waffle house fight in austin, tx

Verification Status: Mostly Verified

The video starts off, as most of these types of videos do, after a verbal altercation had already broken out between customers and Waffle House employees working in the kitchen of what we suspect is the location at Parmer and Dessau in Austin, TX.

When we first start to see the video one customer is giving a hand gesture to a WH employee made popular in fight movies of the 1970’s to signify “come here and fight me” while an employee in the kitchen asks her and her 3 friends to leave the premises.

The person recording the video, @rbaylor_74 on Twitter, appears to be joking about a fight possibly breaking out with a friend and how he just wants a waffle before the first part of the video cuts off.

Watch the video here:

The video starts back up abruptly and shows the same woman from before standing on the Waffle House counter top and physically trying to attack one of the Waffle House employees before climbing back down and walking off seemingly looking for a better spot to climb up on the counter. As she attempts to reposition herself an employee holds a coffee pot aimed at her and eventually hurls it at the assailant when it shatters on the back of a chair.

At this time the woman is joined by one of her 3 friends who runs to help her fight and climbs up where the coffee pot was just shattered and the woman who appears to be the instigator also starts climbing on the counter. The friend who joined her wearing a gray t-shirt slips and falls on to the floor of the Waffle House kitchen while trying to throw an object at the staff. When she hits the ground a female employee starts punching her, the other woman climbs back down and has a pan thrown at her by another female WH employee.

At the same time the other 2 friends, who had been uninvolved, enter the kitchen via the employee entrance and start attacking the female employee punching their friend. Another Waffle House employee who had helped the woman off of the kitchen floor releases her and the woman gangs up on the female employee along with one of her friends who had entered the kitchen to attack the female employee. The two male employees notice this and start doing their best to block punches being thrown by the women at their coworker.

During the fray our cameraman races out of the store along with other patrons and we see nothing but the floor and chairs until he gets back outside. Once he starts filming the fight again we see the woman who originally started the fight walking around the customer side of the kitchen pointing and saying something but we can’t hear her as the cameraman is saying in a falsetto voice “y’all wylin'” over and over again. At this point we can also see that the the Waffle House employees have successfully gotten the 3 aggressive women in the kitchen almost out but the gray t-shirt woman has grabbed the female employees hair and is holding on as the men try to part the two. While yanking on her hair the gray t-shirt woman attempts to throw over the shoulder punches to the woman’s head but she appears to block them effectively.

At this point viewers should notice the woman who appears to have originally instigated the fight with the staff is no longer in the shot and has either gone outdoors or is out of sight near the doorway. Her friends left behind in an altercation that is ongoing.

The Waffle House staff manage to eventually get the gray t-shirt woman to let go of their coworker’s hair and the fight begins to wind down. This is when the moment that has gone viral occurs.

As the gray t-shirt woman and her friends start to walk away she picks up a chair and flings it at the female Waffle House employee who deflects it with ease in a way reminescient of a superhero deflecting a bullet or missile. The gray t-shirt woman is not yet done though and tries a second, feeble, attempt at hurling a chair which misses the mark entirely.

This is where the video ends but we are not certain about how the fight ultimately ended.

The Internet Reacts

John Cena from the WWE/WWF was spliced into a clip as the person throwing the chair:

The video has been edited into an Avengers-esqe fight:

Waffle House in Austin fights back Texas Avengers style. from texas

And someone made an anime drawing of the Waffle House employee who grabbed the thrown chair in mid-air

p.s. we do not endorse the /r/Texas subreddit where the content above is embedded from. There are signs this subreddit might be ran by non-Texans or at least not fairly represent all Texans according to Texas is Life, a media organization that tracks and monitors places on social media where Texans congregate.

Social Commentary:

Please note the follow constitutes opinions and not facts. These are aggregates of commentary around this event from across social media.

1. Are the number of retail / fast food / quick service assaults on the rise? Social Media is full of examples of people physically trying to attack employees over simple misunderstandings or slow/poor service. This has been noted since the Popeye’s spicy chicken sandwich in 2019 caused fights at restaurants over low availability.

The answer to this is difficult since there are no official metrics to go off of from sources like the FBI. Howevever, Waffle House has been the butt of jokes related to late night fights for decades and there may be some truth to it. Best bet is to avoid places with negative reputations like this or if you find yourself in the situation to simply leave as many patrons in this incident did. As an employee of an establishment your best bet is to be physically and mentally fit and maybe to take some kind of fight training just in case.

2. Was this a racially motivated incident? It is hard to tell since it appears only one person in this case was caucasian (the female Waffle House employee) and the rest appear to be of other ethnic backgrounds including the customers involved in the fight. Random people on the internet have tried to make this claim but it doesn’t hold water when we take into account that she was defended by her non-white colleagues and that nearly all of the people filming were also non-white and had been there for the entirety but none of them mentioned this as a motivating factor. There’s also the fact that at the start of the video the main woman instigating the fight is arguing with an African-American female WH employee and no the caucasias one who has a chair thrown at her later.

Our cameraman above (Wallstreet Ray on Twitter) simply noted that they were getting wild and appears to be directing that commentary at the group of female customers causing the disturbance at the beginning. It is safe to assume without any new evidence that this was likely caused by another issue, perhaps alcohol and slow service? (but that is purely conjecture)

Many who make this claim might only be seeing the short and edit “Avengers” cut above and are then drawing from their own biases an inaccurate conclusion.

3. No one tried to help the staff, why? Not one single soul in the restaurant or outside did much of anything to try and help the staff who were being assaulted. A large majority simply left to avoid getting harmed themselves and started filming, ostensibly for social media clout and prestige. Our cameraman might have done the most as he tried telling the attacking customers at the end to stop because they were probably going to go to jail, but that feels light compared to what would have prevented this altercation or stopped it much faster.

Is social media popularity that important that you can’t help staff stop a clear assault? Or might there also be a fear of reprisal on social media for getting involved? A fear of a lawsuit if you cause harm?

One thing seems certain, our society is designed to make it easy and valuable to simply do nothing or film while shouting the n-word into your phone (as one African-American young man did during this incident) and is also designed to make it invaluable and likely expensive to intervene in an assault.

There are no heroes in America any more.

4. Will Waffle House employees start carrying weapons to defend themselves? If you worked at a Waffle House and saw this video and realized that if a fight breaks out because you cooked a waffle too slowly or the eggs weren’t done correctly or whatever the reasoning for this was – you might find yourself wanting to learn how to easily defend yourself in such a situation. Bear spray? Stun gun? Concealed pistol? One thing is certain, in Texas those starting future altercations should consider that the employees might be armed and the law will side with them for defending themselves.

Featured photo a compilation of screenshots from the video embedded above

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here