If they changed their tune when they took the hit, that’d maybe make sense.
My personal philosophy is that it’s stupid to deal with corporations like they’re people, worthy of fair treatment, or even civility. It’s a dumb machine for taking money from people and concentrating it in the pockets of wealthy investors.
I’d rather we deal with the moral failings of business owners and CEOs with proper regulation. But I think at this point I’ll just decline to ever do business with chick-fil-a until they try to repair damage they’ve done. Stopping stabbing someone isn’t the same as treating them in the hospital after all.
I also believe that there are some times when forgiving people or slow AIs for the things they do is just not warranted. I don’t think forgiveness is anyone’s right really and people have a right to dislike someone/something forever if they were hurt by them. Them’s the breaks.
If their actions are seen as half-hearted by consumers not liking their business decisions, that’s really on the company.
They aren’t owed business. People who are choosing not to eat there are doing it because the company hasn’t convinced them to eat there. Again, that’s up to them to persuade people that they’ve had a change of values. If they can’t do it, then people get their chicken somewhere else, that’s life.
It’s not “perverse” to just be insufficiently persuaded by a corporation that they’re worth buying from. Pretty normal, actually. It’s a lot more perverse to oppose things like same-sex marriage when it doesn’t affect the person opposing it.
They’ve done this crap before. They’ve made big PR announcements about taking strides to be inclusive or whatever, when in fact they’d just done things like started a new fake charitable organization to funnel their money into that could go to causes like funding PACs fighting against gay marriage. They have a long history of lying, misleading people, and hiding donations to anti-LGBT organizations, so while I applaud this change, I also see no reason to trust them.
Also, let’s be clear: CFA is doing just fine financially. They’ve grown so much in just the last few years that they’re now the third-largest chain in America. Ending these donations is a desperate PR move after Popeyes has been stealing their thunder lately.
Is it hard to understand the concept of: I don’t like what they do so i choose to go elsewhere?
Because you love their chicken sandwiches doesn’t mean everyone else needs to do so too. There’s plenty of choices and i choose to eat somewhere that doesn’t discriminate against LGBT. Seems like a really easy concept. I think you’re getting hung up on the false idea that this is spite or hate driven by their critics, which is what CFA and other folk want you to think. Honestly CFA has no space in my mind, besides these last few days i cant tell you the last time i even thought of them and i live a relatively happy life. If they’re that desperate for my business then they know what they need to do.
Generally, it’s to get a corporation to pay attention to and perhaps acknowledge its problematic behaviour by hitting it where it hurts the most: its P&L statement. That’s all that “slow AIs” truly understand, even if their controlling shareholders also care about hateongering in the name of religion.
Most corporations behave badly, but it takes particularly crappy behaviour to inspire a boycott of this scale. Even then, most large-scale boycotts don’t change a corporation’s behaviour – focused and local boycotts at a municipal level that involve real sacrifice by consumers are far more effective in poking the all-holy quarterly numbers enough that a company will change its policies.
Chic-fil-A’s problem here is that this privately held company stubbornly stuck to its crappy policies for so long that three things happened:
In popular culture, the brand became (and remains) as deeply associated with anti-LGBTQ bigotry as it was with the sandwich it sold.
A lot of Americans learned that they could live without the corporation’s famous sandwich if it meant not allocating one red cent of its price to Xtianist hatemongers. It’s not a big sacrifice, even if one accepts that it’s the best fast-food chicken sandwich.
Another company in the fast-food market recently started a offering a comparable or better sandwich at a similar price, without all the crappy brand baggage. People who were long accustomed to not buying one widely acknowledged best product in the category started buying the challenger’s product instead, shifting the market share numbers significantly.
In other words, by the time Popeye’s came along and started eating into Chick-fil-A’s market share, it was too late by years for the company to change its behaviour. If it isn’t already, I expect that this story will become a business school case study.
If the chatter on the conservative subreddits are any indication, they’re going to suffer a backlash from the dittoheads for caving on their regressive stances. They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Also, there’s this quote from today:
"No organization will be excluded from future consideration—faith-based or non-faith-based."
In other words, folks, this is just a splashy PR move, and they’ll go back to donating to anti-LGBT groups as soon as they can do so quietly, like they did last time, and the time before that.
Interesting hypothesis, but they haven’t donated to either group in all of 2019, making it unlikely that it’s a response to a sandwich debuted in August 2019.
But they didn’t announce it until this week, correct? They’re just now, this week, making a big deal about their new inclusiveness to improve their image. Maybe it isn’t in response to Popeye’s sandwich, but it’s certainly in response to trying to stop being “the anti-LGBT chicken chain”.
Sorry but I find the concept hilarious. Kenny Rodgers Roasters does so well in Malaysia because it is inherently Halal. Chick-A-fil-A should expand across the Muslim world. They’d make a fortune.
…that discriminates, and that shouldn’t be given access to vulnerable people over any other charity that wouldn’t discriminate in the same bigoted way.
I’m right there with you. The chain’s founder was deeply Southern Baptist and infused that into the corporate culture – their company mission statement is To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us, which is pretty hard core for a chicken sandwich restaurant. And it’s sort of a natural progression for them to give to Christian organizations. But now it’s become a literal act of Faith to eat a pickle-brine-marinated chicken sandwich in a mall (oh, and a side of waffle fries), so much so that Kanye even sang about it on his new gospel album. That’s about as American as it gets, y’all.
