We are all dealing with quarantine life differently. Some of us are using the time to reconnect with out family. Some of us are doing spring cleaning and sprucing up our gardens. Some of us are catching up on DVR'd tv shows or that stack of books that has been collecting dust until we had "free time to read them."
A woman in York, Pennsylvania seems to not be handling quarantine well...at all. A customer at Red Lobster became enraged after waiting outside for her pickup order and proceeded to force her way into the store, even though it was clear from signs - and health orders - that the restaurant was only open for pickup, not dine in. Well, Angry Karen didn't like that. She clearly felt that her desire for All You Can Eat Shrimp was more important than the safety of others.
The staff prevented her from entering and the manager was physically removing her when Angry Karen decided to switch this from a verbal altercation to a physical one, with her actually striking the manager! In the head! WHAT?
Thanks to cell phone video, we could see everything - from the angry entry, to removal, to the first swipe, to the manager's response.
Angry Karen shrieked:
"I was assaulted and have a whole crowd to see it."
Wrong. What we saw was her breaking the rules, assaulting the manager and then being physically removed.
The police reported to Red Lobster shortly after the incident and spoke with the employees. They did hunt down Angry Karen at an alternate location and spoke with her later in the day.
Lt. Tony Beam reviewed the video and said:
"She was upset because her food wasn't ready. She wanted her money refunded...That restaurant's closed; you're not allowed in there. My understanding is all food is brought outside of the building."
It was reported that there was an up to three-hour wait for takeout orders at Red Lobster, which, to be fair, is exceptionally long, even for Mother's Day. But, that does not excuse violence.
Red Lobster made the following statement:
“We understand that we may have disappointed some of our guests on Mother’s Day when due to COVID-19 and changes to our operations and staffing, we were not able to keep up with the demand at some of our locations. We apologize that some of our guests experienced long wait times, crowds, and in some cases, did not receive their orders. It is always our goal to provide our guests with a great seafood experience, and unfortunately, for some guests, we did not meet that goal on Sunday. We are working to better understand what occurred and how we can prevent it occurring in the future. That said, we do not tolerate violence for any reason in our restaurants. We expect our team members treat our guests with respect, and we expect our guests to treat our team members with respect in return. We are grateful our Manager and the guest involved were not seriously injured in the incident on Sunday.”
No charges have been filed yet, but the police report that they are still investigating.
