Wendy Brandes Jewelry Blog

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Papa John’s, the “Lady Chinky Eyes” Receipt, Stupid Comments

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A gorgeous lady named Minhee, who works at MrB’s company here in New York, went to a Papa John’s pizza restaurant last night. Today, she glanced at the receipt and noticed that it called her “lady chinky eyes.” So she did what you do with such things these days. She tweeted it.

The Huffington Post and the Village Voice both reported the racist receipt and contacted Papa John’s, which hasn’t yet identified the culprit. If I were a betting woman, I’d wager the person is a stupid teenager who will be duly fired, as stupid teenagers have been fired for generations. That’s how teenagers learn to be less stupid. After that, I certainly hope someone from Papa John’s will apologize to Minhee. (SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST.) But who is going to apologize for all the stupid/racist/otherwise offensive comments on the Huffington Post? I don’t know why I let myself read them, because I don’t need to be reminded of the idiotic ways people think of to exercise their freedom of speech. I’m going to make y’all feel my pain by sharing a few highlights (all racism/typos/misspellings are from the original comments). There’s the “blame the victim” crowd:

euromarkusx My guess is the cashier asked for her name and she probably declined in a rude manner — just guessing

jimmythegreek Perhaps our little “gong zhu” was to good to tip the guy??

The “repeat the racist insult in the guise of a non-complimentary ‘compliment'” folks:

dontfeelyourpain She’s a pretty, charming-l­ooking young lady who indeed has chinky eyes.

exedor Lady Chinky Eyes is kinda hot. 🙂 🙂 🙂

The conspiracy theorists:
PeeWeesHerman This story doesn’t pass the sniff test….I’­m not buying it
And there are the people who are accusing Minhee (or anyone else who thinks the employee needs to be punished) of overreacting/behaving inappropriately:
johnmac1982 Why are people so thin skinned these days? Was it stupid of him/her to do..yes. But should their life of the companies be alter by such a minuscule thing? no. Get over it people, there are far bigger issues in this world then a papa johns receipt. Grow up.

Dheffernan The customer obviously wasn’t that upset or she would have complained to Papa John’s manager rather then just tweeting a photo.

sir winston Quit wearing your feelings on your shoulder.G­et a life.There­’s more important things than that.

Thomas Reece This is not a major Tragedy. We are moving toward a hurt feeling society that is weak and unable to deal with simple negative events. Grow up get over it and move forward.

That last group really irritated me. Minhee didn’t say it was a “major Tragedy.” She just wrote one (rather good-natured) tweet. Damn! I bitched much more on Twitter about bad customer service from Citibank and PayPal recently. And just last month I was excited to tweet the “Jewish panini” I spotted on a diner menu.

That’s not even offensive, just interesting. Because what makes panini Jewish? Inquiring minds want to know. (I wound up ordering nachos because the Episcopalian panini that I craved wasn’t on the menu.)

Anyway, if people can tweet about sports, sunsets, the greatest rapper of all time, what they ate for dinner, how much they want to see Vinny and Pauly D from Jersey Shore hook up (that one was from me; I repeat it every Thursday) and all the rest of the totally worthless bullshit that is Twitter’s raison d’être, why not tweet a racist receipt? Social media — you’re understanding it wrong.

The only bitchy comments on Minhee’s Huffington Post story with which I agreed were the ones asking her why she was at Papa John’s. I must confess I asked MrB the same thing. We’re in New York! There’s lots of pizza. My local 99-cent pizza place is pretty good. I’d go there before I’d go to Papa John’s. I’m going to tell MrB to get Minhee a 99-cent pizza slice from me.

UPDATED TO ADD: Right after I published this, Papa John’s apologized to Minhee and tweeted: “We are very upset by recent receipt issue in New York & sincerely apologize to our customer. Franchise employee involved is being terminated.” Good! So that’s that, except I still want to know if it was a teenager … and if s/he is too big to be spanked.

