Arby’s employee in Indiana fired after writing homophobic slur on gay couple’s receipt

A Sunday lunch turned into a shocking homophobic experience to a gay couple in Indiana — on the first weekend of Pride Month.

Craig Gray and John Burns went to an Arby’s restaurant in Lafayette, Ind. Since the drive-through line was long, they decided to park their car and go inside to order from the counter.

As they waited for their food, Burns looked at the receipt and noticed that a homophobic slur (“f-g”) had been written, in place of his name.

Gray took a picture of the receipt and then shared it on his Facebook page. The caption read, “So this just happened at Arby’s! Happy Pride, huh?”

He also showed the receipt to the cashier, who attributed the incident to a computer glitch.

“I said, ‘Look at this. What is this? Why would you do this?’ And that’s when he tried to give me some lame excuse about a computer glitch, where he said ‘Sometimes I’ll put in a name and it will come out different on the receipt,’” he told NBC News.

After speaking to the manager, they received a refund for the order. The employee was fired on the spot.

“The franchised employee was terminated within minutes of management becoming aware of the incident,” an Arby’s spokesperson told NBC News. The company “has zero tolerance for discriminatory speech of any kind,” the spokesperson added.

Gray and Burns, who have been together for 17 years, say that they don’t normally experience blatant homophobic behavior, and seeing the hateful slur on the receipt came as a “shock.”

“Sometimes you’re not exposed to some of those things unless you go out of your way,” Burns told local NBC-affiliate WTHR in an interview that aired Wednesday.

“Sometimes it just smacks you right in the face,” he added.