Arby's employee fired for writing homophobic slur on couple's receipt

An employee at an Arby’s restaurant in Lafayette, Indiana, was fired earlier this week after writing a homophobic slur on the receipt of a gay couple, a spokesperson for Arby’s confirmed. Craig Gray and John Burns were dining at the restaurant Sunday afternoon when they received their order receipt with the typed slur, which came as a “shock,” Burns told NBC News during a phone interview.

“We went to the counter and ordered," he said. "The cashier that helped us, the young man that's been mentioned, seemed really new and a little awkward, but very nice. So a very run of the mill type of fast-food occurrence. Nothing that you would expect out of the ordinary.” But as the couple waited for their order to be prepared, Burn’s partner noticed that on their receipt, there was a homophobic slur in place of his name.

“Shock, just absolute shock,” Burns said. “This has never happened to me in all my years. I'm from this area, and I've lived here my whole life.” As Burns confronted the cashier, Gray posted a photo of the receipt on Facebook, with a caption that read: “So this just happened at Arby's! Happy Pride, huh?” Burns said the cashier chalked up the incident to a “computer glitch. 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.’"

Burns said he asked to see the manager, who refunded the couple’s order and fired the cashier on the spot. “By the time I sat down on my seat to meet up with Craig and eat our food, I saw the cashier walking down the street in the parking lot,” Burns said of the terminated cashier. An Arby’s spokesperson told NBC News that “the franchised employee was terminated within minutes of management becoming aware of the incident,” and that the company “has zero tolerance for discriminatory speech of any kind.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/arby-s-employee-fired-writing-homophobic-slur-couple-s-receipt-n1270547