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  • 2007-09-04 (xsd:date)
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  • US Servicemen Refused Service at Dunkin' Donuts (en)
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  • Origins: The years since the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq in 2003 have brought us a panoply of rumors about business owners and employees in the U.S. who have supposedly openly celebrated terrorist attacks on America and/or refused to do business with U.S. servicemen. Most often the businesses targeted by such rumors are gas stations, convenience stores, or other small shops, since those types of businesses are frequently owned, operated, or staffed by immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, or by persons mistakenly assumed by Americans to be Mid-East immigrants). For example, 2001 saw rumors of employees at a Dunkin' Donuts outlet and a convenience store supposedly celebrating the 9/11 attacks, and 2005-06 saw rumors of service station owners in Tennessee and Illinois allegedly refusing to do business with U.S. servicemen. And, for good measure, 2003 saw multiple versions of a rumor claiming that U.S. Marines had been shunned by the American operators of a number of different businesses. All of these rumors proved to be false. (In the one case we've found where such a rumor seemingly had some truth to it — a 2004 incident involving a convenience store employee who neglected, deliberately or otherwise, to wait on a U.S. Marine — the business owner didn't dispute the account, promptly fired the employee, and apologized to the parties involved.) The August 2007 e-mail reproduced above fits this pattern of rumors, telling a tale of two servicemen in uniform reportedly denied service by the owner of a Dunkin' Donuts franchise in Crown Point, Indiana, who rudely told them that you are killing my countrymen and I will not serve you. We don't yet know how much truth (if any) there might be to this one, although both the CBS television affiliate in Chicago and the Munster, Indiana, Times reported on other military personnel who have patronized the same establishment while in uniform and experienced nothing untoward. Hard to believe that something like this might be going on in our community, said John Pitt of the Indiana Army National Guard. The Times also reported that the details of the e-mail were contradictory and could not be substantiated: (en)
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