Toni Christina Jenkins, a young Red Lobster waitress was the target of a racial slur left by a customer on a receipt, which she reported to management.
In the space for gratuity, the customer wrote “None, n**ger."
Christina showed the note to her boss, she says, and was assured she had done nothing wrong. But things changed when she posted it on Facebook.
The Franklin, Tenn., teen was only hoping for “some prayers and support,” her mom says, when she posted the hateful note on her Facebook page.
It went viral and sparked a great deal of outrage controversy, discussion, hoax theories and more racist comments. There were even reports she had been fired.
Toni graduated from high school a year early, her mother says, and is waiting tables to help put herself through medical school at Belmont University.
Monday, mom Tina Jenkins-Wilson told Radar that Red Lobster “let her go. They told her she could not return to work and that they were [investigating]."
"They didn’t tell her they were going to pay her. They didn’t say if they were going to punish the people that did it. They just said they were going to let her off.”
“It’s heartbreaking. She’s a nursing student who is trying to save up money so she can get back and forth to school. Waitressing is how she makes her money.”
UPDATE: The restaurant strongly refutes this.
A spokesperson for the restaurant tells THG: “Christina Jenkins has NOT been fired. In fact, she has not lost any days of work so far and is still scheduled to work this week as usual.”
“We are extremely disturbed by this situation and are currently investigating to determine exactly what happened. We take this extremely seriously."
"This kind of language is completely disgusting and has no place in our restaurant or anywhere else and we are committed to getting to the bottom of what happened as quickly as possible.”
That’s very good to hear. In any event, it’s unclear why the mom would be so confused or why the customer(s) left a note like that for the server.
Story developing …