It’s one thing to ask for a funny joke to go along with your dinner delivery, but when one customer received a pizza box with a very unfunny racist comment written inside, a franchise owner in Massachusetts says he fired the worker responsible.
On Friday night, a 16-year-old ordered a pizza from Domino’s online and asked in the “special instructions” box on the form for a joke to be written on the box, the Telegram & Gazette reports, something he and others have done before with hilarious results — perhaps a silly pun, or a humorous saying, that kind of thing.
But when the the pizza arrived, it had the question, “What’s the difference between a black person and [a] piece of s**t?”
The teen showed his parents the box, and they called Domino’s hoping to get some answers. On Monday, the boy’s father said he wasn’t convinced the company would hold the person responsible for the comment accountable: at one point, a general manager accused him of writing the message, he claims.
On Tuesday, the franchise owner confirmed that the worker who wrote the message had been terminated, adding that he was upset to learn of the incident.
“There is really no rehabilitation for that,” he told the paper. “This behavior by an employee is destructive.”
He adds that Domino’s is a company that offers anyone the chance to climb the ladder from delivery driver to franchise owner — something the did in two years.
“I want everyone in my business to have the same opportunity,” he said, adding that he doesn’t know what prompted the comment but that “there’s no place for it.”
He says he might come up with a list of “very sterilized” jokes should someone ask for a joke in the future, but that for now, good food and service come first.
“I want our reputation to be that we have great food, great customer service, but not the best sense of humor,” he said.
This is the second time this week a fast food restaurant has been in the headlines for situations involving offensive language: Dairy Queen recently pulled a franchise from an owner in Illinois after the franchisee reportedly called at a customer and her children by a racial slur.
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist