Althouse: "He added that the employee responsible for the receipt was a teen — who he believed was misguided by 'hip hop culture.'"

January 8, 2012

"He added that the employee responsible for the receipt was a teen — who he believed was misguided by 'hip hop culture.'"

A Papa John's restaurant owner tries to explain why a receipt identified a customer as "lady chinky eyes."

And no one will ever accuse him of racism ever again.

42 comments:

Automatic_Wing said...: He was just keepin' it real, yo.; 1/8/12, 11:22 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: Lady GaGa is NOT part of Hip-Hop culture,...; 1/8/12, 11:25 AM
edutcher said...: Yes, but to say it's racist is racist.

Isn't it?; 1/8/12, 11:25 AM
Ray said...: All the Papa John's manager had to do was disavow the receipt and he was golden.; 1/8/12, 11:27 AM
Known Unknown said...: We need more sophisticated bigotry

WV: equal. Thanks, Google.; 1/8/12, 11:37 AM
Anonymous said...: There is one really, really nice thing about many Asian women, a characteristic shared only with some lesbians and the occasional hippie chick. Tragically, a trendy young urban Asian girl like Minhee Cho has almost certainly succumbed to the false allure of the razor and is as hairless as any other woman. You can tell just by looking at her picture in the Daily News. God damn it.

Peter; 1/8/12, 11:40 AM
Known Unknown said...: This would never happen at Original Ray's. They would at least have the decency to say it to your face.; 1/8/12, 11:40 AM
gerry said...: This happened in NEW YORK?!!!; 1/8/12, 11:40 AM
DADvocate said...: If it hadn't been for hip hop culture, the receipt would have said, "lady slant eyes."

This happened in NEW YORK?!!!

Yeah, but we better send some comedians down South to uncover the anti-Asian racism there.; 1/8/12, 11:59 AM
gadfly said...: Back in the days before Political Correctness, the customer would have countered by disparaging the food, service and manners at the Wop pizza restaurant, highlighting the sound of wet spaghetti hitting a wall.

Friends would be told, neighborhoods would soon know and one each Pappa John's would be down the tubes in short order (sorry about the pun).; 1/8/12, 12:03 PM
Wince said...: Whether the customer's name is Cho or Chong, you should say "Chinese Eyes".; 1/8/12, 12:10 PM
Known Unknown said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/8/12, 12:17 PM
halojones-fan said...: The only one whose race is mentiones in the story is Cho.

Meaning: Everyone else is black.; 1/8/12, 12:21 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: DADvocate,

If it hadn't been for hip hop culture, the receipt would have said, "lady slant eyes."

Oh, so now you guys are going to keep it up, are you? Listen to me:

There's a BIG DIFFERENCE between "Chingy" and "Chinky."

It's all about a G thang - and yeah, I'm here to "help"...; 1/8/12, 12:59 PM
Chuck66 said...: One of the bad sides of the internet and just the outrage business in general.....somebody on an impulse rights something on a receipt in NYC. Took him...say 5 seconds. And this gets in the news all around the country.; 1/8/12, 1:03 PM
Jeff with one 'f' said...: This happened in NEW YORK?!!!

I've heard way more open racism in NY, Philly and Baltimore than I ever did in Texas or Virginia.

Anti-semitism, too.

No contest.; 1/8/12, 1:35 PM
Anonymous said...: Well at least the now terminated employee didn't label the customer as a super touchy super self-centered super vindictive bitch. That would have been insensitive.; 1/8/12, 1:37 PM
MadisonMan said...: I don't think the worker should have written anything like that on the receipt. Anything beyond "Thank you for your patronage" is superfluous. (Why haven't they been trained in this already, Mr. Manager?)

That said, it must be exhausting looking for things to outrage you 24/7, as I suspect Lady Chinky Eyes does.

The better response? Roll your eyes, and throw it away. The world does not need to know your angst. If you want to be nice, you tell the manager and maybe get a free pizza out of the deal.; 1/8/12, 1:40 PM
David said...: Uh, if the lady "wasn't unhappy about it" why did she out the guy? She might have just said something to the poor slob and then let it go.

So much for random acts of unexpected kindness.

Get a life, lady chinky eyes. You are not really a victim of racism.; 1/8/12, 1:57 PM
jacksonjay said...: Maybe that greatest of American artists, Spike Lee, can make a groundbreaking movie about it! It could be an updated "Do The Right Thing"!

