Portland Press Herlad
Thursday October 18, 2018
By Matt Byrne
Hamdia Ahmed said she was told to leave the St. John Street store and issued a no-trespass order after the employee overheard Ahmed's family speaking Somali at the drive-thru and told them to 'stop yelling.'
A Dunkin’ Donuts store owner met Wednesday with a Portland college
student and activist who called out the business on social media after a
store employee refused to serve her Somali-speaking family and then
called police following an argument in the drive-thru lane.
Hamdia Ahmed, 20, said she felt that the employee discriminated
against her and two relatives for speaking Somali as they waited to
order coffee at the St. John Street Dunkin’ Donuts on Monday afternoon.
Ahmed said she and her relatives drove to the coffee shop around
12:30 p.m. and waited for a store employee to ask for their order. As
the family chatted in Somali in the car, a woman’s voice crackled
through the speaker and admonished them for yelling, Ahmed said.
“All of a sudden we heard a woman say, ‘stop yelling, stop yelling,’ ”
Ahmed said “We’re like what’s happening. We’re just having a
conversation. We were talking in Somali. She told us she’s not going to
take our order and for us to leave and she was going to call the
police.”
Ahmed, a refugee from Somalia who arrived in the United States more than a dozen years ago, has emerged in recent years as an outspoken anti-racism social justice activist and organizer.
After the argument in the drive-thru lane, Ahmed said she parked her car and went inside the store to speak with someone.
A store employee called Portland police, and after an officer spoke
to Ahmed and store employees, the police issued Ahmed a no-trespass
notice barring her from returning to the store for a year. The officer
listed the cause of the no-trespass notice as “disturbance – yelling at
staff.”
Ahmed posted an image of the no-trespass notice to her Twitter and
Facebook accounts, as well as posting a video showing parts of the
encounter. The video recording does not depict the initial exchange at
the drive-thru kiosk, only a portion of the argument that followed.
“You’re going to disrespect me because I speak a different language
than you?” Ahmed said in the recording. “Is that what it is?”
“It has nothing to do with your language,” the employee said through
the loud-speaker. “You can leave. I don’t want to hear it. I’m done with
it. You can leave, or I’ll call the cops.”
Following the online posting about the encounter, Ahmed organized a
protest Tuesday night outside the store, and about 12 people showed up
to demonstrate.
Following the demonstration, she was contacted by a corporate representative of Dunkin’ Donuts who apologized, Ahmed said.
The owner of the St. John Street store, Dave DaRosa, met with Ahmed
Wednesday and also apologized, Ahmed said. They discussed how to avoid
these types of encounters in the future and he rescinded the no-trespass
order, according to Ahmed.
“He gave a sincere apology,” she said. “He acknowledged that the police should have never been called.”
Reached by phone Wednesday after their meeting, DaRosa declined to
comment and referred all media inquiries to a Dunkin’ Donuts corporate
email address. The company did not respond to a list of submitted
questions, but Ahmed provided a message from the company saying it
strives to treat everyone with dignity and respect and acknowledging
that the franchise owner has apologized to the customer for the
“negative experience.”
The company later issued a statement:
“Dunkin’ and our franchisees are committed to creating a positive
customer service experience for all of our guests,” the company’s
emailed statement said. “The franchisee who owns and operates the store
has confirmed he has met with the guest, sincerely apologized to her for
the poor experience and is working on providing additional customer
service training to his store crew.”
“I appreciate their apology but what I really wanted to get out of
the meeting is I want training for their workers,” Ahmed said. “Because
they can’t treat people like that, and the police should have never been
called.”
Ahmed, a University of Southern Maine student who has been an
outspoken anti-racist activist in Portland who does not shy from public
demonstrations and discussions about race, said she felt compelled to
speak up and publicize her encounter through social media.
“I can’t just ignore stuff like this because that would mean I’m allowing it to happen,” she said.
Ahmed had a similar encounter in September at an Old Port Starbucks,
where she said an employee laughed and rolled her eyes at her when she
asked for the employee to check the alcohol content of a vanilla
flavoring, News Center Maine (WCSH) reported. Ahmed, who is Muslim, abstains from alcohol.
Starbucks apologized to her after the encounter, a response she said was “adequate.”