Craig Gray and John Burns say they were the victims of a homophobic incident after a worker at an Arby’s in Layfayette, Indiana wrote a slur on their order receipt on 6 June 2021. (NBC News/Facebook/Craig Gray)
A worker at Arby’s restaurant in Indiana was fired after writing a homophobic slur on a gay man’s order receipt.
Craig Gray and John Burns told NBC News that they were dining at Arby’s in Lafayette, Indiana on 6 June when they received a customer’s receipt with “f*g” typed on it. Burns said the slur came as a “shock” because the worker seemed a “little awkward but very nice”.
“The cashier that helped us, the young man that’s been mentioned, seemed really new and a little awkward but very nice,” Burns explained. “So a very run of the mill type of fast food occurrence. Nothing that you would expect out of the ordinary.”
As they waited for their order in the restaurant, Gray noticed there was the homophobic slur on the receipt instead of his name. He later shared a photo of the receipt on Facebook with the caption: “So this happened at Arby’s! Happy Pride, huh?”
Burns said such a homophobic incident has never happened to him, and he’s “lived here my whole life”. He told NBC News that they brought the receipt to the worker’s attention, but the employee said the incident was because of a “computer glitch”.
“I said, ‘Look at this. What is this? Why would you do this?’” Burns recalled. “And that’s when 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.’”
But Burns demanded to see the manager, who refunded the couple’s order and fired the cashier on the spot. Burns remembered seeing the fired worker “walking down the street in the parking lot” by the time he and Gray got their food.
Burns told NBC News that they have not had a “phone call or phone conversation” with anyone from Arby’s corporate office to acknowledge “what’s happened and apologise”. He said he also wanted to “hear something from the franchise owner” about what they’re doing to prevent such homophobic incidents from happening again in the future.
An Arby’s spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that the “franchised employee was terminated within minutes of management becoming aware of the incident”. The spokesperson explained that Arby’s has “zero tolerance for discriminatory speech of any kind”.
“I can confirm that both the franchisee and us at Arby’s corporate have both reached out to the guests to no avail,” the spokesperson added.
