diff --git a/apps/telephony/telephony.yaml b/apps/telephony/telephony.yaml
index 4aa97a4..4ca4de3 100644
--- a/apps/telephony/telephony.yaml
+++ b/apps/telephony/telephony.yaml
@@ -127,10 +127,13 @@ spec:
       initContainers:
         - name: fix-data-perms
           image: busybox:latest
-          # Also chown /shared-tts (hostPath /tmp/tts-audio) so the non-root
-          # app user (uid 1654) can write Piper .sln16 files that Asterisk
-          # reads at /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/tts. World-readable (755) is
-          # fine — Asterisk runs as a different uid in the other pod.
+          # Must run as root to chown the hostPath /tmp/tts-audio that may be
+          # root-owned after node reboot. Pod-level runAsNonRoot:true would
+          # otherwise inherit and chown would fail with EPERM (see Notes memory
+          # feedback_hostpath_initcontainer_chown_perms).
+          securityContext:
+            runAsUser: 0
+            runAsNonRoot: false
           command: ["sh", "-c", "chown -R 1654:1654 /data && chown 1654:1654 /shared-tts && chmod 0755 /shared-tts"]
           volumeMounts:
             - name: telephony-data