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This one involves a bit of twist from the usual fast food hiccups that turn sideways. It centers around a Burger King employee in Willowick, Ohio, who was shaken after having gun pulled on him for giving a customer…a discount on his meal.
On Easter Sunday morning, Howard Vernon, a 38-year-old drive-thru worker, told news outlets that he was taking an order when the customer started raising a stink over the price. But not because he thought he was being overcharged, it’s worse than that, even.
The order in question consisted of; two sausage, egg and cheese croissants, a sausage biscuit, and hash browns. It should have come to about $11. But because there was a promotion going on, Vernon applied a promo code so that the customer would receive a discount resulting in a new total of just $8.
This is where all reason was thrown out the window, and the tale gets Twilight Zone-esque.
Vernon was interviewed by the local news outlet: “He was like, ‘My order can’t be right, it should be like $11,’ and I’m like trying to explain to him that we had a promotion going on, and like it’s cheaper, and he started cussing and getting all loud, and I was like, ‘I don’t know what to tell you, I don’t know why you want to pay more money.'”
The situation took a bizarre turn when the customer left, only to return moments later, pulling up next to another car at the drive-thru window. He brandished a gun and pointed it at Vernon. By the grace of god (or the Easter bunny), he didn’t end up firing the weapon and instead, sped away. The incident left Vernon reeling in disbelief, and he has not returned to work since the mishap.
Looking down a very long line of altercations throughout the years where gun pulling, fighting, throwing, and bashing seem to be the trend…one would think there’s something in the air at fast food joints that turn people into monsters who lose their shirts over any tiny perceived slight.
There was the time a woman pulled a gun because she thought she was entitled to a free cookie, another altercation (gun pulled) happened earlier this year at Burger King wherein a situation turned violent because a Whopper took too long to be made, and then how about the time where a worker got violent, eventually pulling out a gun because the customer pointed out his curly fries were missing. And these are just scratching the surface.
In Vernon’s case, he’s lucky the gun-wielding weirdo, upset over his surprise discount…abandoned whatever plan he had in mind, and fled for the hills.
Willowick police are still reviewing security footage captured during the ordeal, and are actively searching for the suspect, described as a male driving a gray Honda sedan.
Vernon continued: “It’s crazy that people would just do something like that. I mean, yes, because at the end of the day, it was just a few breakfast sandwiches. And you’re that mad that you put a gun in somebody’s face?”
The National Restaurant Association reports that fast-food workers experience violence at a rate much higher than the national average.
