Two Wendy's Employees Leave Racist Note in Little Girl's Meal
It takes a particularly terrible person to direct hatred toward children. In this case, it took two horrible people—both Wendy’s employees—who left racist messages, complete with the “n word," in a little girl’s kids' meal. Manige Osowski, a Colorado mother, says her 7-year-old daughter discovered the note in a toy included with the meal.
According to Osowski, after the two stopped in at Wendy’s to grab food for dinner, her daughter opened the meal, and instead of the advertised toy, found a deck of cards inside. “It was weird, since it wasn’t supposed to be there to begin with, but she was excited because we could play Go Fish,” Osowski said in an interview with Yahoo! Parenting. But after the cards were opened, Osowski says her daughter asked, “Mom, what does "n—a" mean?”
That’s when she discovered the cards had the “n word” and other offensive slurs written on them.
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"604078","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"356","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]]
To add insult to injury, Osowski says when the family returned to Wendy’s to complain, the manager apologized but didn’t seem to take the incident that seriously. Osowski says the manager ripped up the card and threw it away (luckily, not before she’d taken snapshots) and then “turned around and yelled to the employees in the back, ‘You guys need to quit playing your games, [I’ll] deal with you later.’”
The two accused employees have been fired. Candis Goins, Wendy's spokesperson, offered this statement: "Our core values as a brand center around treating people with respect, and we have taken this situation very seriously. As soon as we learned what had occurred, we investigated and took swift action. The two employees who were involved are no longer employed by Wendy's. We also have reached out and have formally apologized to the customer."
Osowski says she is still waiting for a formal apology from the restaurant to her children. A small protest was held outside the Wendy’s on Tuesday.