UPDATED AGAIN TO ADD: I was right! A teenager was involved. And she has been punished. But now I’m annoyed by another “let’s all blame Minhee” Papa John’s manager named Jerome, who told the New York Post, “I think the lady put it out there just to get some attention — some people like that type of attention. I truly don’t think it’s fair. It’s been taking up all our time. It’s been very disruptive.” Again, Twitter: You’re not getting it. It’s for sharing random-ass stuff. There’s no telling what’s going to go viral. Minhee tweeted once; she didn’t organize a campaign. Even if she did, don’t blame the messenger. Instruct your employees not to write racial slurs on your receipts and you won’t have this problem. I think Papa John’s now needs to apologize for Jerome and tell all their employees to shut the fuck up.

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Comments

  1. What sucks even more is that this PJ represents us back in Louisville, the corporate home of Papa John’s. Last I checked, our Camaro-drivin’ CEO wasn’t a member of the KKK, a Nazi or the white son of Kim Jong-Il (North Korea = Nazi Germany).

    I do want to know more about this 99-cent pizza shop, though. 😉

    • I’ll take you there. It sometimes seems great and sometimes it doesn’t. I think it depends on how much you’ve been drinking. But I’d take it over any chain! I mean…99 cents!

  4. I woke up to your tweet and HAD to read it!

    I’ve never been fond of Papa John’s (yes we have it here in Malaysia but only a handful of stores) so I guess I’m glad that it didn’t come from a more popular restaurant?

    Anyway, I am “chinky eyed” myself and I’m horrified that this kind of silly joke happened in this day and age. It has to be a stupid teenager, and OF COURSE it had to be tweeted! Social media is powerful and the hype over that one photo is enough to pressure Papa John’s into taking immediate action.

    • Imagine if it were an actual adult and not a teen?!? I refuse to think that. This has teenager (or early 20s) all over it. Like I said, this is how people learn the hard way not to be fucking stupid racists!

  5. Wow WTF was my first reaction and then I laughed because of the good nature of the tweeter. Social media is an amazing outlet to take corporations to task and keep everyone on their game. As far as the comments I’d like to know what ‘more important’ issues are they referring to? I guess racism isn’t important enough anymore. The comments sound like they are threatened that Papa Johns will go out of business from this and they won’t be able to order that ooh so not delicious pizza anymore.
    ps: Know where I can get a good evangelical sub? Reading all this has made me kinda hungry.

    • Try the chain “Protestant Express” … next door to Panda Express! 😀

      Yeah, I thought Minhee’s tweet was short and funny. She wasn’t going on and on in hysterics or threatening to sue (as some commenters assumed she was)… that receipt was more than fair game!

      “More important issues” are always what bothers THAT individual. People have no empathy, it’s like anything that happens to anyone else is trivial to them. Makes me think of the Mel Brooks quote: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26965.html

  6. Ohwow. Talk about a major flub in a really dumb way. Also, I’ve learned to never read comments on journal posts, especially “controversial” ones. Or youtube videos. My IQ drops 10 points every dumb youtube comment I read.

    Glad to hear the company did apologize. I just wish their food was better. I used to not eat any pizza but papa john’s, but it just hasn’t been good in a long while. I don’t live in NY. ;D I can find you some incredible BBQ dives, but our pizza choices are frequently lacking.

    • I love BBQ! BTW, there were some peeps on HuffPost trying to pick a pizza fight, saying NYC was so bad next to Chicago. I didn’t even touch that! (But NYC all the way, I HATE Chicago pizza, so there.)

      YouTube comments are soooo bad. In general, comments on any major sites are bad! I’m trying to avoid certain news sites now because I can’t resist the comments and they’re very bad for my morale. I feel very negative and upset after reading them.

      • If you’re ever in Nashville, I’ll take you out! As for pizza, yeah I guess I’m on the NYC side of pizza.

        Remember that positivity breeds more positivity, and vice versa!

  7. Minhee was absolutely right in tweeting the receipt!

    I’m glad PJs publicly apologized and terminated the offending employee, but the HuffPost idiots really piss me off.

    Twitter is like a digital form of the old Puritan Stockade and there’s nothing as effective as public humiliation, although in this case the offender didn’t have his/her identity revealed, so one wonders how much was actually learned from the incident.

    • I have definitely opted to avoid the public shaming of small businesses…do you remember the post I did after I went to some local hair place and the guy used a regular office-style rubber band in my hair? I didn’t even name the salon in the post. They probably deserve to go out of business, but I’m not going to help them with that. I did talk to the owner, of course. He apologized and offered me a free hairstyle, but I never took him up on it. Too much like having a free meal at a place that gave you food poisoning.

