YOURSAY 'While this incident happened to involve several Malays and one Chinese, I can't see why it should take on a racial tone.'

KFC assault victim denies provoking attack

AGM: Forty-five minutes at a 'fast food' chicken restaurant to be told, 'Ayam sudah habis', I'd be fed-up, too. At what point did they count their chickens?

The staff and management should have thought of their customers first. No one was proactive, no one was professional.

KFC Malaysia is a very poorly-run international franchise. If the Colonel were still alive, he'd fire the lot and take his restaurants back.

Thuey: Let's face the facts. There is absolutely no reason to shout and get angry at anybody just because you don't get what you want. Please bear in mind that just because you waited (which was at your own choice), KFC is obligated to serve you what you want.

We can fairly say that no one can properly estimate how much food is going to be left after one hour. You cannot simply guess what 15 people queuing up are ordering.

The people working in KFC are also humans. They are paid to do their job, not to be your slave and take verbal abuses by you.

Yes, you have one hour for lunch, but it's your duty to exercise your judgment about where you want to have your lunch within that one hour.

Don't push the blame for your bad judgment to the restaurant because you waited there. Initiate a provocation and expect no retaliation?

Jeremy Ng: Frankly, both are wrong. The complainant, Danny Ng, was wrong to scold loudly, irrespective of whether he used vulgar language or not.

In the course of his anger, I would not be surprised that he used insulting language. For this, he is frankly dumb and not civilised. He should know that the staff are of low-level grade, probably even part-timers.

As for the staff, he or they have nothing to lose except their job. The KFC management must take action to terminate such aggressive front-end staff.

It should have a standard policy for staff to move away when faced with aggressive customers. Such a situation should be handled by the manager/supervisor.

What happened is that Malaysian racial disharmony is very true. And this is created by Umno to gain Malay support.

However, this incident should not be championed further by any politician. Danny Ng, if he insists, should take up a civil/criminal suit.

Loyal Malaysian: Well, there's the video recording and there are definitely eyewitnesses, so the truth of the matter can easily be established. That is, if one is so inclined.

JimmyKL: KFC staff are definitely the ones that should be blamed in this case because they are the ones who started to physically attacked Ng.

But having said that, why can't the victim himself explain to the public? Why must he use politicians to explain for him?

I bet the victim has a problem communicating in Bahasa Malaysia or English. I have seen his Facebook page and it seem he was struggling to explain himself in either BM or English. Most of his explanation is in Mandarin which many Malaysians won't understand.

Even during the press conference, he was struggling to communicate in Malay and English what really had happened. Instead he relied on the politicians who obviously were not there when the fracas happened.

How are we going to resolve a problem when you can't even communicate in languages that everybody can understand? How many generations have the victim lived in Malaysia and still doesn't know how to communicate in the national language?

ONG: JimmyKL, you asked why can't the victim explain himself to the public and why must he use politicians to explain on his behalf.

As I understand it, Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng arranged the press conference where Danny Ng explained his side of the incident, and the politician made a plea to netizens to stop fanning racial sentiment over the incident.

I don't know about you, but I personally won't be able to organise a press conference to address the public if I were unfortunate enough to be involved in a similar incident. I, too, will need some politicians' assistance.

HYL: By the way, if there is no more chicken, why is it that there are still so many queuing up at the counter?

Didn't the staff put up a notice informing that the outlet has no more chicken and these people have to go and cook their own chickens?

Maplesyrup: The customers may not be always right, but in the food and beverage business, staff must be properly trained to provide good customer service.

I can imagine the frustration of being in a queue for an hour, only to be told that the stock has run out.

If the calibre of the workers are below par, it is probably linked to the company's wage structure. To maximise profit, the company has sacrificed on staff quality. We should avoid KFC like a plague. People, learn to love other types of fried chicken lah .

Puchong Mali: It beats me (puns intended) how KFC, a worldwide food franchise, train their staff to have resulted in such horrible inexcusable behavior towards their customers.

There is something very wrong about the staff in the outlet - from the manager down to the hot-tempered workers.

While this incident happened to involve several Malays and one Chinese, I can't see why it should take on a racial tone.

Ferdtan: Why does it only happen to KFC? Is this the quality of the international chain of restaurants? How come it didn't happen to other international chain of restaurants like McDonald's?

If the local management cannot run the restaurant properly, then the owner of the franchise should give the licence to someone who can.

Rule no 1 in business - you don't assault your customers. If KFC don't take any action against its staff in a transparent manner, we shall do what it hurts KFC the most - we stop going to eat in KFC.

At least, we can save some chickens from the pot.

Changeagent: I believe this incident is really symptomatic of a more serious social problem that we have over here in Malaysia.

It has highlighted our general tendencies to resolve conflicts through aggression and intimidation, rather than by civil discussion and rational compromise.

This kind of ugly behaviour is especially noticeable on our roads where we can see higher statistics of road rage and bullying.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this issue is also equally prevalent among our different races. We have become an increasingly violent and angry society that is totally inept at resolving our differences through polite discourse.

Our first reaction is to curse and swear, and this provocation can often easily escalate into fist fights.

I dare venture as far as to say that this social dilemma would only compound further unless there is a concerted effort by all relevant authorities, schools and adults to inculcate in our next generation's psyche that provocation and violence is never the answer.

Paul Tino: The best ending for racial harmony now will be for both parties involved to hold a press conference to forgive and forget.

Both hug and shake hands, but don't say 1Malaysia (so plastic and enough of this). So KFC management, can you do this?

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