Tim Hortons in a new PR jam
Good Samaritan scolded after buying a homeless, pregnant woman food – then leaving her to eat it
May 23, 2008 04:30 AM
No good deed involving doughnuts, it appears, goes unpunished.
Two weeks after an employee at a Tim Hortons in London was fired, then rehired, after she gave a child a free Timbit, Toronto investment manager Teresa Lee bought breakfast Wednesday for a pregnant homeless woman at a Tim Hortons downtown – then was scolded by a restaurant employee unhappy that the homeless woman stayed in the restaurant to eat.
The employee, Lee said, told her the Tim Hortons at King and Victoria Sts. does not let homeless people eat inside, even if they are eating Tim Hortons food, because they "make a mess."
"I said, `She purchased the goods, there's no reason she shouldn't be able to eat in the store,'" said Lee. "He said, `No, she didn't purchase it, you purchased it.' I said, `They were purchased. There's no reason she doesn't have the right to eat it in the store.' He said, `No, she's going to make a mess, who's going to clean up that mess? Are you going to clean up that mess?'"
The homeless woman, Tim Hortons spokesperson Rachel Douglas wrote in an email yesterday, had been "disruptive to customers and staff" on "several" occasions in the past. But Douglas did not say the woman had caused any problems Wednesday morning, and she apologized later to Lee — though Lee was unsatisfied with what Douglas said.
Walking to her office Wednesday around 8 a.m., Lee, 34, said she saw the homeless woman lying on a grate on King St. When the woman got upset after police told her to move, Lee asked if she was hungry.
Lee bought her a sandwich, a Boston cream doughnut, and chocolate milk. The woman, Lee said, sat down at a corner table, "not bothering anybody," to eat. When Lee walked out the door, the employee followed to admonish her.
Douglas said the homeless woman, who could not be located later for comment, had been asked to leave the restaurant on several previous occasions. Tim Hortons, she said, does not have a policy on the treatment of the homeless; it is up to franchises to "make delicate judgment decisions when dealing with any disruptive customers to ensure the store is pleasant, comfortable and safe."
But she acknowledged the woman had not been disruptive Wednesday before the employee rebuked Lee. "What happened here was the act of a Good Samaritan and we agree it was not handled in the best of manners. We have since apologized to the customer."
Lee, who works at an investment firm at Yonge and King Sts., said that apology was incomplete. Douglas appeared to apologize only for how the restaurant treated her, she said, not the homeless woman. "I don't think she directly admitted what they did wrong," Lee said.
The Lee incident Wednesday and the Timbit controversy two weeks earlier illustrates the challenges companies like Tim Hortons face in protecting their brand images from negative publicity created by the decisions of their franchises.
Ninety-five per cent of the Canadian stores in the Tim Hortons chain are owned by independent franchisees who pay annual fees to the company, not by Tim Hortons itself. The company, "a Canadian icon of best practices from a franchising perspective," extensively trains franchisees on the treatment of customers, said Perry Maisonneuve, the principal at Northern Lights Franchise Consultants in Mississauga. "But it comes down to judgment. Somebody is Johnny-on-the-spot, they're there at that time, and they're going to react."
Maisonneuve said a specific company policy on the treatment of the homeless would probably be "too narrow"; Tony Wilson, a franchise lawyer at Boughton Law Corp. in Vancouver, said "it's just common sense" to most restaurant owners that they should not evict homeless customers.
But after another public controversy, Wilson said, "I'll bet you dollars to navy beans Tim Hortons is developing a policy right now on it."
