Sugar Land Restaurant Faces Backlash After Owner Hurls Racial Slur At Former Employee

After earning a fervent online backlash for calling a former employee a racial slur, the owner of the Pho Shack in Katy and Sugar Land has departed both restaurants.

In a series of text messages uploaded to Facebook, former Pho Shack general manager Domo Schneckenburg called in to quit her job, and owner Danh Le reportedly responded to that news by saying “f**k the [n-word]” and “don’t like that bitch’s attitude anyways.” According to Yahoo, Le took to the Pho Shack’s now-deleted Facebook page to apologize for using the racial slur. “I grew up in an environment that allowed ignorance to prosper, allowing the n-word to be used casually amongst friends, and it remained a part of my vocabulary until now,” Le wrote. At the end of the post, he “resigns” from his position as owner.

Scope out a screenshot of Le’s apology below:

But that apology was apparently too little, too late. Schneckenburg’s screenshots of the exchange and accompanying Facebook post went viral, racking up more than 10,000 shares on Facebook and earning attention from both national media outlets and celebrities like D.L. Hughley. In response to Le’s usage of slurs, dozens of Yelp users left negative reviews of the restaurant, which prompted the review platform to issue a notice that Pho Shack’s Yelp page was being monitored for “content related to media reports.”

The backlash was so intense, in fact, that Schneckenburg was forced to post a message to her Facebook page discouraging people from calling the Pho Shack and “telling the workers to kill themselves.” “You can’t say you support me by calling this business and telling them that. Do not harm my ex-coworkers physically or mentally,” she wrote. “If you really cared about me and my experience, you won’t do this.”

• Restaurant owner resigns after calling employee the N-word in text message: ‘I will never use that word again’ [Yahoo]