A video of an assault of a female worker at the McDonald’s branch in Kenilworth by an aggressive male patron over food has gone viral on social media.
The video received over 328k views and 1.3k reactions by Tuesday morning.
In the video, the fris white male in a black "wifebeater" vest can be seen standing in the kitchen, behind the counter, which is a domain restricted only to employees.
The black female employee is seen and then heard informing him: “You wait for your food.”
The male is then seen walking into her showing two fingers as he shouts: "For two hours, I’ve been waiting for two hours.”
She then tells him to stop pushing her.
“Don’t dare push me,” she shouts.
She has a chip fryer in her hands and uses it to protect herself while the male continues with his assault, attempting to hit her as she pushes him away.
She responds with “who do you think you are, to hit a woman?"
He then disappears out of sight but is still in the kitchen.
He calls her a “piece of s***".
Shocked male patrons are filming the incident and later a group of frustrated males enter in a bid to help the worker and confront the man and this is when the camera is turned off.
Members of the public on social media suggested that she should have burnt him with the hot oil while others said she could have faced arrest for doing that.
“I would have grabbed hot oil if I was working, then as he pushed me he would get it in his face and chest.”
Another responded: “The only thing that came to my mind… so far we would be arrested by now.”
They also expressed frustration at male customers taking a while to jump into action and applauded the others for doing something.
“I want to see what happened after the guys entered the big guys,” one person said.
Another stated: “Men watching another man assault a woman.”
McDonald’s South Africa has confirmed they have begun a full investigation into the assault of one of their employees by a customer on Tuesday at their branch in Kenilworth, Cape Town after a video of the incident was leaked to social media.
In response to the video’s circulation and the incident, Daniel Padiachy, Chief Marketing Officer at McDonald’s South Africa says: “We are aware of a video circulating online showing an altercation between a customer and one of our employees.
“We take the safety of our employees and customers very seriously and have instituted a full investigation into the matter.”
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) provincial secretary Malvern de Bruyn said they would be looking into the incident and would be writing to the South African Human Rights Commission.
The South African Human Rights Commission said they were unaware of the incident.
