Two employees of a Cook Out eatery have been fired after an incident over the weekend—a cashier, for refusing to serve a law enforcement officer, and the manager, because she didn't step in.
The incident happened over the weekend when officer Kenneth Horton, visited the eatery at the Walker Street Madison Boulevard junction in Roxboro, North Carolina, shortly after midnight.
When Horton asked why he wasn't served, he didn't get a clear answer. When another cashier offered to help him, Horton said he was no longer hungry and left without ordering. It remains unclear why the cashier did not want to help Horton.
“If a cashier doesn’t feel comfortable taking somebody else’s order, it’s not wrong for them to ask somebody else do it or contact the manager,” Taren Woods, the on-duty manager told WTVD.
Horton did not report the incident to his superiors, but word of it rapidly spread on social media, and before long, it had reached the upper management of the fast food chain. Cook Out's district manager didn't wait for approval from higher-ups and fired the two involved.
Woods said she was in the back of the restaurant when the incident happened and didn't see the interaction, but also said that all employees adhered to the company policy.
"I just wish they would have asked me to come up front to take their order," Woods told the news station. “I didn’t know … it was that serious until the next day I heard the cashier got fired because she didn’t take the cop’s order,” Woods told WNCN, adding that she only learned that she was also let go upon arriving at work the next day.
“[The district manager] told me that I should have went outside and got the officer’s attention and, I guess, offered to take his order,” she told WTVD. “Mind you, it was midnight, and policy states that we’re not allowed outside the building after 9:45. So why would I go outside to chase down a cop?”
“It is frustrating because it’s a lie,” Woods, a mother of four who has worked over a decade at Cook Out, added in a statement to WNCN. "And they got all this stuff stirred up. And I lost my job, and I got four kids, and it’s Christmas time. So, yeah, that’s not fair at all."
“We’re saddened that an employee denied service to a police officer," Roxboro Police Chief David Hess told WTVD on Monday. "We promote unity. The public here knows that. And, unfortunately, this incident has created a divide, but it is only because of a small action that could have been avoided.”