Racist Papa John’s Employee Calls Customer “Lady Chinky Eyes”
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If the idea of eating Papa John’s pizza doesn’t make you cringe enough, imagine having a racial slur thrown at you in the process. Minhee Cho was one of the many costumers seeking Papa John’s “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza”, but instead, got some mediocre pizza with a side of racism.
On Saturday, January 7th, Cho posted a photo of the receipt she received from a Papa John’s employee that stated her name as “lady chinky eyes”. Following Cho’s tweet, Papa John’s quickly apologized and dismissed the offending employee from the New York location where the incident took place.
The Louisville, Kentucky-based chain apologized to Cho on various social media outlets, and are reportedly trying to issue a personal apology.
A similar incident occurred less than a month ago at a Chick-fil-A in Orange County, California. Instead of asking for the names of two Asian students from UC Irvine, the employee decided to call them “Ching” and “Chong” respectively. Chick-fil-A released a statement soon after the offense.
“Please understand and accept our confirmation that the inappropriate, and unthinking behavior of a young team member at one of our restaurants does not support any claim or even suggestion of racism at our restaurant,” the statement said.
With these incidents happening so close together and the politically correct nature of the society we live in today, will corporate America be forced to establish basic civil respect training into their daily operations? While Cho seems to have a good sense of humor about this Papa John’s employee’s ignorant actions, not all customers might be so reserved in their backlash. These random instances make for interesting news and as they say, all publicity is good publicity. I guess we will have to see how companies are going to distinguish between customers in the future without offending anyone and hurting their business in the process.