I'll resist the urge to imagine a new title!; 1/8/12, 2:05 PM
fivewheels said...: Those of you calling this manufactured outrage are being jerks. Manufactured outrage is being offended when someone correctly uses the word "niggardly." This is basically a case of someone using the word "nigger," in the worst possible, least excusable context.

They used an ethnic slur against her. How much more racist could they possibly be? Just because she's Asian, that mean it doesn't count? Is that the argument?; 1/8/12, 2:56 PM
fivewheels said...: It's also a sympton of what political correctness is: The left wants to say it's about not being racist, but it's really only about not being racist toward black people or mean to gay people.

Any kind of stereotyping of Asians is fine, because they're not a protected class (presumably because their grades are too good and their voting patterns not universally Democratic). So Joe "Dunkin Donuts" Biden and Hillary "Gandhi ran a gas station" Clinton can get away with plainly racist jokes about Indians because the p.c. police don't actually care about policing stereotypes, but just catering to their narrow protected classes.; 1/8/12, 3:02 PM
fivewheels said...: I also don't think she made a big deal out of it. I imagine she just tweeted it thinking her friends would find it amusing, and the media beat a path to her door.

I also agree that the worst thing is that anyone in New York would go to Papa John's. That's insane.; 1/8/12, 3:09 PM
Paco Wové said...: "I also don't think she made a big deal out of it. I imagine she just tweeted it thinking her friends would find it amusing, and the media beat a path to her door."

If you actually read the linked story, you would know that she tweeted Papa John's directly. So she did make a moderately big deal out of it. The benighted employee lost her job, so I assume she thought a big deal was made out of it also.

I can't fathom how stupid someone must be to think calling a customer that would be acceptable.; 1/8/12, 3:29 PM
William said...: Well, he did call her lady chinky eyes instead of chinky ho. In his way, he was trying to be respectful. There's a good chance that this guy didn't even know chinky was a rascist term. Apparently calling someone a Canuck is a rascist way of saying they're Candadian. If it was just a matter of stupidity as opposed to actual bigotry, he should have been reprimanded and not fired.; 1/8/12, 3:37 PM
Jose_K said...: Any kind of stereotyping of Asians is fine.. where is the stereotype? have you seen anime?Round eyes (copied from Disney by the creator of Simba ,the white lion copied to make the Lion King)mean good character and happines. little eyes the evil chararcter.In Japan women pay to make their eyes round .
Their eyes are that way.
asians? the japanese that see koreans as lesser than them.The striker of North Korea soccer team was born in Japan. his mother run to NK because of the discrimination in Japan.
The chineses hate japaneses. 20 millions were killed by the latter in wwii.300k in Nankim.
philiphines? they are of mixed race with spaniards.And only at Bataam , 70 k wer killed by japaneses
There is no such thing as asians.They hate each other.And they hate black people
Nakasone:" USA is behind Japan because of black people"; 1/8/12, 3:44 PM
fivewheels said...: Re: Tweeting it back to Papa John's ... it would be wrong to let it happen and not alert management. At the least, there should be some free pizza (not to mention preventing the next instance).; 1/8/12, 3:46 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: This kind of stuff is too stupid to be labeled racism:

I would've apologized to the customer, paid the tab - plus given them a voucher for a free meal - and taken both out of the employee's paycheck, with a firm warning that if anything of the kind happened again they'd be fired.

Jobs, and customers, are too hard to come by - and life is too short.; 1/8/12, 3:49 PM
Andrea said...: "The only one whose race is mentiones in the story is Cho.

Meaning: Everyone else is black."

halojones-fan says something I thought when I read this story. I did wonder if the offending employee was black, or possibly Hispanic. "Lady chinky eyes" doesn't sound like a very White Anglo-Saxon Protestant* insult. A white kid would have done something more extreme -- in either direction, either by insulting the woman to her face or else not even thinking that way because the full force of anti-racism education has been aimed at white kids and most of them have been successfully indoctrinated, or at least intimidated enough that they wouldn't pull some prank like this.

Unlike whites, minorities aren't being watched 24/7 for evidence of racism, so from what I've observed (I have lived most of my life in racially diverse South Florida) they don't feel the need to police their own reactions. And I've had more than one black and Hispanic person announce in my presence that they neither like nor trust Asians.

*The WASP stereotype is what people usually think of when they think "white."; 1/8/12, 3:50 PM
fivewheels said...: That sounds fine to me, Crack. But I still think the people in this thread saying she went looking for offense are wrong. This receipt found her, not the other way around.; 1/8/12, 4:09 PM
Capt. Schmoe said...: "The owner of the store, Ronald Johnson, said that he was shocked over the incident and planned on having sensitivity trainings to make sure nothing similar ever happened again."

