Papa John's Employee Butt-Dials Customer, Leaves Racist Voicemail
A Papa John's employee was unwittingly recorded making extremely racist remarks about the customer he had just delivered a pizza to after he accidentally butt-dialed the customer and left a message in his voicemail box.
[There was a video here]
The delivery driver, who works in a Papa John's restaurant in the city of Sanford, Florida, where the Trayvon Martin shooting took place, can be heard complaining to a fellow employee about the $5 tip he received from the customer.
"I guess that's the only requirement for being a nigger in Sanford," the driver tells his friend. "Yeah, they give me five bucks there — fine outstanding African-American gentleman of the community."
He then breaks into a racist rendition of Figaro's aria from Rossini's The Barber of Seville.
The restaurant where the two men were employed was reportedly inundated with calls after the voicemail was uploaded to YouTube by the customer himself.
A store manager confirmed to The Daily Dot that the incident was real and that the two culprits had been terminated.
Papa John's CEO John Schnatter took to Facebook today to formally apologize to the customer and reiterate that the responsible parties have been let go.
"Friends, I am extremely concerned to learn about the reprehensible language used by two former employees in one of our restaurants," Papa John said in his statement. "Their thinking and actions defy both my personal and the company's values, and everything for which this company stands."
Schnatter says he personally reached out to the customer to apologize, but does not mention if the two discussed restitution.
The unidentified customer released his own statement in the description of the video, since removed from YouTube (though plenty of copies remain):
As an African-American in this community and also someone who has always tipped their Delivery Drivers 21 percent, I am disgusted entirely by this conversation. Instead of focusing on ‘better ingredients’ and ‘better pizza,’ they should prioritize ‘better integrity’ and ‘better people’ on the top of their ‘to-do list.
This isn't Papa John's first time apologizing for a racist employee: Just last year, the company fired an individual responsible for addressing an Asian-American customer as "Lady Chink Eyes" on her receipt.
