Ian WhiteDiscrimination at Raymour and Flannigan
December 30th 2010 12:52
Category: No Category
Yesterday I went to help my friend move furniture into his house. One other guy came along to help. He had bought a living room, dining room, and bedroom set from Raymour and Flannigans in Redding, PA and rented a U Haul to transport it to his house. My friend spent $5000 at that store and had it arranged so that they would wrap the furniture and load it into the U Haul when we got there so we could take it to his house. He even called at 10 that morning to confirm. When we got here, it was just this black guy by the loading area with his white manager. None of the furniture was wrapped or in the process of being wrapped, nor did anyone seem know what was going on. The manager even gave my friend a hard time about wrapping it, trying to make excuses so he didn't have to do anything. He ended up making the black guy do it, so we had to delay loading, waiting for him to wrap it. Then the only moving guy there was leaving for another job, and we were told they were short staffed and couldn't help us load the truck.
So we load for about an hour. Another guy comes in, older black guy, and he's annoyed because they'd apparently been giving him a hard time about pick up, and it turns out he didn't have much to load, though still did it himself. They didn't wrap his stuff beforehand either, and that same manager gave him lip when he asked for it to be wrapped, and made the black guy do it. Keep in mind the manager is just strolling around and the black guy is wrapping our stuff when he isn't helping the rare person that comes in.
By now my friend is calling foul, but we keep loading because we want to get out of there, but he talks to who I guess was the store manager, a black guy, and tells him about the situation. He sympathizes and says he'll make sure corporate knows because there should be enough people there to load our truck. So we keep loading and this young white guy comes in a pickup. We ask if he's a mover and he says that he's picking up a couch for his grandmother.
My friend watches the situation very carefully to see what they do and tells me to record it on my phone to see what happens. Sure enough, the white manager drops everything, grabs the black guy, and loads this guy's couch. Well that did it for my friend and he goes back to the store manager. All the manager ends up doing is putting $200 back on his credit card and throwing in a $100 dollar store gift card. I thought the gift card was a slap in the face because that's a gift for them. They want him to buy more crap, with the same service. He also aggravated his arm while loading, which didn't help his night. He knows some influential people and plans to make some noise about this, but I just thought I'd share. It's just been one of those weeks for race relations.
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