I'm sure that will help.; 1/8/12, 4:12 PM
gk1 said...: What struck me about the story was how asians have not really set up a permanent greivance infrastructure for some corrupt politicos the way african americans have Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. I guess they are too busy succeeding in this racist country of ours to create one.; 1/8/12, 4:12 PM
rcommal said...: From the receipt at the link, the phrase was typed into the computer and then printed out with the receipt, not jotted down by hand. From the article there, Cho refers to being surprised "because the lady that was serving me was super nice and we joked and it seemed super normal.” While the article does not make explicit who entered the information into the computer, it seems as likely as not that the offending employee was female, not male, as seems to be the assumption in a number of comments here.; 1/8/12, 4:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Yeah, but how many times have I had to try and describe another employee I had talked with previously to an Office Depot (or similar) employee and had to NOT mention race as an identifier until they did first out of some kind of PC modern victorian dance?

As far as I can tell, Asians and black people have no such issues. It's really just white people.

I even can feel myself pause before mentioning race *to the freaking police*.; 1/8/12, 4:54 PM
rcommal said...: I would've apologized to the customer, paid the tab - plus given them a voucher for a free meal - and taken both out of the employee's paycheck, with a firm warning that if anything of the kind happened again they'd be fired.

Jobs, and customers, are too hard to come by - and life is too short.

I can appreciate that point of view, but by the same token BECAUSE jobs can be hard to come by and many people are looking for them, there's absolutely no reason for employees to have to settle for poor judgment in an empoyee when they have an opportunity to hire someone with better judgement.

(That said, assuming this is a first offense, I think it would have been better to go or call the store and complain to the manager in person, rather than tweeting in order to shame an entire, nationwide business. That said, choosing the latter response rather than the former ALSO appears to be "more of the culture today," and so there we are.; 1/8/12, 4:58 PM
knox said...: Well at least the now terminated employee didn't label the customer as a super touchy super self-centered super vindictive bitch. That would have been insensitive.

LOL. She sounds OK in the article, not so uptight. She should ask Papa John's to reinstate the guy.; 1/8/12, 5:22 PM
Biff said...: A few years ago, I had an amusing experience (at least to me) in a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan. Not your standard take out restaurant that tourists and non-Chinese frequent, but the kind of place that Chinese immigrants (legal and otherwise, and only from one particular region of China) patronize and that white folks (like me) might walk past without even realizing it was a restaurant. The only Roman character in the place was...me.

Anyway, I was the dinner guest of three friends from China, and when my host was reviewing the bill, he started howling with laughter. He showed me the bill, which was handwritten in Chinese, and he pointed out that "This order is for 'seat 1, tall guy', this one is for 'seat 2, northern accent', this one is 'seat 3, the boss', and this must be you: 'seat 4, laughing round eye.'"; 1/8/12, 5:44 PM
Biff said...: Jeff with one F wrote: I've heard way more open racism in NY, Philly and Baltimore than I ever did in Texas or Virginia.

Anti-semitism, too.

No contest.

Isn't that the truth? I spend a lot of time in Cambridge, MA, and I have heard more openly racist and ignorant comments coming out of the mouths of tweed-wearing bien pensants than I've ever heard in Louisiana or Georgia. Lots more snark and cussin', too.; 1/8/12, 5:50 PM
Anonymous said...: The Crack Emcee said...
I would've apologized to the customer, paid the tab - plus given them a voucher for a free meal - and taken both out of the employee's paycheck, with a firm warning that if anything of the kind happened again they'd be fired.

Jobs, and customers, are too hard to come by - and life is too short.

So manifestation of stupidity is not a good reason to fire someone? No wonder this country can't compete anymore! I bet they don't fire that guy in Washington in November for incompetence, either.

Also, it's not as though they're going to have trouble finding someone to replace that dummy (the one at Papa John's).; 1/8/12, 11:07 PM
Methadras said...: Was the order taken by a jew, a darkie, a spic, a wop, a red dot, or a cohort zipper head? I'm just curious.; 1/9/12, 12:54 AM
Writ Small said...: Which is going to have a greater impact on the remaining employees: the sensitivity training or the fact that the "hip hop" female employee was fired?; 1/9/12, 5:56 AM
pious agnostic said...: It's just bad luck that Ms. Cho happened to encounter the only New York Republican misguided by hip hop culture.; 1/9/12, 8:12 AM