According to police in Little Rock, Arkansas, a night shift employee at the McDonald’s on Geyer Springs Road will be looking for a new job after trying to murder a customer Tuesday morning. Willie Holmes was convinced the guy deserved it, and it’s a good thing he wasn’t a better shot. Obviously this worker never heard the phrase “the customer is always right.”
Against McDonald’s policy
It’s almost a daily occurrence for people to try to scam fast food restaurants out of food or money. That’s precisely why McDonald’s has very clear policies on how to handle disputes with customers. They’re designed to keep things from escalating out of control without giving away the store in handouts.
It seems that the graveyard shift at the branch on Geyer Springs Road has their own policies regarding refunds, which involves beat-downs and shootings. Police are still trying to figure out which, if any, charges to file.
An unidentified 32-year-old male customer rolled through the drive-thru around 3:30 a.m. but didn’t keep going. He walked into the lobby of the store, the door of which probably should have been locked at that time of day, and proceeded to intimidate the first employee he encountered, a female. He claimed he “didn’t get his change.”
Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. McDonald’s has ways to find out. Step one is always changing the cash register drawer from the drive-thru and counting it for a discrepancy. That didn’t happen. There are probably video tapes to show the money changing hands. They weren’t viewed.
What did happen was an argument. The police report documents “the two began yelling at each other.” That’s when 39-year-old Willie Holmes “escorted” the irate customer outside.
Video from a witness taken outside the McDonald’s building shows Holmes punching “the customer in the face.” That’s about when the female employee reports “she then heard a loud bang and glass hit the floor inside the store.”
Shot in the finger
The astonished customer never thought he would be battling for a couple bucks. All he told police about it is that his attacker “pulled a gun out and shot him in the finger.”
They took him to the hospital by ambulance for stitches at McDonald’s expense. After shooting the unruly customer, diligent employee Holmes “went back into the store.”
The manager gave Holmes the rest of the day off and sent him home “because he shot someone.”
McDonald’s frowns on bringing firearms to work but the fast food “graveyard shift” from around midnight to six can be a whole lot more dangerous than most people imagine. Most customers are either heavily intoxicated or just woke up. A lot of them are grumpy.
Officers made sure to get lots of photos and measurements of the bullet hole “in the front window and glass on the floor” of the McDonald’s.
Holmes is lucky he didn’t shoot the employee he was out to protect. As of the latest reports from Tuesday morning “Holmes had not been arrested.” Police are still investigating.
