To Filipinos all around the globe, Jollibee offers a little taste of home away from home. Not only is the menu filled with delicious items, but many of the menu descriptions are super positive, like Jolly Spaghetti and Chicken-Joy. In New Jersey recently, however, a customer was very far from jolly or joyful when she visited her local Jollibee restaurant. Instead, she got pretty angry with the manager, who she branded as “rude and nasty“, for allegedly making the Karen wait for the chicken to cook at 9am in the morning.
The video doesn’t show the buildup before the altercation occurs, but apparently, the New Jersey Karen has been left waiting for a while to allow the chicken to cook at 9am in the morning. This inconvenience has seemingly sparked the incident. The footage starts mid-sentence, with the Karen exclaiming, “–Very rude and nasty to me, and I’m the only one here.” The Jollibee manager attempts to interject and explain, but the Karen just talks over her. “I’m not talking to you, but you’re very unprofessional. And for you to be that rude and disrespectful, I’m definitely coming back. When is the store manager here?”
“I am the store manager,” the Jollibee employee states, calmly. Surprised by this fact, the Karen declares, “And you’re the store manager?” Off camera, a security guard asks the Karen to “back up a little” but she fires back, “I don’t have to back up. She’s behind the counter. I’m right here. You just back up. You back up from me. First of all, you’re a male. You shouldn’t be approaching me. I’m a female. I don’t have to back up. I’m not trying to touch her. I do not want an arm up. You ain’t trying to keep the peace. You’re making it worse.”
So far, however, the manager appears to be calm and the Karen is the one who seems to be behaving rudely. “Like I said, you are very, very, very rude. Because she was very nasty to me for absolutely no reason. I was very polite. I was very manner-able.” expresses the Karen. The security guard attempts to defuse the situation, but the Karen continues, “I don’t care about that. I don’t care about you. You’re not keeping no peace.”
The Jollibee store manager then explains something that’s difficult to make out, but it sounds like, “You were taking forever in there,” and the Karen jumps on this believing this is her smoking gun. “You hear — what did you say? Say that again.” says the Karen, pointing at the employee. Again, the manager says something like, “You were taking forever in there–” though the woman cuts her off. “So, the problem is I took too long. Exactly. Now, you see. She admitted on camera. Mind you, look y’all, nobody’s here. I was the only one here. Getting chicken at 9 o’clock in the morning.” the overly entitled woman states swinging the camera around to show that there are no other customers in the store.
After some back and forth, the Karen then begins demanding corporate’s contact details so she can lodge a complaint. The security guard tells the woman that he can give her the information, but for some reason, the Karen wants it from the store manager. “No, she’s supposed to give it to me. I can post whatever I want. You know the laws in New Jersey? I can record in public. I’m gonna post this and tag Jollibee. I got over 300k followers. You admitted it. I was taking forever and you had an issue with that. Now you’re scared to be on the internet. Now you’re scared to be on the internet.” The Karen then starts to sound childish and petulant, and mockingly states to the store manager, “Now you’re scared.” before yelling “F*ck you” at the employee and the security guard.
As the clip continues to gather momentum online, social media users largely sided with the Jollibee store manager and criticised the rude behaviour of the New Jersey Karen. One Redditor wrote, “She shows up right at opening, then complains about the chicken taking time to cook. I can’t understand what anyone else says with how she keeps yelling that she was very polite. Just trespass her and don’t engage anymore, that job doesn’t pay enough to deal with that.”
Another commenter chimed in with, “Every time the manager attempts to speak this ‘very Polite lady’ starts screaming” while another penned, ““Look at this video of me screaming at a fast food employee. Isn’t her behavior OUTRAGEOUS???”” Over on Instagram, one of the most up-voted comments read, “I don’t feel like the employee was aggressive at all. She seem calm to me.” A fifth comment simply joked, “No Chicken Joy for her!“
While it’s a little tricky to fully understand the whole incident without seeing the buildup before the altercation, it’s fair to say that the New Jersey Karen was being incredibly pushy and rude to the Jollibee store manager, and was seemingly playing the victim card over something that was simply a minor inconvenience. As a result, I side with the Jollibee employee on this one.
