POOLER, Ga. (WTOC/Gray News) – Public outrage is mounting against a Firehouse Subs restaurant in Georgia.
The restaurant location in Pooler has come under fire after a Veterans Day incident went viral, sparking calls for the location to be shut down.
The controversy began with a Facebook post accusing the owner of being rude to veteran customers who came into the store for the company’s Veterans Day promotion.
Amiee Eisensmith, who shared the post, said the experience left her and her daughter feeling unwelcomed at the restaurant.
“From the beginning, we did not feel welcomed,” Eisensmith said. “I went in and asked, are you participating in the Veterans Day promotion? And he said very nastily, ‘Unfortunately, yes.’”
And according to her the interaction only continued to go downhill from there.
“We were going to let it go, we were going to give him the benefit of the doubt but as we were sitting there and he was slamming things down, he was talking about how inconvenient this was and how his store had been ravaged,” Eisensmith said. “He started rambling about how much money it was costing him, and that he hadn’t made any profit that day. It just became more and more uncomfortable.”
Eisensmith and her daughter decided to leave, but before they exited, she says the situation escalated.
“He was nagging about how four people had called corporate about how they felt entitled to their free sandwich. He did not even want to participate in this. My daughter lost her temper,” Eisensmith said. “We didn’t respond in the best way, and we know that but something in us just snapped.”
After words were allegedly exchanged, the two veterans said they left the restaurant unable to believe what had just happened.
“We got into the car, I’m in tears and my daughter is shaking with rage,” she said.
Eisensmith said she then decided to post what happened on a small neighborhood Facebook page, warning other veterans in the area of what they may be walking into at the restaurant.
“I didn’t want anyone else to go there and have a bad experience like we had,” she said.
And the post began to take off, garnering hundreds of comments and thousands of shares, with most expressing support for the veterans.
By Monday, the restaurant’s Facebook rating had dropped from four stars and under 100 reviews to a single star and nearly 500 reviews.
Some commenters even claimed that this wasn’t the first incident involving the owner.
The owner of the Firehouse Subs location in question said the Facebook post “did not paint the whole picture” and that Eisensmith and her daughter had used profanity towards him that day.
The owner also stated that his comment about the promotion was meant to explain the situation, not convey aggression.
The restaurant manager said the location has been flooded with phone calls from across the country, many involving profanity and threats over what happened.
Firehouse Subs’ corporate office released the following statement regarding the situation:
“We thanked Ms. Lancaster for taking the time to speak with us on Tuesday morning and allowing us to share our deepest apologies for the unacceptable experience her family had at this franchise location in Pooler, Georgia.
We take our history of supporting Veterans and First Responders seriously, and we are taking immediate action to address this matter with the franchisee.
This experience is not representative of the proud work of our brand, our franchisees and thousands of team members nationwide who collectively served nearly 150,000 meals this Veterans Day as a token of gratitude to our local heroes. As an apology and to show our support to the Pooler veteran community, the Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation has pledged to donate $25,000 to a local veteran organization that Ms. Lancaster has recommended.”
Community members have since offered to provide meals for the veteran family, but they have declined and encouraged those supporters to channel their contributions toward veteran-focused organizations in the area.
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