Woman said it pays to stick up for what you believe is right

Leah Eichstadt who grew up in Van Buren Township and now lives in Dexter said she learned it pays to speak up for what you believe is right.
Eichstadt told her story to the Independent on Friday. She said she went into the new Sizzle restaurant at the corner of Rawsonville and Martz roads on Sunday, March 28.
She said she ordered a chicken club submarine, so she could cut it up and share with her father, who lives down the road. She said he no longer can walk so she comes out to take care of him.
Eichstadt said she was served the wrong thing and said she wasn’t accepting it. When the man who said he was the owner said he wasn’t replacing the food, she said she wanted her money back and he refused. It was ten dollars and change.
That’s when she flung the food off the table and onto the floor.
She left. The restaurant got her license plate number and called Van Buren Police. When she got to her dad’s house, she called police, as well, and told them where she was if they wanted to talk to her. She explained she had to excuse herself from the situation. Police didn’t come, she said.
Eichstadt said she didn’t need the money because she just got a settlement for an accident she was in two years earlier. She said she was riding her Harley motorcycle to church when it happened.
Her teenage children told her not to make a fuss, but she said people shouldn’t accept this kind of treatment. She said in the past when she worked in a restaurant she was taught the customer is always right. “The customer is always right,” she emphasized.
“We work hard for our money,” she said.
The day after the incident, on Monday, March 29, she decided to picket the restaurant and read up about the rules on the internet.
She said she made her protest sign and stood in front of the business, which is inside of the Shell gas station building. She yelled out, telling people not to eat there. Two police officers came and advised her not to cross the sidewalk in front or she would be trespassing, so she didn’t. She said she parked along Martz Road.
She said the police were very nice and they asked her if all this was worth a sandwich. She said it was the principle of the thing.
She said she is still going to therapy three days a week at a place on Rawsonville Road, so she could easily drop by to picket when she is in town.
But, on Friday afternoon when she and three friends came with their signs to picket, they said they were barely there five minutes when the regional manager of the Shell station Omar Skaf came out and gave her $11.
“I learned about it and took care of it,” Skaf said Friday. “There are people dying. It’s not worth all the trouble.”
Eichstadt was delighted.