      Anyway, a big chain like Papa John’s with a dumb employee who puts a racist remark in writing? Tweet away. Totally fair! Probably the only way you’ll get their attention.

      Certainly Citibank paid more attention to me after one tweet than they did after six phone calls.

  10. My guess is that maybe the Jewish panini has no meat with its cheese? 🙂 It is amusing.

  11. I am not understanding the people defending the racist comments and demanding people get thicker skins. That always blows my mind because if you ignore the comments, more people see this as okay which leads to more racist comments and situations happening. People just can be so dense sometimes and that is always so disappointing to me since we are in 2012 now and not pre-Civil Rights America.

    Kudos for Papa Johns for apologizing after hearing about this but still, it should not have happened in the first place.

    I also understand your being perplexed about why she was at Papa Johns. NYC has some great pizza places that are far better than Papa Johns. I am actually not surprised she got that treatment at a chain restaurant to tell you the truth.

  12. Wow that really sucks. But I’m wondering if the name was maybe to be the employee name, not the customer name? Either way,VERY irresponsible.

  14. Hi there-she was so right to tweet it and thankfully Papa Johns have done the right thing too-although its obvious it should never have happened in the first place xxx

  15. WOW….I don’t even know where to begin. It’s most upsetting to read the comments from such cretins. I am dealing with insomnia right now and I looked at my local online paper and read that Beyonce had given birth. A couple of comments referred to Beyonce’s baby as a “monkey”. WTF?

    Living in Texas, I deal with this redneck bullshit all the time. I would hate to have to deal with the shit that Muslims and Mexicans deal with on a daily basis. We have politicians that openly endorse all kinds of discriminatory actions so why are we surprised when people feel comfortable openly displaying their ignorance?

    Thanks for posting about this! This is one of the ten billion reasons why I love your blog.

  17. Can always count on you to blog about important issues such as racism, which is far from dead, as evidenced by the outrageous Huff Post comments. Who are these people?

  18. I am so shocked at the ignorance of people these days. Why? WHY???? I’m glad that this received so much attention because people need to know this and put a stop to such behavior.

  20. I knew I was a jack@ss for even TRYing to read any of those goddamn comments you re-posted, but I did, and after two, my blood began to boil.

    Anyway, I’m glad that PJ’s made good. It’s the least they can do.

    And PJ’s pizza is lame anyway.

  23. Gosh. I’m shocked and appalled at the comments. If that had happened to me, I’d be pretty darn offended and would definitely have tweeted it. I wouldn’t have expected such a backlash. Thanks for posting.

    • Seriously, who with a Twitter account wouldn’t tweet that receipt! Twitter is made for that. Why get on Minhee’s case when you’re the one in the wrong! People have NO sense.

  25. Wow. Jerome is extra dumb. I agree with: “I think Papa John’s now needs to apologize for Jerome and tell all their employees to shut the fuck up.”

  27. I have a problem with the whole twitting the offensive receipt thing. The fact that it was racist and inappropriate is indisputable. But how Minhee reacted was on some level inappropriate too.
    We’ve become a culture so infused with the concept of defending our rights, it’s become acceptable to trample over someone who broke them. In this aspect we are no different that feuding cultures of the early medieval times. My concern is that the tweet was a means to punish Papa John’s, make them pay.
    Like you wrote in a replay to Susan’s comment, the first action should be approaching the offender and try to resolve it in a polite manner. If that doesn’t work, by all means spread the word…make them pay.

    • I think you’re out of your mind. Someone else did something wrong and you’re blaming Minhee for one tweet to her friends (which was actually pretty funny)? When newspapers did approach the franchise staff they barely seemed to understand the level of offensiveness. Do you think a national chain would care about something that wasn’t national news? I would have said a lot more than Minhee. This isn’t an incompetent hair dresser. It is racism. Don’t blame the victim for sharing her story in 140 characters or less.

  28. I’ve had to stop reading the comments in the local section of the Washington Post because the racists depress me so badly- ditto Foreign Policy. Ugh.

  29. Words fail me. After reading this post, I’m reminded of a conversation I once had with a classmate who believed that racism does not exist today….who didn’t change his mind after completing a course in social studies that specifically dealt with this issue. Ugh!