Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Pizza hut's Anti Kannada Policy

Recently I had been to Pizza Hut in Ring road near Kamakya theater in Bangalore. As we were placing our orders, I noticed that the waiter replied to everything that I asked in English. When I asked him if he was not familiar with the language, he told me that he was a Kannadiga, but he was not allowed to talk in Kannada. When I inquired more he told me that, it was the Pizza Hut policy that the staff was strictly instructed not to speak in Kannada. I was furious at their racial policy. How can Pizza Hut not respect the the local language. They want to do business in Karnataka and make money, but don't want to encourage the local language. Forget encouragement, they were discouraging it. This is a highly racial attitude. I condemn their policy.
I even left a feed back about this at their drop box.

As I was in the middle of voicing my opinion with the staff, I noticed two elderly ladies in their sixties, enter the outlet. I could hear them speak as they were quite loud. They called the waiter and told them that they were coming to their 'Hotel' for the first time and wanted some help in ordering the food. It was very evident, that both the ladies were not able to talk in English. The waiter helped them smilingly with their questions - All in Kannada. If the waiter had strictly followed their anti Kannada policy, then Pizza Hut would have lost the business and would have left 2 more unhappy customers (apart from me).
Later, my wife told me that she and her cousin too have voiced their opinion at a different outlet about the policy.
I would request every reader to go the pizza hut website http://www.crm.pizzahut.co.in/index.php and give a feedback about their policy

12 comments:

ashu said...

Nagendra,

I am glad that you voiced your anger in a constructive manner by giving feedback....We are constantly facing such bias across many other places and only way out is to unite and fight together against such moronic policies...if ur interested do drop me ur mail, we have forum of folks working together against biases

ashukrao at gmail dot com

Guru said...

I agree with Nagendra...and glad that you have done something for this.
Previously ( I mean good 10 years ago or so), I rarely saw any Kannada speaking proud kannadiga be able to afford Pizza's and visit other western food outlets. I think now that affordability has reached into many middle class or even lower income groups...everybody wants to try Pizza's...is it affordabilty or just cheap pizza's..I don't know.

prashanth said...

Very Good Nagendra, I appreciate that you voiced your opinion, but I hope you have done the same at their website too, as there are all chances that the feed back form would have gone straight into the shredder/trash can. It is just not enough to hang out Kannad a sign boards outside the outlet, but, to have a policy to follow the same inside the outlet too. Such establishments should keep in mind that they are not doing any favour to kannadigas by opening an outlet and follow the language of the land.

Keshava Murthy said...

Nags u have done a good thing. Feedback forms will help, but I beleive the best/simple way to handle these guys is to walk out from there restaurants without buying any thing. I hope you did that.

Well the extreme step is to inform Kannada Rakshana Vedike :)- For sure they will take care of such issues.

Tarle - Nagendra HK said...

I not only wrote this blog, but I also posted a feed back on their website

bharadwaj sathavalli said...

Glad that you did this... Please drive it to closure... keep writing feedbacks on the site till they roll back such racist policy of theirs... And I hope someone from KRV takes a look at this.

Anup MalenaaDu said...

I have written this in the feedback to pizzahut:

"
I would like to tell you that this is unlawful and unethical on the part of Pizza Hut. If the management does not correct this wrong attitude, we will escalate this issue to your higher authorities.

Hope to see a corrective action soon."

If they dont, we can raise our voice in public.

Kannadiga said...

ನಮಸ್ಕಾರ ನಾಗೇ೦ದ್ರ ರವರಿಗೆ,

ನಿಮ್ಮ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಇರುವ ಕಾಳಜಿ ನೋಡಿ ಸಕ್ಕತ್ ಖುಷಿ ಆಯ್ತು. ನನ್ನ ಹೆಸರು ಕಿಶೋರ್ ಅ೦ತ, ಇದೇ ರೀತಿ ನಾವೆಲ್ಲರೂ ಒಟ್ಟಾಗಿ ಸೇರಿ ಇನ್ನೊ೦ದಿಷ್ಟು ಗ್ರಾಹಕ ಸೇವೆ ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡಲು ಉತ್ಸುಕನಾಗಿದ್ದೇನೆ. ನನಗೊಮ್ಮೆ ಮಿ೦ಚಿಸಿ - kishoreyc@gmail.com ಅಥವಾ ಕರೆ ನೀಡಿ ಮಾತಾಡೋಣ - ೯೮೮೬೬ ೫೫೩೫೨.

ನನ್ನಿಯೊ೦ದಿಗೆ,
ಕಿಶೋರ್!

Manoj said...

I had experienced the same when i had called up the Pizza hut. Though the attendant knew Kannada he said he was asked not speak Kannada as its Pizza huts policy. I really got angry and asked him to pass the phone to his manager, but he dint and started talking in Kannada. This is ridiculous. People are not allowed to speak their regional languages to spoken in their own land. Would people have let this happen in other states say Tamil Nadu?? We Kannadigas are tolerant towards everything. We need to change this. This is absolutely not acceptable. We must raise our voices now.

Ganesh said...

Good nags, that was the right way to go. But u need to visit the same place again if things have changed. If there's no change, there is always the option of informing the gooda's running around in the name of Karnataka rakshana vedhike. That will surely send the message across to not only Pizza Hut but everyone.

Anonymous said...

I found this site using [url=http://google.com]google.com[/url] And i want to thank you for your work. You have done really very good site. Great work, great site! Thank you!

Sorry for offtopic

Anonymous said...

Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!