for nondiscriminatory reasons.
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http://www.wisn.com/news/leons-frozen-custard-english-rule/39611466
 
Seems like he's not a racist, just a moron. While I wouldn't generally choose to advertise either to the world the latter is more forgivable.
 
I don't find this outrageous. I don't find it stupid. I don't think I would do it, however, particularly in interfacing with a non-English speaking customer.

Proficient English is a reasonable requirement for someone in a customer service position, and clearly the owner is hiring Hispanic employees. I don't see evidence of discriminatory employment practices.

Beyond that, employers have the right to mandate employees follow all sorts of zany rules for their own corporate culture and standardization. How is requiring communication in English inherently different than forcing people to wear Khaki pants?

I get the outrage. There is potential here for conscious or unconscious ethnic discrimination. So what? So long as they are not explicitly restricting employment opportunity and customer base, let racists be racist. If you don't like it, don't eat there.
 
If I am the owner and I have employees that can speak Spanish and a large Latino customer base? I would put a big sign in the front -


"Bienvenido. Nosotros Hablamos Español. Entra Y Gastar Su Dinero Aquí"
 
Strange business plan. I can understand just simply not having someone available to speak spanish at the time someone is trying to order who ONLY speaks spanish but this seems to be going out of the way to refuse it entirely and make sure a massive possible client base knows it.

I don't get it.
 
WHAMPOM said:
Makes me wonder about his hiring practices. English only there too? Or is he subject to paranoid thinking that people are talking trash about him in Spanish?
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The article seems to indicate the cashier could speak spanish but that she was not allowed to. Combined with basic logic and the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood the business is in I don't think it's a big leap to suspect that many of his employees are bilingual.

I don't see what the actual utility of his policy is other than to needlessly antagonize his customer base...which is always a sound business decision.
 
K1052 said:
I don't see what the actual utility of his policy is other than to needlessly antagonize his customer base...which is always a sound business decision.
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ROFLMFAO!!! Thank you for that one. It made my day just a bit happier.
 
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Once again the left plays the Victim card.

Sounds like this policy has been in place for decades, and only now is a problem when someone went out of their way to be offended.
 
michal1980 said:
Once again the left plays the Victim card.

Sounds like this policy has been in place for decades, and only now is a problem when someone went out of their way to be offended.
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Shut the fuck up, Donny.
 
We have a Mexican restaurant in town that staff is mostly Spanish speaking & they don't require the customer to speak Spanish. They hired an English+Spanish speaking person.
 
Dumb policy. His reasoning makes no sense either, when Latinos started moving in, he had problems. Then some of his Workers were Latino and the problem goes away, but now he wants to return to the problem because of some longterm problem he foresees? That's just stupid.

I suspect he just jumped on the Rage Train and this is his way of fighting back.
 
sandorski said:
Dumb policy. His reasoning makes no sense either, when Latinos started moving in, he had problems. Then some of his Workers were Latino and the problem goes away, but now he wants to return to the problem because of some longterm problem he foresees? That's just stupid.

I suspect he just jumped on the Rage Train and this is his way of fighting back.
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Spanish is not a skill one either has or not. He may well be tired of holding up the line while his employees' broken and marginal Spanish skills tries to comprehend the customers' fluent Spanish. Or while his employees' high school textbook Spanish skills try to cope with idiopathic Mexican/Guademalan/etc. Spanish. If he discourages customers with communication difficulties, he may net more customers as the length of the wait is a powerful disincentive to trade with a particular merchant. Or he may just dislike his employees carrying on his business in a language he does not understand. Either way, there are thousands of extant languages so obviously there can be no requirement to accommodate a customer's native or preferred language.

I am reminded of the couple who was busted for child cruelty in NYC. The City tried for days to find an interpreter, without success. Finally the couple broke down and admitted that their native language was in fact English - but they spoke only Klingon and were raising their children by Klingon methods. Point is, Babel isn't necessarily Shangrala, even if it is not PC to admit it.
 
Sheik Yerbouti said:
Hmmm with the heavy Germanic make up of Wisco, I wonder if people speaking German would be getting the same response.
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You think people speak German in public is normal in WI? This isnt 1916.

I'd imagine if somebody tried to order in German they would get a blank look on the employees face. So yeah, I think they would probably get the same treatment.

Anyways I dont think it is a good business decision to not accommodate customers. If you have employees that can speak Spanish to the customers, let them.
 
Point, grunt, get ice cream. It isn't that hard. I speak almost no spanish yet manage to get most excellent food using the point-grunt method at the myriad of Mexican roach coaches and holes-in-wall where no one speaks english.
 
IronWing said:
Point, grunt, get ice cream. It isn't that hard. I speak almost no spanish yet manage to get most excellent food using the point-grunt method at the myriad of Mexican roach coaches and holes-in-wall where no one speaks english.
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lol Excellent point. In a way, this speaks to the gay wedding thingy.

Shut up and take my money!
 
buckshot24 said:
Is not knowing English a protected class?
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Won't be long till speaking English is denounced as an imposition of the patriarchy and a micro aggression against those who speak another language. Just a matter of time with the PC lunacy we endure and allow to grow like a cancer.

Seems like a dumb business move to me, but it's entirely up to the business owner how he wants to run his business. I have no problem with him deciding what language he wants his employees to conduct business in, but I'd probably go the other route.
 
Genx87 said:
You think people speak German in public is normal in WI? This isnt 1916.

I'd imagine if somebody tried to order in German they would get a blank look on the employees face. So yeah, I think they would probably get the same treatment.

Anyways I dont think it is a good business decision to not accommodate customers. If you have employees that can speak Spanish to the customers, let them.
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So why should we accept that Spanish, unlike all the other languages spoken by immigrants to America, should be protected and encouraged to endure?

Being bilingual is a blessing in an individual and a curse in a nation. It establishes that some citizens are fundamentally unlike the others.
 
werepossum said:
So why should we accept that Spanish, unlike all the other languages spoken by immigrants to America, should be protected and encouraged to endure?

Being bilingual is a blessing in an individual and a curse in a nation. It establishes that some citizens are fundamentally unlike the others.
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Assimilation happens over a couple generations. Always has, always will. Trying to help it along, in your own inept way, by being kinda a dick to your largest customer base seems like an unwise and fundamentally unnecessary decision.
 
This is where the marketplace will decide.
Lot of Ice Cream places. Not essential. Open Spanish only ice cream place and see how it goes.
 
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