Karen Putz denied service at Taco Bell drive-thru

Alex (Daily Moth): You said that last Friday on November 19th, you were denied service at a drive-thru. You stayed at the spot for 30 minutes and then they called the police. The police came.

[Video clips from Karen Putz of the incident]

Karen is sitting in the driver’s seat in her vehicle with an elderly man sitting in the passenger seat. She is outside of a Taco Bell drive-thru window.

Karen: “You can clearly see my hearing aid. You can clearly see that I am deaf. Why would they ask for a deaf person to come in and put the order and refuse to serve a deaf person at the drive-thru? It makes no sense.

Karen, to a female Taco Bell employee at the window, “ Can I, Can I please understand why you are not serving me when you know that I’m deaf? Why are you making a deaf person go inside? I have a legal right to get my food in the drive-through so why would you make me go inside. Can you help me understand that? Ma’am? Ma’am? (The employee closes the window and ignores Karen)

Two police officers are standing outside of Karen’s passenger window. The officers say, “Yeah, let’s just go in the parking lot we’ll figure this out okay.”

Karen is sitting in disbelief in the driver’s seat. She wipes away tears and mouths, “Sorry.”

One of the two officers shows his name label. It says, “K. Cooper.”

Karen signs to the camera, “So here we are more than 30 minutes later, no tacos.

[End of video clips of Karen at Taco Bell.]

[Video clip of Karen Putz signing a vlog on her YouTube/Ageless Passions page]

Karen: …stop denying a service. You know, I have to admit when the police came I started crying because this little girl inside of me is feeling that rejection. This little girl inside of me is feeling “less than” sitting there for almost 30 minutes when I just wanted some tacos. Me and my friend, my new friend here in New York, I just wanted to give him the meal and the two of us drove away with no tacos. That’s not right, you know…”

[End vlog]

[Back to interview between Alex and Karen]

Alex: I saw you post on Facebook that you want to hold Taco Bell and its parent corporation, Yum —

Karen: Yum.

Alex: Yum, accountable. What do you visualize on how you’ll hold them accountable?

Karen: That is a good question. What’s the next step? I have to reach out. I hope they will make it easy for me to reach out. Because this problem is really easy to solve. It is easily solvable. If we have more standard policies, standard practices, serve the customer first — but first understand that the customer. If you don’t understand your customer, you can’t serve them well. We need to transform the training programs all over so the standards, if someone comes up and says they are deaf, what do you do? What do you do? We have business training like DeafFriendly.com. Use them to provide training all over so all the employees are required to watch that specific training and have that as a standard practice. It’s simple.

Alex: I understand. Good luck with that process and pushing. I know that many deaf people hope for significant change with drive-thru restaurants. It’s happened again and again.

[Sponsored video from Convo: www.convorelay.org]

Alex: Do you have anything you want to add before we close this interview?

Karen: Yes. Right now I am collecting deaf experiences. If you’ve experienced this, please use the hashtag #deafdrivethru. Use that hashtag and I will look for your stories. And contact me, I have a form you can fill out. Click on the link and share your experience. I plan to use it as a report for the restaurant industry. It is time. Now is the time for us to be “heard.”

Alex: Good plan. I saw someone post that “Taco Bell messed with the wrong person.” So you’re now ready to pursue them and make an impact for us. Good luck with that process. I hope we can help you with providing information. I hope that going forward your drive-thru experiences won’t be a repeat of this. I hope they will be positive in the future.

Karen: That is a big hope for all of us. For us to never experience this problem again. It would be great!

Alex: Thank you so much, Karen Putz. Thank you.

Karen: Thank you!

Karen Putz’s YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK7od...

If you want to help Putz with her survey, here is the link: https://bit.ly/3xpnwvL