Chris Rock’s mother is suing Cracker Barrel for racial discrimination, the AP reports. Based on the information given, it is a rush to judgment and an overreaction.

Evidently Rock and her 21-year-old daughter were seated, but waited for half an hour without service. She asked the manager about the delay and was offered a free meal. She refused.

As someone who’s worked in food service (though never as a waiter), I can say it’s easy for these things to happen. Pretty much everyone has had a bad restaurant experience, either because everyone on the wait staff thought someone else was taking care of it or because the restaurant was understaffed. A free meal for two sounds like pretty reasonable compensation for a half-hour wasted, and it seems that the manager was quick to offer it.

I remember my family — four white people — once ordered a pizza in a restaurant, and the food never came. After some time we had to flag down someone (no one checked on us) and they started the process over again. The manager dropped over once it arrived, but just said a quick apology and tried to make small talk while we were (finally) eating. No discount, and even the apology didn’t sound all that sincere. Rather than sue, we just never went back.

So it isn’t just blacks who get overlooked, and when it happens even whites don’t always get the free meal Rock was offered.

The whole thing reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld’s fictional Uncle Leo: “I told them medium rare, this is medium! Anti-Semite! The guy at the car wash didn’t clean the hubcabs! Anti-Semite! Vending machine didn’t give me the cookies I wanted! Anti-Semite!”

And this isn’t, of course, the first time someone with celebrity ties has simply defined bad or less-than-perfect service as racism. Recall Oprah; a store wouldn’t let her in after its closing time, so she concluded her skin played a role and mounted a public relations crusade. Her argument was that there were still people in the store, but that’s irrelevant — if stores kept letting people in because earlier arrivers hadn’t finished yet, they’d never close. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere, and most stores stop letting people in at closing time while letting those who came earlier wrap up their shopping (albeit under the annoyed stares of employees who want to leave…saving up for and working my way through college is coming in handy this post).

The one valid issue the article brings to light is that many Cracker Barrel restaurants seem to have experienced these problems. Though it’s hard to prove this specific case was due to racism, a whole pattern of behavior might be worth looking into.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.