My Sad Stomach
Since starting YU two years ago, one of my favorite places to eat has been Golan Heights. Scratch that, one of my favorite things in general has been Golan Heights. “Golan is the best!” I used to tell everyone. Who doesn’t love that awesome laffa, the one that no actual human needs to eat in one sitting, but does anyway? Golan was always there for me. I would have Golan on a random Thursday night with friends. I would have Golan after taking a tough midterm. I would have Golan to break a fast. I would have Golan on pretty much any occasion possible. But recently, I’ve been inhabiting Chop Chop instead.
As I’m sure you all know by now, Golan is no longer on YU’s Omni Card plan. The fact that it is no longer on the plan is upsetting, but the manner in which this occurred is way more irritating to me personally. I overhear people discussing the recent Golan scandal and I highly disagree with the way many present the details. Are there two sides to every story? Yes. However, in this particular story, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that one of the sides actively steals money. Golan has very legitimate claims against YU. Golan has every right to cry foul when its business partner acted unethically. It isn’t fair that YU decided to add more money to the student restaurant plan and allowed students to refill their cards independently, all without informing Golan. (Let’s assume that Golan is telling the truth on this one). If this were my business, I would probably be very upset. What would my course of action be? Hmm. Well, I could go to the other party and state my issues and work out a new deal that is more beneficial to both parties involved. Another option would be to cut the deal entirely and walk away. There are many logical next steps, but you know what isn’t one of my options? STEALING!!!
Since when is it permissible to steal money from innocent people? Since when is it acceptable to then claim, after acknowledging that you stole, that you were entitled to steal that money? And to think, they didn’t even apologize for the misconduct. It is this sheer audacity on the part of Golan’s owners that gets me.
Here is my favorite part. A Y-Stud that went out last week stated that there have been students who were “mistakenly charged sales tax” at Golan. In fact, it wasn’t a “mistake” at all- Golan specifically said that they carefully chose each victim to charge the additional tax to. The email urged students affected by this unfortunate mistake to “Please bring your receipt to the restaurant and speak to the manager, who will refund any sales tax collected.” When was the last time anyone in the history of the caf card took a receipt? And if they are referring to the online receipts, those only date back to January, but how long has Golan been stealing from us?
So all of those sneaky sales taxes are gone. And they add up. For those of us who inhabited Golan frequently (and again, we were the ones they claimed to specifically target, as ridiculous as that sounds), we probably lost a good amount of money. So where does that leave us now? With no formal apology, or even an acknowledgement of error, I see no option to eat at Golan. It’s possible my stance will change if I simply can’t resist, but for over 80 days now I have not eaten Golan, by far the longest streak since starting YU in August of 2014. (This 80 day streak includes winter break. I returned to the Heights eager for my laffa, only to find out the bad news). I just don’t feel right supporting a place that steals from its customers, even if it makes excellent food. And to be honest, maybe a part of me hopes that they will see revenues decrease and realize they need to apologize and get back on the caf card plan. Until then, I’m just left with this sad stomach.
