Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us.
It seems the long-ago promise of Burger King — “Have it your way!” — still resonates with Cobb County Sheriff Craig Owens.
Now, we always knew the “flame-broiled” Whopper that you unwrapped never looked as enticing as it did in the ads. The meat wasn’t as perfectly juicy and sizzling, the bun wasn’t as heavenly plump, the lettuce a bit wilted.
Still, we usually shrugged and wolfed that sucker down. Despite the royalty attached to the name, what did you expect?
The good sheriff has higher standards. He simply won’t settle and will employ the police power of state to make sure The King lives up to his lofty vows.
And because of that, Owens has become a punchline, seen as an imperious leader quick to have his underlings do his bidding, no matter how petty.
And what’s more petty than having armed deputies rush to the scene of a fast-food joint to help an unhappy boss wage a complaint?
I guess we can be thankful he didn’t call SWAT.
Credit: Cobb County Sheriff's Department
Credit: Cobb County Sheriff's Department
Owens, a retired Cobb police major, is the county’s first-ever African American sheriff, elected in 2020, and has largely kept out of the limelight. That is, until in March 2023 when he thought it was a bright idea to call his office to send some deputies to help in his dispute.
WSB-TV broke this odd news whopper last week, showing police bodycams doing the work they were intended to provide. The truth.
The cameras show deputies, three of them, speeding with sirens blazing to the scene of the ... um, not crime, exactly. To the scene of the alleged mistaken order.
The deputies pulled up and the sheriff, sitting in his Supersized pickup, explained the emergency. His wife was hungry and, “I wanted to order her a Whopper with no mayo, cut in half, right?”
He informed the officers he told the Burger King workers the order was wrong and did not receive satisfaction from them.
“I don’t need no damn money back no more,” he said. “I just need to find out who owns this place so I can do an official complaint.”
“OK, sir,” responded a bemused officer, who then knocked on the restaurant’s locked door.
Although it was the middle of the day, the Burger King’s doors were locked. The assistant manager told deputies they’ve been threatened before and were concerned for their safety. They didn’t know the fellow fuming outside was a man sworn to provide that safety.
Owens was off duty and out of uniform, so all the restaurant crew saw was a disgruntled fellow dressed in camo idling in his F-150 with a large dog barking in the back seat.
Who wants to mess with that for $14 an hour?
Threats and mayhem are nothing new for fast-food workers. Things had gotten badly in recent years and then even worse after the pandemic. It’s vicious cycle: The jobs are low-rung, workers are hard to get, the service gets worse and customers, paying more than ever, get frustrated and angry. YouTube is filled with videos such as “Fast food freakouts.”
Apparently realizing his boneheaded methods, Owens this week gave WSB an interview using the old my-wife-has-an-allergy excuse. She doesn’t do mayo.
The sheriff said the assistant manager refused to change the order or even give him his hard-earned money back. (Owens made $195,000 last year.) He told WSB he never told the workers who he was and that they slammed the drive-thru window on him, leaving him with an uncut, mayo-slathered Whopper.
Asked why he escalated the situation, he said, “I thought the best thing to do was to call a deputy,” Owens said. “In hindsight, I probably should have just drove off and took the bad service and left and came back another day.”
Ya think?!?
David Cavender, Owens’ GOP opponent in next month’s election, says the 2023 episode demonstrates an abuse of power and a “sense of entitlement.”
“If this is how he deals with a wrong food order, I shudder to think how he handles a true emergency,” he told me.
As to contentions he’s pulling a last-minute smear job on Owens, Cavender says he put in an open records request and didn’t get the videos until Sept. 24.
Also, he said the Burger King employee sent him an email. “He said the sheriff absolutely identified himself,” Cavender said.
Owens did not respond to calls or emails to his office.
I called Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, a veteran lawman who’s seen it all. Well, almost everything.
“I can’t imagine doing something like that,” said Sills. “In fact, I routinely get substandard meals and don’t complain.”
“I don’t know what he expected those cops to do,” he continued. “It’s obscene if you ask me. I just wouldn’t think of using them as my servants.”
It does put a new spin on the term “public service.”
Sills teaches a course to incoming sheriffs about ethics. “I ask three questions,” he said. “What would it look like on the TV news? Is it legal? And what would your mama say.”
I don’t know about the last one. And the second is probably not illegal. But it sure as heck played badly on TV.
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