The morning manager on Tuesday 14 March 2023 at the McDonald's on Neue Ramtelstraße 9, 71229 Leonberg was an older man with salt'n'pepper grey hair and a beard, and he was incredibly rude. I asked what kind of muffins they had in the McCafé and he got very annoyed for no reason. It was not only bad customer service to a paying client it was rude and unkind. Not only did he raise his voice at me, he also spoke in a disrespectful tone multiple times. I realised he was having trouble differentiating between the savoury McMuffin breakfast sandwich I'd just ordered and the sweet muffins from the McCafè. So I left it, paid, said thank you and moved on to the next window and asked the younger male colleague about their selection of muffins. The older man heard this and angrily rushed over, pushed himself next to the other guy at the window and screamed at me to leave. There was pure hatred in his eyes and he totally shocked me. Why did he have such a problem with me asking for a muffin? I was soft spoken and polite... unlike him! He tried to rush me away & told me to leave even though there was nobody behind me and shut the drive through window in my face VERY aggressively! When his colleague who was standing right next to him said nothing about it I was very shocked. I thought for sure he would come to my defense as this behavior from the older man was unwarranted. I couldn't just drive away and allow them to get away with treating me so poorly so I parked and walked into the establishment. I went to the McCafé section and the younger colleague who witness the earlier interaction assisted me. No apology offered on his colleagues behalf and didn't make eye contact with me. I asked if in his opinion I had said something wrong to invoke that kind of reaction from his older colleague. He was quiet and couldn't give me an answer. The older man approached still very aggressively (so much so that I had to back away a few steps because he came right in my face) and not sincerely at all apologized for his disgusting behaviour. He obviously did not mean his apology because I'm sure he just did not want any trouble and wanted me gone. I backed up from his imposing demeanour but stood my ground and stoop up for myself. I told him he had no right to speak to me like that and treat me like an animal. I get mistreated as black woman all the time in Germany and if we keep letting prejudice, bias and pure racism prevail we will never move forward as a society and a people; a community I am part of and raising my kids in. He of course denied that his behaviour was racially provoked and blamed his tantrum on the fact that it was a misunderstanding, strange because even though my Germany may not always be grammatically correct it I speak a clear, non-dialect / high German and not heavily accented at all. At least not as accented and foreign sounding as his... I told him he can not treat paying customers that way. I was emotional and nervous in his presence and I didn't want to cause a scene so I said what I had to say and left quickly. Whether it was racist or not we'll never know because he will never admit it. But I know micro-aggressions, I deal with them DAILY and I know what my experience was. For arguments sake we could even just chalk it up to him having woken up on the wrong of the bed... Either way it was unprofessional and uncalled for. I will not allow people to treat me that way and he can not go on thinking that he can get away with treating people like that. If McDonald's doesn't take action against that and rectify the situation we will know which side of history they will go down in as a company as a whole.
Let this be a call to the rest of us out there to be kind to one another and treat each other with basic manners, respect, common curtesy and human dignity. It costs us nothing. And when we witness injustice, let us have the decency to stand up against cruelty and injustice, otherwise we are inadvertently siding with what us wrong. read more
