Sonic Fires Worker Over Receipts With Offensive Language

A Sonic restaurant in Fort Worth has fired an employee after two customers said their lunch receipts included offensive language.

A man and his coworker stopped at a Sonic drive-in on Friday for lunch, and ordered on the patio, where usually, he says, workers take his name, reports FOX 4 News. This time, however, no one asked his name.

It wasn’t until they had finished their meals that the man noticed his friend’s receipt read “Mexican.” On his own, a variation of the n-word. He says he pointed out the receipts to a Sonic worker, but she seemed to shrug it off.

He says the carhop responsible for the slurs on the receipts is also black.

“I try not to use that word, and I know where it comes from,” he said. “It kind of bothers me for your own kind to call you that. Especially at a place of business. Especially where I spend my money at.”

Sonic said in a statement that the carhop is no longer employed at that location.

“We understand that a carhop wrote an offensive word on one customer’s receipt and a different offensive word on another customer’s receipt,” the company said. “The franchisees who own and operate this drive-in consider such behavior to be completely unacceptable. They have already investigated the matter and report that the carhop is no longer employed by the drive-in.”

Sadly, this is far from the first time we’ve heard of restaurant workers adding racist or offensive things to receipts: there were the Virginia diners surprised to find nasty comments about them at the end of the meal; a New Orleans restaurant that fired a server for adding a racist slur to customer’s receipt; the restaurant that claimed an offensive comment on a receipt was a joke meant for the kitchen staff; the Red Lobster server who landed in hot water for posting a photo of a receipt with a racial slur; and those are just a few examples.

Despite all of that, we can’t help but hope this will be the last time we have to report about such a lack of basic human decency and respect for one another.

Fort Worth Sonic customers shocked over ‘racist receipts’ [FOX 4 News]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist