"Tolerate Each Other": Zomato Reinstates Employee Who Was Fired Over 'National Language' Remark
In a row over a food order that went viral, Zomato today sacked an agent after a customer from Tamil Nadu said he was told to "learn Hindi" when he sought a refund. Hours later, the food delivery app's founder tweeted that the employee had been reinstated and that the "level of tolerance and chill" needs to be much higher in the country.
What Zomato founder said
Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal added, "Tamil Nadu, We love you".?Goyal stressed that the call centre agents are young people and are not experts on languages and regional sentiments.??
"Having said that, we should all tolerate each other's imperfections. And appreciate each other's language and regional sentiments. Tamil Nadu - we love you. Just as much as we love the rest of the country. Not more, not less. We are all the same, as much as we are different," he said.
The? food delivery and restaurant rating apps, Zomato, faced backlash on Twitter on Tuesday after a customer shared their experience with the app's customer service executive. The customer was told that everyone should know Hindi as it is the national language, during a grievance redressal conversation.??
Exchange between Zomato executive and customer
Vikash, a user presumably from Tamil Nadu, was facing an issue with his order and decided to take it up by chatting with the customer service executive on the app.In screenshots that Vikash has posted on Twitter, it is seen how he is unable to get his refund due to a miscommunication between the app and the restaurant.
The customer service executive explained that this was happening due to a "language barrier" to which Vikash replied saying that they should have sent someone who knew Tamil. To this, the executive said, "For your kind information, Hindi is our national language. So it is very common that everybody should know Hindi little bit."
Why is it offensive?
Not only was this statement factually incorrect since Hindi is not our national language, but is was also an offensive thing to say, something Vikash pointed out in his tweet.?
Hindi is one of the official languages detailed in Article 343 of the Indian constitution but has not been designated as the ¡°national language¡± in any official capacity. There has always been stringent opposition from south Indian states to the imposition of the Hindi language on people who speak other regional languages.?
Social media users slam Zomato
?The exchange soon triggered a Twitter storm with many slamming the company for imposing the language on customers.??
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¡°Reject Zomato¡± trends on Twitter
Soon,?hashtags like ¡°Reject Zomato¡± and ¡°Hindi imposition¡± went viral with 20k tweets and over?4,500 likes and 2,500 retweets.??
Zomato issues apology?
Earlier, Zomato issued a public apology for the incident in Tamil and English, and informed the customer that they had ¡°terminated the agent for their negligence towards our diverse culture¡±. However, the company has now reinstated their employee.?
Responding to Vikash¡¯s complaint, the company¡¯s customer support page Zomato Care agreed that the incident is ¡®unacceptable¡¯ and promised to check it out immediately.
The company also insisted that the employee¡¯s remarks did not represent Zomato¡¯s stance on language and diversity. A Tamil version of the app is also in the works, it added.
