Dunkin' Donuts Customer Rant

Overview

Dunkin' Donuts Customer Rant refers to a YouTube video of an enraged woman complaining about not receiving a receipt and directing various insults and racial epithets toward the coffeehouse chain staff.

Background

On June 8th, 2013, YouTuber sally salvenie uploaded a video featuring a woman demanding a free order for failing to receive a receipt at a Dunkin' Donuts chain restaurant. In the video, she expresses concern that the employees will urinate, spit or defecate in her food and directs a racial slur toward a female employee (shown below).

The same day, Redditor cryptical33 submitted the video to the /r/videos^[2] subreddit, where comments were disabled after Redditors began posting her personally identifiable information. In the first four days, the YouTube video gained more than 87,000 views and the Reddit post garnered upwards of 890 up votes.

Notable Developments

On June 9th, 2013, the NewsMaster11 YouTube^[1] channel uploaded a duplicate version, receiving over 500,000 views and 8,300 comments in the next 72 hours. In the following days, the video was highlighted by several news sites, including Guyism,^[9] Gawker,^[10] The Huffington Post,^[11] UpRoxx^[12] and the New York Daily News.^[13]

Customer's Identity

On June 10th, The Smoking Gun^[3] published an article outing the woman as 27-year-old Florida resident Taylor Chapman,^[8]who had previously appeared in marketing videos for a local Chinese food restaurant (shown below, left) and an auto repair business (shown below, right). By the next day, the Smoking Gun article had been posted on the /r/JusticePorn^[5] subreddit, where it received upwards of 3,900 up votes and 1,100 comments in the first 24 hours.

Dunkin' Donuts Employee's Identity

Also on June 10th, The Smoking Gun^[4] also identified the Dunkin’ Donuts employee who was filmed during the rant as Abid Adar, an 18-year-old who had recently graduated from high school at the time of the recording. Meanwhile, an Indiegogo^[7] crowdfunding campaign for Adar and his coworker Nithi was subsequently created, which gained more than $1,100 of its $10,000 goal in the first 48 hours.

Company's Response

Also on June 11th, Dunkin’ Donuts posted a tweet announcing that the company planned to recognize Adar for properly handling the incident.

On June 12th, Gawker^[7]published an article about Adar, which included a statement from Dunkin’ Donuts about his recognition:

"We commend the franchisee's crew member for handling this difficult situation with grace and patience. We believe this is a powerful example of great customer service and the respect our crew members have for our guests. The franchise owner of the restaurant has reached out to the crew member privately to express and demonstrate his personal appreciation."

Search Interest

External References