Apple Bees Mishap

Apple Bees Mishap

The interesting thing about this social media case is that there are many different angles you can take to dissect the case.

 The first angle is that of the pastor, Alois Bell, the customer who wrote the note on the receipt next the 18 percent tip line that said, “I give God 10% why do you get 18”. Bell had an opinion about giving her waitress 18% tip and felt it was unfair to give the waitress more than she gives God. This was an expression of speech that some people have advocated or disapproved of as we see in the comments below the articles written.  Click here to read articles from Yahoo and CBS. One such commenter felt that Bell was in the right and said,

 “What ? Did I read this correctly ? Is the pastor apologizing for not tipping? When I first heard of this I had immense respect for the pastor. But now I am ashamed of her. The auto tipping should be illegal and she should defend herself and her actions. She did nothing wrong. Welch is the #$%$”

Another commenter posted, “wow the pastor did not even leave a tip for that poor hard working waitress. and then he mentions God. Now he's embarrassed and it is a bad example for his ministry. she should not have gotten fired”

Now let’s look at this from a legal stand point--  did Bell do anything that was illegal when she wrote the sentence on the receipt? No. However, can she expect, after writing something like that not to get the social ramifications. If there is one thing we know for certain as we continue to navigate through this evermore online driven world, we realize that what we say, do, and especially write can’t be expected to be kept private. If you don’t want something to be spread to millions of people, then don’t do it.

Now another angle, that of our apple bees waitress, Chelsea Welch. She was simply expressing her opinion of what Bell had initially wrote of not paying a tip. Note that Welch wasn’t even the server to Bell. She found it “insulting,but also comical” ­­­­.

Another comment made to support Welch, 
“this is all a bunch of crap... the waitress who posted the receipt had every right to post it..maybe not the whole receipt but the part that had the comment on it...the pastor in this is a fool, why was the info about her being a pastor on the receipt to begin with? lots of 'important' people do that to try to get a deal on the bill...”

Again let’s look at this from a legal standpoint. By posting this receipt online, did bell violate any laws? Not technically. If she would have posted other parts of the receipt that had information like the last four digits of her credit card or other confidential information, then Welch could be facing legal ramifications. But she did not post such information.  Did she violate any company Policies? According to Welch, there is nothing specific in the employee handbook admonishing the behavior. However, Michael Archer, president of Apple Bees, said that is was a violation of a “simple rule” of customers privacy. So whether it is explicitly stated within a company handbook or not it’s implied that publicly posting a receipt that associates a company with a customer’s controversial behavior is probably not a good idea.

This brings us to our third and final angle, the angle of President of Apple bees, Michael Archer. As any PR or Senior official knows, with social media and the internet as rampant as they are in this time period, undesirable situations that occur with customers would be best dealt with internally, rather than posting it publically and letting the whole world judge you on social media. Either decision the company made to correct this would have led to criticism because it’s now on the internet for everyone to know and interject their opinion. What was the best way to handle this as the President of the company? Did he do the right thing by affirming that they needed to fire Welch because it was a violation of customer privacy? Archer said, “ It’s not favoring the guest over the employee, It’s really a simple rule that we have that was violated.”

Was there a better way to handle it?

Either way, the best lesson to learn from this is that if you don’t want something posted on the internet, probably don’t write it. People then can do what they want with it. A second important lesson to learn is that as an employee, most definitely don’t post anything that could bring negative publicity to your company because let’s be frank, there is a high likelihood that you could lose your job.