Nyjah Vest, a Georgia woman, discovered a racist slur on the receipt for her order from a local Atlanta-area Mexican restaurant. Instead of writing of her name, the bill reportedly listed the N-word.
The incident occurred Saturday night at the El Porton Mexican Restaurant in Duluth, Ga. Vest and friends went to the restaurant for dinner on the evening of September 7. The server who took their order wrote down the first names of each patron in the party in order to issue separate checks after everyone finished eating.
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According to Vest, the server returned to the table after taking the party’s order, and a co-worker asked Vest for her first name so it could be entered into the restaurant’s point of sale system (POS). The waiter who took the order proceeded to spell out “N—-” in place of “N-y-j-a-h.”
The co-worker tasked with writing Vest’s name even tried to verify the spelling with the waiter.
“I even looked at him and asked, ‘Are you sure?’”, told FOX 5 Atlanta. “Even him leaving with that order, I kind of felt uncomfortable as well, because we all know that is not a word to just throw around.”
He even tried to verify the spelling with the server to ensure the spelling was correct, to which the server reportedly brushed him off.
El Porton is a chain with twelve locations across Georgia, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
The proprietor of El Porton claimed that the server did not know how to spell the name “Nyjah” and that the racist slur somehow instead ended up on the bill. He did not give an explanation as to why the server failed to verify the spelling with Vest.
The server and the owner of the restaurant have since apologized for issuing a check with the racial slur on it. Vest was also issued a refund for her order. She says it is not enough.
“I don’t know how the n-word got put on my order,” Vest said. “I had my (debit) card there with my name on it as well, and I got rung up as the n-word.
“If somebody told me their name was that, I wouldn’t even acknowledge it,” she continued, “I would think they’re prank calling me or something. It’s a joke.”
*Writer’s Note*
As a Spanish-speaker, I’d like to clarify that there is no long “i” sound in Spanish and certainly no double g. The pronunciation of her name would not warrant that spelling.
