Man finds disturbing racial slur on takeaway receipt

A customer was left furious after he noticed a waiter had used a racial slur to describe him on a receipt.

In Young Lee went to a Taco Bell in Pennsylvania to grab a bite to eat, and when the cashier asked for his name, he said “Steve”. In Young says he does this for convenient purposes, as it’s easier to put down than “In Young”.

Instead of putting just 'Steve' however, the waiter put 'Steve ch**k', a derogatory way of referring to people of Asian descent.

Recalling the incident on his Facebook page, the University of Pennsylvania PhD student said:

Our interaction was very ordinary and cordial even, until I saw my name on the receipt that read “STEVE C---K”. I was so infuriated that I couldn’t help but to confront the cashier. When I confronted him, he said that there are three Steve’s in the restaurant so he needed to differentiate. It made me even more upset that he was protecting his case rather than apologising so I lashed out and told him that it is extremely disrespectful to use such a derogatory slur. He eventually apologised, and although I was still very upset I decided to let the case go.

Although he initially let the slur go, he later found the waiter joking about it in the kitchens, which made him angry again.

This is when the manager approached me to calm me down. He said that what the cashier did to me was wrong and that he is sorry.

However, he rebutted that I was being disrespectful by snatching my food from the cashier. It was as if he was trying to defuse the situation by redirecting the blame on to me. But how does he expect me to be polite to the cashier when he deliberately took his time to spell out the word “C---K” to describe me?

When he attempted to condemn me, people in the restaurant started to berate both the [manager] and the cashier, which led him to apologise and finally admit that they were in the wrong.

I thought incidents like this only happen in the news and never expected it to happen to me but I guess it really does happen in the real world. Normally I would let things like this go but under the current political climate I find it very important to address such issues and voice them loudly and clearly.

His post received an outpouring of support and was shared almost 200 times. One Facebook user called the incident “shameful”, and another praised him for speaking out about it.

A spokesperson of Taco Bell Corp told indy100:

We do not tolerate this behaviour. This employee no longer works for the brand, and the franchisee is retraining its staff to ensure this incident will not happen again. Management has reached out and apologised directly to the customer.

This article was updated to include Taco Bell's comment.

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