Tennessee waitress allegedly receives racist slur on customer receipt

A waitress at a Red Lobster restaurant in an affluent suburb of Nashville, Tenn. claims a customer wrote a racist slur on a receipt on Saturday. Toni Christina Jenkins, 19, posted the receipt on her Facebook profile after what she said was an encounter with two customers who were very rude to her. It shows a bill for $45, but in the tip line it reads "none" with the word "n-gger" beneath it.

"This is what I got as a tip last night...so happy to live in the proud southern states..God Bless America, land of the free and home of the low class racists of Tennessee," she wrote on the social networking site.

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Jenkins, a nursing student, has since removed the receipt from Facebook after some have called into question its legitimacy, suggesting that the signature has different handwriting than the racial slur. They speculate that she was miffed for not receiving a tip and so she wrote the racial slur to get attention.

Someone also posted the receipt on Reddit.

After talking with the Daily Mail, Jenkins describes her encounter with the couple as bizarre.

"They were extremely rude, but I introduced myself to them and they didn't respond. When I came to take their order they simply told me they wanted their food and to put everything in a to-go box. I offered them dessert but they told me abruptly that they just wanted the check."

She says she showed the receipt to her manager who reassured her she had done nothing wrong. In the mean time, she has been suspended with full pay while her employers at Red Lobster investigate the situation.

Also see: Delaware restaurant faces criticism after racist social media snafu

This isn't the first time a racial slur on a restaurant receipt has made the news.

Last year, a New York City woman of Asian descent was left a bill from Papa John's restaurant chain that referred to her as "lady chinky eyes." She posted the bill on Twitter, which went viral, later prompting a public apology from the pizza chain, as well as the termination of the waitress responsible for the bill.

Also last year, a Korean couple sued Hooters after they were described as "Chinx" on a restaurant receipt at a location in Queens, New York.

And this past April, a customer sued CVS for 1-million after receiving a receipt with her name printed as "Ching Chong Lee." Her real name is Hyan Lee.