Report: Phoenix-area Del Taco manager fired after customer confrontation goes viral
Apr 29, 2016, 7:59 PM | Updated: May 1, 2016, 8:45 am
PHOENIX — The manager of a Phoenix-area Del Taco has been fired from his job after a video of him yelling and cursing at a pair of customers over a inaccurate order went viral.
The video, titled “Confrontation between Del Taco drive thru and customers who didn’t get their sauce” shows an unidentified man who claims to be a manager at the Peoria location arguing with and, at several points, even cursing at a pair of customers in the drive thru.
The argument allegedly began after the man did not give the customers, an unidentified man and woman, packets of sauce.
Before the video begun, the customer claimed the manager said expletives toward him before flipping him off, which can be seen in the video.
As the couple waits in the car, sans tacos, the manager comes back to the window to explain the “whole story,” which turns out to be a story about miscommunication about the order between a couple of drive thru workers.
The couple begins confronting the man on the video, who responds with more expletives and questions the ability of videos on the internet to go viral.
When the woman claims they will send the video to his boss, the manager responds, “I am the boss. My dad’s actually the (expletive) owner, so good luck with that.”
The manager continues, saying he’s “done this a billion times” and complaining about customers giving him a “hard time.”
“In reality, it’s the same (expletive) outcome,” he said. “Why? You got your sauces and you guys are still being (expletive) and I’m (expletive) ticked off because I still got orders.”
The interaction continues with the customers asking the manager why he doesn’t quit his job if he hates it so much, to which he responds, “Why would I quit? This is my (expletive) fortune right here, do you know how much of a pot of gold this is?”
The argument ends with the couple stating this video could get him fired, due to the massive reach of social media before driving off.
Turns out, the couple wasn’t wrong. Since it was posted on Wednesday under the Vimeo username Kobe D., the nearly 3-minute-long video has been viewed more than 120,000 times.
It can be viewed here. (WARNING: Video contains explicit language.)
Since then, the manager has been fired, according to tweets from Del Taco’s official Twitter account.
@SLastnam We were appalled by this behavior & addressed it immediately with the franchisee, who terminated the employee.
— Del Taco Restaurants (@DelTaco) April 30, 2016
Multiple tweets on the account repeat the statement, “We were appalled by this behavior and addressed it immediately with the franchisee, who terminated the employee.”
In a separate statement sent to KTAR News, a Del Taco representative said they were “appalled” by the manager’s behavior and called it not representative of the restaurant’s “high guest service standards.”
“We took this incident very seriously and addressed it with the location’s franchisee, who took definitive action by terminating the employee immediately,” the statement read.