A server at Red Lobster in Franklin, Tennessee was allegedly the victim of racism thanks to a nasty slur left in lieu of a real tip. Supporters of Toni Christina Jenkins took to crowdfunding platform YouCaring to donate over $10,000 to the girl. She just got the check. (Warning: explicit language)
Jenkins had posted a picture of the receipt to Facebook, complete with the following comment…
“This is what I got as a tip last night … so happy to live in the proud southern states … God Bless America, land of the free and home of the low class racists of Tennessee.”
Jenkins was temporarily suspended from her job for posting the picture, which is against company policy. However, she eventually did get her job back with support from corporate. AddictingInfo.com launched the campaign in an effort to “show her that Americans abhor that kind of behavior!”
Of course, that isn’t the whole story here. Some are accusing Jenkins of faking the incident. NewsGenius has a great annotated breakdown of a statement from Devin Barnes, the man whose name was on the check. He released a hand-written statement…
Barnes eventually hired a handwriting expert who deduced that the slur didn’t match his handwriting. The truth is we may never know the whole story, as this is a classic he-said-she-said case. Regardless, the story went viral on an international scale and that likely aided in the raise.