Photo Credit: Phillip Pessar
Imagine it being gay pride month, going to Arby’s to get something to eat before the festivities and bam, your receipt says smack dab in your face, “f*g.” Now of all the times to be a bigot, what a hell of a time to do so. And this is what Craig Gray and John Burns encountered at a Lafayette, Indiana location to which they told NBC News they were in “shock.”
Photo Credit: John Burns
“This has never happened to me in all my years,” Burns said. “I’m from this area, and I’ve lived here my whole life.” The cashier was described as being a “young man” who “seemed really new and a little awkward, but very nice.” And next to the “order name,” he typed “f-g.”
“I showed him the receipt,” Burns said. “I said, ‘Look at this. What is this? Why would you do this?’ And that’s when he tried to give me some lame excuse about a computer glitch, where he said ‘Sometimes I’ll put in a name and it will come out different on the receipt.’”
The couple shared their experience on Facebook pointing out the manager gave them a refund and fired the employee immediately afterwards. A company spokesperson said, “the franchised employee was terminated within minutes of management becoming aware of the incident,” and reiterated that Arby’s “has zero tolerance for discriminatory speech of any kind.” Burns did say, however that he would have preferred a phone call from someone within the company instead. “It would be nice to hear something from the franchise owner about maybe what they would like to do to try to combat this issue from happening again,” he said.
Yesterday we covered the Atlanta rapper DaeDae who went in Dunkin Donuts swinging a knife allegedly over a donut flavor that wasn’t available. At least if he were called some slur it might halfway seem justified. Now imagine if this couple reacted that way. What may have been a passive bigoted gesture from the employee could have cost him his life. You should be careful playing with people working with the public because you never know who you’ll come across. That could have been his final match right there.
