Black customers forced to pay for meals in advance: ‘You people steal’
Students say buffet manager discriminated against them due to race
A group of Black students in Ohio say they were shocked by a restaurant manager when they were forced to pay in advance at a buffet restaurant before they could be seated.
Samora Savage, a Youngstown State University student told The Vindicator that she and her friends had gone to the Royal Grill Buffet in Boardman, Ohio last month. When they arrived, they were asked to pay up front and agreed to do so before they were seated.
But then they noticed that other customers were seated without paying in advance.
Savage asked the manager about the difference in the way they were treated, at which point the manager told her, “you people steal.”
“I couldn’t believe the way we were treated there,” she said.
Another customer overheard the exchange and yelled at the manager, accusing him of discrimination. That heated exchange was caught on cell phone video.
The manager’s defense
The manager, Jay Dong, says that he doesn’t believe his policies are racist because he doesn’t make all Black people pay ahead of time, even if he did acknowledge that a lot of the customers he singles out for pre-payment are Black.
He explained that he usually asks for pre-payment if it’s a big group paying in separate checks or if it’s a group he doesn’t know.
“A lot of people steal from me. If I don’t know them, and they all pay together and they try to run, I can usually catch one person and make them pay the bill. But if they all pay separate and they run out, I can’t catch everyone,” Dong said.
However, when asked why he doesn’t just make it a policy to have all customers pay in advance, Dong said that he had tried that and lost customers.
The restaurant does not have any kind of posted sign detailing when customers pay for their food.
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