Hindi issue: Zomato sacks employee, reinstates later

Zomato, the food aggregator app, has been in the news after a Tamil Nadu-based customer complained about the behaviour of a grievance redressal agent working for Zomato. It all began with the customer in question telling the grievance redressal agent that he didn’t understand a phone conversation previously because the other person spoke in Hindi. At this, the Zomato employee told the customer to learn Hindi as it is a national language. The aggrieved customer took screenshots of the conversation and put them out on social media. 

The screenshots became the centre of a social media storm, with both pro-Hindi and anti-Hindi imposition segments arguing intensely. In no time, the Zomato employee was sacked from her job. However, some moments later, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal announced that the sacked employee has been reinstated. 

He said, “An ignorant mistake by someone in a support centre of a food delivery company became a national issue. The level of tolerance and chill in our country needs to be way higher than it is nowadays. And remember, our call centre agents are young people, who are at the start of their learning curves and careers. They are not experts on languages and regional sentiments. Nor am I, by the way.”