Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201260064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SPEAK OUT, BUT DO IT WITH CAUTION
Robin Roop went to work Friday morning at Kentucky Fried Chicken on Melrose Avenue and felt bad vibes from her co-workers.They weren't talking to her.
Finally, as they hustled to put out a bunch of lunch orders, somebody broke the silence: "Saw your name in the newspaper today."
Roop doesn't read the paper regularly.
She knew, though, that her name probably was in the newspaper.
The day before, on Thursday, she and her husband stood in line for a food handout at the National Guard Armory on Reserve Avenue. Robin and Ron have four children. He doesn't work.
They got six cans of vegetables, six pounds of butter, five pounds of cheese, some rice and some flour. It'll help.
While the Roops were waiting, a reporter approached them. He wanted to attach some faces and some names and some thoughts to the 3,000 or more Roanokers hungry enough to wait in line for free food.
The Roops obliged. Robin told Neal Thompson, the reporter, that she's been getting fewer hours at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Fewer hours means fewer dollars.
Nancy Fluker, who manages the restaurant, was angry when she read Roop's comments.
Fluker believes Roop's comments reflected badly on the restaurant, an embarrassment for the Colonel and company. The Kentucky Fried on Melrose sold more chicken in January of this year than it did in January of last year, says Fluker. No workers' hours have been cut.
She said as much to Roop, and insisted that Robin Roop call the newspaper to pound out the dents she'd inflicted on the colonel's sterling image.
Kentucky Fried Chicken's 8,000 outlets generate about $5 billion in annual sales, last I heard.
Robin Roop earned $4.35 an hour.
No more. Roop left after Fluker vented her anger. She walked home, up over the hill, through the woods, skirting the edge of the graveyard. She has no car.
"An embarrassment?" asked Roop, later, sitting at her kitchen table. "You want embarrassment? Try standing in line for free food. And then have a reporter come up to you."
Robin Roop intended no disrespect to her employer.
A reporter asked her a question. Roop answered it. She saw no harm, but neither is she a savvy media pro. She doesn't know how to spurt pabulum - the soft, mushy, colorless, odorless, spineless quotes that readers get fed, every day, by people accustomed to being interviewed and people accustomed to conducting interviews.
It's an unwritten code between reporter and newsmaker.
Say nothing. We'll treat it as if it were something, and float it out there.
Robin Roop didn't know that code. Had she known, she would have said, standing in line for the free food: "Roanokers have responded in large numbers to this U.S. Department of Agriculture offer of free cheese, and I find myself among them."
There is plenty more to this story, as there always is: The Roops and Nancy Fluker were eager to share stories - none of them flattering - about one another on Friday.
Those stories do not affect the fundamental point here: Roanoke is not kind to people who talk to the media.
Long ago, I jokingly told friends that we live in the City of Anonymity. All over the valley, I encounter people - common, working, non-famous people with nothing to hide - who will not tell me their names.
They don't want to become targets, and they know something that Robin Roop has just learned: To get by in Roanoke, you keep your mouth shut.