A 19-year-old server has shared his experience after receiving a homophobic remark on a receipt from a table he had served.
Noah Bierig works at Bubba’s 33, situated in front of the Towne East Mall in Wichita, Kansas.
In conversations with local media, he mentioned that since he came out as gay in 8th grade, he has been met with nothing but support. He added that he was “not used to blatant homophobia like that.”
On Sunday (July 21), while working a shift, a customer used a homophobic slur on the receipt.
Reflecting on the event, Bierig said: “That hurt me, a lot. I’m not the type to cry at work but I have to say that definitely was the first time that had happened to me.”
Noah noticed something was off with a certain table, as they had given him “a couple of dirty looks.”
“And every time I would walk away, they would kind of just start laughing a little bit,” he added.
The 19-year-old believes they were fixated on his painted nails and pride bracelet, a gift from his mom.
Despite this, Noah served them as he would any other customer.
It wasn’t until after the group had left that he saw what was written on their receipt.
“I looked at one of their receipts and I noticed that it had a certain three-letter derogatory term written on it,” he said.
Following the incident, an image of the bill was shared online. Social media users quickly identified the customer and confronted them on Facebook.
The customer then issued an apology: “I know it was wrong of me to write what I did and for that I am very sorry.
“The overall dining experience wasn’t that great and I shouldn’t have dealt with it by saying what I did.
“I did try to call the restaurant to apologize to the guy but couldn’t contact him. I am sorry to anyone who was affected or hurt by my words.
“I have learned a valuable lesson in all of this and nothing like this will ever happen again.”
Attitude reported that Noah’s friends teamed up with ‘Proud of Wichita’ to create an online fundraiser aiming to ‘tip’ him up to 100 percent.
The donations, including those from the restaurant, will be directed to GLSEN, an organization fighting against LGBTQ+ discrimination.
In an interview with KAKE News, Bierig said: “It is not the only time this has happened. I am sure there are things like this that happened on the daily that might not get as much traction as this did.
“I want to show no matter how much this happens, we can always keep our smiles up, we can always be smile and we don’t have to hate anyone we can always just love.”