Working in the service industry inspires a special kind of misanthropy. You spend your day being bitched at by rude people who don't tip, and often have to deal with all kinds of other work-related bullshit. But that doesn't mean that servers should follow the lead of one Arlington server, who just got canned from his job for typing a racial slur on a party's ticket.
As WFAA reported yesterday, Ta'les Russell, a black man from Arlington, went to Shatila Lebanese Grill and Hookah with a group of friends to celebrate New Year's. When a member of Russell's party asked for separate checks, the server was visibly pissed.
When the server begrudgingly returned with the individual tickets, Russell and his friends noticed that the server had typed "NIGGER" -- yes, in all caps -- into the restaurant's system to identify his group at the register. They were, understandably, more pissed than the busy server.
The group, who had just come from a church service on New Year's Eve, says that they tried to address the situation as politely as possible, by pulling the server aside for an explanation. When confronted, he would only say, "I didn't mean anything by it," which is generally code for "oh, shit, I can't believe I got caught!"
The server, identified only on the receipt as "Ragheed," was promptly fired after the incident by Shatila owner Mike Salame. Salame claims that the 18-year-old Ragheed wasn't having much success in his first few weeks at the restaurant, and Salame says that he was "waiting for his third strike" after complaints from other customers.
Salame reached out to Russell and his party with profuse apologies, but no word on whether or not he comped the meal in question. When WFAA asked Ragheed about the incident, he would only give one comment to the station: "my bad." Which, admittedly, is not an entirely unexpected response from an eighteen year old who clearly doesn't give a shit about his job.
We're guessing that Ragheed doesn't plan to put his short-lived stint at Shatila Lebanese Grill and Hookah on his resume.
