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Norman E. Kjono October 30, 2003 Via E-Mail: OBS54615@outbackrestaurants.com (425) 803-6880 Re: Proud to be "Smoke-Free" Dear Mr. Crowley, On Monday October 27, 2003 my son and I visited your establishment. We have done so several times a month since the Kirkland Outback Steakhouse opened a few years ago. You should be able to find a credit card receipt used to pay for our meal. I write to inform you that I will not return to any Outback Steakhouse (including your restaurant), I will not recommend that others patronize any Outback Steakhouse, nor will I pay any future credit card charge in my name that identifies Outback Steakhouse. I also write to inform you that Outback Steakhouses in general, and your restaurant in particular, will be a featured part of an editorial on a consumer advocacy Web site. The article will address corporate products and service locations that should be avoided, indeed be the focus of boycott. The basis for my refusal to patronize your restaurant or any other Outback Steakhouse—and to recommend a boycott by food consumers—is that you are now "Proud To Be Smoke-Free" (underline added), as set forth in the huge banner displayed on front of your restaurant October 27, 2003. I noticed today that the offensive banner has been removed, nevertheless the stigma and hurtful mentality behind it remain. And the Outback in Kirkland still does not permit smoking in its lounge. So the only thing that has changed in a meaningful way is that you chose to remove a banner that you have been informed offends a customer. The "anti-mentality" that prompted the banner and your "Smoke-Free" policy still remain. It is to the anti-mentality and the insensitive, boorish, rude behavior toward others that it inspires that I so strongly object. Hiding an offensive banner does not change what is in one’s heart and mind. As I informed your hostess when I left on the 27th, such a banner sign is rude, offensive, and self-serving. The sign says to me that nearly 30 percent of the American public who choose to lawfully consume legal tobacco products are to be shunned, excluded, and ostracized. Moreover, the sign intentionally communicates a negative value judgment about a large segment of your customer base: If you are proud to exclude those who choose to smoke, would you be embarrassed to accommodate them? If you take pride in promoting a divisive and exclusionary agenda, why should your customers believe that prideful bigotry would change merely because you removed a banner? If you proclaim in large banners that you are proud your establishment is for nonsmokers only, do you regard persons who smoke as second-class customers? The bottom line is that your judgmental banner loudly communicates the fact that you would seek to use a special-interest political agenda—to "denormalize" tobacco use—to line your own pockets through an anticipated increase in food service sales. Those who appear to trade personal integrity and civil behavior toward others for pecuniary interests to line their own pockets are not worthy of hard-earned dollars from patrons who lawfully consume legal products of which you so clearly disapprove. Anti-fat is to a great extent funded from the same special-interest sources (pharmaceutical Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) as anti-tobacco, managed by the same professional activists who have also crafted anti-tobacco (for example, John F. Banzhaf, Esq. of George Washington University, who self-styles his lawsuits against fast food restaurants as "Legal Terrorism" in a good cause), and applies the same negative labeling and unfavorable stereotyping strategy against overweight persons as anti-tobacco does to persons who choose to smoke. Anti-fat and anti-tobacco not only share similar funding sources and hurtful strategies but they also craft a common agenda to support corporate special-interests at the expense of "Target Group" consumers. Will the Outback also become "Proud To Be Fat-Free"? That raises an interesting contradiction: will the Outback only take pride in demeaning persons who consume products that it does not serve in its restaurants? Given the portion sizes, fat content, and sugar levels of the Outback’s menu and drinks, perhaps it will not be long before the anti-fat police pay the same visit to you as anti-tobacco operatives apparently have. Will you then install a scale at the hostess stand, to determine which menu customers are "approved for" (the regular menu going only to those of "appropriate" weight)? Will Outback employees who greet patrons at the door have received intensive "anti-mentality" training about how to surreptitiously calibrate the size of one’s buns, to herd customers into the "correct" line by buttock size? Where does your and the Outback’s political "anti" agenda delinquent silliness end? Then again, perhaps the food service competitive fix is already in: if Outback supports anti-tobacco perhaps it can be expediently arranged so that Outback Steakhouses will not be targeted by anti-fat lawsuits as Wendys, McDonalds, and ice cream companies have been. That brings to mind a final contradiction: does the Outback only support special-interest agendas about products that it does not distribute, and for products that its food service competition does serve? Perhaps the way to increase Outback market share compared to other restaurants is to support the special-interest "War on Tobacco" agenda against tobacco consumers, which garners protection from the "antis" for the Outback at the expense of fast food consumers in the "War on Fat." What comes out of even a cursory analysis is that the Outback appears to embrace political agendas as a way to puff their bottom line at consumer’s expense. Should that be the case, it goes beyond merely rude and offensive to outright filthy. Just an inference that the Outback would engage in that form of low-down political corruption is sufficient to permanently boycott all Outback Steakhouse restaurants. When the Outback has reduced itself—through its own self-serving political decisions—to serving artificially flavored tofu shaped in molds to look like prime rib to accommodate anti-fat, accompanied by nicotine-laced bottled water to accommodate anti-tobacco and anti-sugar, we consumers can come by to enjoy a good horselaugh at what a formerly fine dining establishment has done to itself. We’ll celebrate by having a Big Mac and A&W Root Beer float tailgate party in your parking lot. Perhaps then you will wake up to the reality that your self-serving political agenda need not, and will not, include our consumer dollars. In the meantime, you have your bigot’s banner and anti-mentality, we have our consumer dollars. You have your self-serving intolerance of neighbors and members of your own community, we have our credit cards. You have your policy, we have our free choice of what restaurants we will patronize. You keep your anti-mentality, self serving intolerance, and "Proud" policy. We’ll keep our consumer dollars and credit cards to ourselves, while pointing out to neighbors and friends it would be a good idea to boycott the now-oh-so-politically-correct Outback Steakhouse. Given the amount of political pork that is transparently obvious in your banner and the anti-mentality behind it, perhaps you should change the restaurant’s name to "Fatback Porkhouse." Sincerely, Norman E. Kjono cc: Stephanie Amberg,
Outback.com 16149 Redmond Way No. B221 Redmond WA 98052 (425) 497-8187 |