A valley man says he was shocked when he went to pay his bill at a restaurant, because he claims the employee had typed a racial slur next to his name.
"I really found it to be demeaning and embarrassing," says Bryan.
Bryan says he went into the California Pizza Kitchen in Town Square to pick up his to-go order, but at the top of the receipt next to his first name, somebody had typed "ape."
"Just to have "ape" on my receipt, there's racial implications there that really bothered me," says Bryan.
He says he first tried to give them the benefit of the doubt.
"There's no justification that I could come up with," says Bryan.
13 Action News reached out to CPK's general manager and corporate representatives. They say Bryan's order was not taken by a CPK employee, but by a third party call center. Representatives with corporate also said the employee who typed his name, and then the word "ape", was immediately let go.
In a statement, the restaurant said:
“We are truly very sorry for the experience Mr. Hennagan had with the 3rd-party vendor, who entered his food order by phone. California Pizza Kitchen categorically does not tolerate discrimination whatsoever within our company, our restaurants or from our vendors and their employees. When we learned of Mr. Hennagan’s experience, we immediately reached out and apologized to Mr. Hennagan and contacted our vendor who initiated an investigation, immediately corrected their database and informed us their employee who entered his name is no longer with their company. We have since been in touch with Mr. Hennagan about the incident with our vendor’s employee and reaffirmed our commitment to re-earning his trust in CPK.”
– Attributable to California Pizza Kitchen
Bryan says he wasn't after anyone's job, or even looking for compensation. He says after the recent deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, he felt he needed to come forward and share his experience.
"This really is small in comparison to that," says Bryan. "But I wanted to give a voice to something people could experience, and prevent others from being called names just based on appearance alone,"
Bryan was given a gift card from the restaurant, and compensated for that dinner.
