Shocking video has emerged of a South Island KFC manager allegedly verbally abusing a customer who wanted his sloppy slider snack remade.
The customer, who wished to remain anonymous, was at the Greymouth KFC drive-thru on Saturday afternoon with his young son when he ordered a slider from their menu.
After leaving the drive-thru he checked the slider only to realise it was drowning in sauce to the point where he thought there were “taking the piss”.
“It had enough sauce on it. I normally wouldn’t go back but they were taking the absolute p***,” he told The New Zealand Herald.
Instead of his request being met, he allegedly copped abuse from the manager who told him to “f*** off”.
After the initial alleged abuse, the customer pulled his phone out and started recording and captured the manager coming back and swearing at him again.
“Do you want to get the manager down to sort out my food? Tell him to come out here and sort it out,” the customer asked another worker on camera.
The worker returned without the manager, and the customer asked again: “Go get your manager bro and tell him to come out to apologise to me for the way he just spoke to me and sort out my burger.
"You can’t just tell someone to f*** off when they complain about it. Tell him to make me a new burger and come out and apologise.”
The manager is then seen coming to the counter before telling the customer to “f*** off”, allegedly for a second time.
“You going to sort it out mate?” the customer asked before the manager returned fire saying “you can f*** off”.
The customer then said: “Make me a burger. Look at what you did to my burger.”
The manager then responded: “I didn’t f***ing make it.”
Not happy with the manager’s attitude, the customer then said “you’re the manager, sort it out.”
The manager then said: “Nah, you can f*** off” before walking away. The customer then asked again politely to “make me another burger please” but was ignored.
When asked by the Herald if the behaviour of the manager was acceptable, a KFC spokesperson dodged the question but confirmed they were investigating.
“We are taking this incident very seriously and are investigating it through the appropriate internal channels. As this is an active employment matter, we are unable to comment any further.”
They also sidestepped the question of whether the slider served to the customer in the video met their regular standards.
The customer told the Herald he was stunned by the whole incident and that other staff members appeared too “nervous” to help.
“None of the other staff would help me. They were kind of looking at me like they can’t help me because their manager has told them not to. All they had to do was make a new slider and send me on my way.
“It’s not about the $4, it’s the principle of getting half-decent service and a product you’d want to eat. It wasn’t like I was trying to lay a complaint, it was more me asking ‘look at the state of my slider, can you make me another one thanks’.”
According to the customer, the incident lasted about 10 minutes.
The customer told the Herald others in the restaurant were shocked at the manager’s alleged outburst. He decided to leave the store as he didn’t want the incident to escalate further.
“I got to the point where I decided to leave because I thought if I keep kicking up a fuss and cause a scene he’d ring the police on me and I’d be the one in trouble, not him.
“I thought it was a wind-up, to be fair. When I went in there I was pretty calm because there were a bunch of older customers next to me. He started flipping out, even before I started recording and half the shop was standing there in disbelief.
“I had my young son standing next to me as well so I didn’t want to flip out with him. But the manager just lost his s***.
"The old people in the store were pretty disgusted at the language the manager was using and his carry-on. When he came out swearing one lady took five steps back because she was absolutely horrified.”
The customer said he’s not after a $4 refund but just wants customers to be treated with respect and hopes the incident can still be resolved.
