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Comment by magneticnorth | Hacker News Reader

"When some employees complained internally about what they felt was racist and misogynist branding created by CloudKitchens for customers, like "happy ending" for dessert at an Asian restaurant, Kalanick said the startup did not seek to accommodate the press or woke culture. "

Wow.

I am astonished that someone like Kalanick, who is in some ways so smart and business savvy, can make mistakes like this twice.

In case anyone is unfamiliar with early Uber culture, I highly recommend reading Susan Fowler's account of being a female engineer at Kalanick-heyday-era Uber. https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...

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Do you think Kalanick would react the same if instead of "happy ending" for a dessert at an Asian restaurant, it was something like "Uncle Tom's Chicken & Watermelon"? To me, this is just another example of the acceptance of racism toward Asian people in American society.

Yes, he should be consistent and put that on the menu too.

Those aren’t really equivalent.

Maybe something closer would be “finger licking good” and that’s actually used by many restaurants and was used by KFC until covid.

“Happy ending” is actually super common for use on Asian restaurant menus. And I usually assume the Asian owners made that decision.

Using “Uncle Tom’a Chicken” is an offensive stereotype and even if it was made by a guy named Tom who had niblings it wouldn’t funny or clever to me.

I'm wondering what difference you see between the examples - they both seem like self-depreciating humour to me. It doesn't really make sense to be offended on behalf of other groups, especially when they haven't problem with it.

The difference I see is that one is related to slavery and betrayal and the other is about jerking people off.

Happy ending isn’t self-deprecating and also has some meaningful relation to food since desert is an ending and it’s sweet and happy, etc etc.

There’s really no connection to Uncle Tom and chicken that I see.

>"happy ending" for dessert

I am expressing no opinion on whether this is ok or not, but there has been a chain restaurant in the northeastern US catering mainly to families whose signature dessert was a "happy ending" sundae for decades.

And it appears that they do not use that phrase any more, but I found evidence it was eliminated in the last 3 years. I don't know why - it might have been a combination of changing sensibilities and their bankruptcy leading to reexamining things.

(2018)

"Get a free Happy Ending Sundae when you try any of our 5 new entrées!"

- friendlysrestaurants.com

Imo, specifically associating it with Asian restaurants is the problem.

My guess is that Friendly's use of that phrase dates back to before the days that it was a well-known wink-and-a-nudge phrase related to Asian massage parlors.

That may be correct, but apparently the OED has a citation for this definition from 1999. Which means that Friendly's used it for nearly two decades while it was a recognized double entendre.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/294866/when-did-...

I'm not sure there's a clear boundary between the usages where the second one just jumped out of nowhere.

Someone in the thread linked above mentions lyrics from 1978 that mention a "happy ending":

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/olivianewtonjohn/alittlemore...

A double entendre recognized by some, perhaps. I am admittedly pretty tuned out of a lot of popular culture, but I had never heard this.

People may have different opinions on whether one should be aware of it, indeed.

You can point to an authoritative source like the OED, and at the same time question whether it really penetrated to everyone.

Considering that, as I wrote, it was used until 2018 by one restaurant chain, that might be a plausible estimate of when it became commonly known to most people.

So is it reasonable to come down like a ton of bricks on someone in 2021? Is it fair to say that 19 years is not enough time to adjust, while 22 years is more than enough?

Not that I support his behavior - but it more or less worked at Uber. They became dominant. Why change now? Being a jerk feels good to those in charge.

Yeah, it may be a bit optimistic/naive of me to assume that Uber's success was despite this behavior, not positively correlated to it.

Yeah, I got an email from a recruiter about this company a while back. The main thing they touted was that it was run by Travis K. I wrote them back and said "Sorry, but that's actually a negative to me. Good luck." Sucks to be them, but it's good to know my instincts were on target.

It’s like nigerian spam - they want only people who don’t care about that to reply so you’re not gonna waste their time then nope outta process after realizing who your boss is going to be

Maybe, but I suspect people who actually care that Travis K. is running the ship would at least google the company and end up finding out that way.

I don't think it sucks to be them at all. Travis and his team probably want people who aren't overly sensitive whiners who constantly get offended at every little thing. (Actually I don't think any companies want these types of people, it's just that most don't try very hard to filter them out). If you happen to be a person who opts out as soon as the name Travis Kalanick is mentioned, then both parties are satisfied.

If you think not wanting to work with someone who created a mysogynistic bro culture at his last company -- a company which he referred to as "Boober" -- and who got removed from said company for his bad behavior, is being an oversensitive whiner, I would like you to email me your contact information so that I never end up working anywhere near you. My email is in my profile.

Boober, wow ::eyeroll:: To be clear, Uber executives, venture capitalists and its board of directors lived with Travis for many years and didn't see any issues, didn't censure him. He was not removed for his behavior, i.e. the acts themselves, he was removed because the company started to get bad press -- very little of which was ever verified or even investigated.

> I am astonished that someone like Kalanick, who is in some ways so smart and business savvy, can make mistakes like this twice.

I hope I too can fuck up and become a billionaire some day.

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