As anyone who has worked in retail, restaurants, or any other service industry knows, there are times when you really wish you could tell off the customers. One cashier at a Panera Bread in Georgia just found out that it's not such a great idea to follow through with that impulse, especially not in writing.
"Add watermelon for this stupid bitch," now former North Druid Hills Panera Bread employee Toriana printed on the receipt for a salad.
The customer, identified by the Daily Mail as Karensa Harris, told Georgia's WSB-TV that she was already sitting down to eat when she noticed the insult.
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"I was floored," she told the station. "Whatare your morals? What does Panera Bread stand for?"
When Harris complained, she said the manager offered to remake her salad, as if the salad itself were offensive.
"I am at a loss for words," she later shared on a Facebook post with a photo of the receipt. "Even better, when I called the corporate office they had the audacity to tell me that they need to look in to retraining opportunities for the cashier."
She tagged Panera on the post and later received a response from the company. "At Panera, we have a zero tolerance policy for this kind of behaviour and the associate has been terminated as a result of this situation," the company said in a statement to WSB-TV.
"I feel like if I didn't use social media as my platform, I don't feel like I would have been heard," Harris told WSB-TV.
After her story aired on TV, Toriana spoke to the news channel, claiming that Harris had rattled her with degrading statements when making her order. "She said, 'Do you understand? Are you stupid?' " she said. "At that point, I felt like, OK I'm not stupid. I'm not incompetent. ... I'm new and I didn't know how to provide her the things she wanted, the way she wanted them."
Toriana did regret her actions, though. "That is not the way they trained me. I'm not that way," she said. "There is no excuse to write that on a ticket."
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