Papa John's employee fired after using racial slur to identify Asian customer

Papa John's pizza chain has apologized to a woman in New York City after an employee used a racial slur to identify the customer on a receipt on Friday (Jan. 6), calling the woman "lady chinky eyes."

Minhee Cho, the customer in question, drew attention to the slur when she tweeted, "Hey @PapaJohns just FYI my name isn't 'lady chinky eyes,'" along with the above picture.

The tweet and picture subsequently went viral on the internet. Papa John's saw the tweet directed their way and tweeted in response, "We are very upset by recent receipt issue in New York & sincerely apologize to our customer. Franchise employee involved is being terminated" and "Please know the employee has been terminated & a formal apology has been given. We've also reached out to customer personally."

You know, we've worked in the food service industry, where it is not uncommon to identify customers by physical characteristics. We even had a boss regale us with a story of having to fire a waiter who named a customer "d*****bag" on a receipt that the customer then saw. But yeah, racial slurs?

Really, Papa John's employee? Who thinks this is OK? Why would this even occur to someone?