Pennsylvania restaurant calls customer the n-word, says it’s a ‘joke’
A Pennsylvania restaurant says one of its employees was “joking” when they printed the n-word on a black customer’s receipt.
Marquis Moore was about to consume an order of wings from Zembie’s Sports Tavern in Harrisburg when he noticed the word printed near the check number instead of his name.
Moore tells the paper that he is insulted and “will never go back” to the restaurant: “It makes me feel like I’m just low… nigga is an ignorant, disrespectful person. It has nothing to do with your skin color. What would possess you to put something like that on a piece of paper? You don’t even know who I am.”
The owner of the restaurant, Angelo Karagiannis, claims the incident was just a “misunderstanding,”and that “no malice was intended.” (Since when is that word an acceptable joke?) Karagiannis even falls back on the good old “we’re can’t be racist because we have black customers” excuse: “We have a Redskins fan club and every week there are 12-15 black guys who come in to watch the games. We are not racist at all and serve anyone.”
Raw Story notes that the bartender who wrote “nigga” on the receipt told Karagiannis that the loaded word was mean as a “light-hearted joke.” Apparently Moore was busy talking to people in the spots bar and piqued the bartender’s interest. A friend allegedly showed the bartender Moore’s Facebook page where he apparently describes himself as a “sexy nigga.” The bartender claims that she wrote down “nigga” on the ticket as a “joke.”
Moore isn’t accepting the restaurant’s explanation. He believes the bartender “searched the comments on his Facebook page looking for an excuse after she was caught.”
As for the bartender, she’s still employed but has been told to avoid identifying people “by using physical characteristics in the future.”
This shows that we still have A LOT of work to do.
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