A teenage waiter in Kansas was reduced to tears when a hateful customer scrawled a homophobic slur on his receipt in place of a tip.
“That hurt me a lot. I’m not the type to cry at work, but I gotta say, that was definitely the first time that had happened to me,” Noah Bierig told KAKE.
Bierig, 19, was working his serving shift at Bubba’s 33 in Wichita earlier this month when he encountered the cruel customers.
The group exuded negative energy from the beginning — Bierig noticed in particular that they were staring at his pained nails and a pride bracelet, which was a gift his mother gave him when he came out as gay six years earlier.
“The first time I went up to the table, they were just shooting me a couple dirty looks. And every time I would walk away, they would kind of just start laughing a little bit,” Bierig told the outlet.
The teenager decided to ignore the group’s jeering and took care of them as he would any other customer.
The table repaid him for his kindness by hurling a slur.
“I looked at one of their receipts and I noticed that it had a certain three-letter derogatory term written on it,” Bierig explained.
One of the customers declined to leave a tip, instead writing the word “f-g” on the tip line.
Bierig — who has only received support since coming out in the 8th grade — was devastated by the act of cruelty.
“I’m not used to sort of blatant homophobia like that,” he said.
Soon after, one of Bierig’s friends shared the receipt online, revealing the customer’s name signed and printed below the slur.
The customer’s accounts were flooded by angry commenters who condemned his cowardly action until he relented and offered an apology.
“I know it was wrong of me to write what I did and for that I am very sorry,” he wrote on Facebook. “The overall dining experience wasn’t that great and I shouldn’t have dealt with it by saying what I did.”
Bierig’s friends seized the opportunity to set up an online fund through Proud of Wichita, the town’s LGBTQ+ chamber of commerce, to benefit the scorned server — but Bierig humbly said he wouldn’t accept any of the money.
“Whatever comes out comes from that, it’s going to be donated,” Bierig explained. “
There’s an organization called GLSEN. It’s essentially an anti-bullying organization. It helps out kids who are LGBT kids specifically who are getting bullied in school, and it helps them out.”
