A man was serving some female customers at a Texas restaurant when he unknowingly made a big mistake. All it took was two words written on the women’s receipt to get him suspended from his job at the Houston bar and grill.
Barnard Bradfield, 19, was working at Bubba’s Bar and Grill on Washinton Avenue in the Heights on a busy Saturday, when an incident, which he claims was innocent, resulted in a two-week suspension from his job. As these stories usually go, it involved what he wrote on a receipt, and it only took two words to land him in hot water.
In an effort to keep the patrons whom he was serving straight, Barnard admits that he wrote “Black Girls” on the receipt of some African-American females he was serving. He was trying to remember who they were after he forgot their names. When the customers saw it, they were offended and upset. But, there’s a twist to this story, making it much different from similar ones that you may have read.
The Texas restaurant employee is adamant that he didn’t mean any harm or anything condescending when he referred to the customers as “Black Girls,” and I’m inclined to believe him for one very simple reason. Barnard Bradfield is also black.
“I was trying to remember the ladies’ names but it wasn’t right, of course. I just was trying to remember their names so I didn’t give them a wrong order or anything,” Barnard explained, regarding the incident. Even so, he was suspended over the so-called lapse in judgment. After his suspension and a lesson learned, he plans to return to work.
The manager stated that the two women who received the receipt did seem to be satisfied with the way the restaurant handled their complaint. “They didn’t make it a big deal. They were upset about it, but they felt it wasn’t personal, that we weren’t trying to be racist,” General Manager Eliud Zapata said.
The receipt was posted online shortly after the incident, and that’s when the restaurant became the target of a social media uproar. “This is why I will no longer go to any place on Washington Ave!!! This (is) not the only place out there that does this,” one social media user wrote, according to Click2Houston, while another asked, “Are they putting different ingredients in our (black girls) food or what?!!!” Other Twitter users quickly came to Barnard’s defense, pointing out that what he did was normal.
“I laughed loud as f*ck! This sh*t is lowkey normal,” wrote one Twitter user, who also happened to be black, to which another person of color responded that “it is. I’ve done it so many times.” When questioned about whether such descriptions were “on the ones that y’all give to ppl?” the Twitter user added, “If they don’t give you a name and it’s busy, you just gotta go with the obvious!” and another chimed in to say, “At tables it’s by table # but behind the bar I’ve put everything ‘old guy’ ‘pink hair.'”
Are we not allowed in our society to describe people by their physical characteristics anymore? What if it had been two cowboys that this young man served, and he wrote “cowboys” on the ticket? At what point does political correctness such as this become absolute lunacy? Describing someone’s skin color should not be treated as a racial slur. White, black, Asian, Hispanic, guys, girls — none of those words should imply a negative connotation. They are adjectives, and it’s certainly not something to get upset about.
