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A Chick-fil-A cashier in Orange County has joined the ranks of comediennes such as former UCLA student Alexandra Wallace and Rosie O'Donnell who find the words "ching" and "chong" to be a catchall for referring to anything and everything Asian.
Two students at UC Irvine wanted to get some Chick-fil-A with their resident advisor, according to the RA's friend Kelvin blogging at lolwhat. The RA said the cashier never asked for the students' names, but when they got their receipts they found out the cashier — Lia — made up her own: "Ching" and "Chong."
It's not clear exactly what locationthe students went to or whether Lia did get canned, according to the OC Weekly, but the RA spoke with the manager. He sent this note to his blogging friend: "I went to talk to the manager, and I told him that this cannot happen ever again. I chose to be calm about it, but I was ready to go off. I made it known that it wasn't okay, and that I didn't appreciate it whatsoever. I think I indirectly fired Lia."
As Kelvin's post took off, he noticed that people have been quick to call Chick-fil-A a racist company — which didn't seem hard to do since the company has already drawn a lot of fire for its prejudice against gays. But in a follow-up post, he says that in this case the incident might have said more about the individual — Lia — than the company:
I realize Chik-Fil-A hasn’t exactly had the best track record when it comes to issues of social justice, but I don’t think the horrible mistake on the part of one individual is reason enough to launch a witch hunt. There’s no way the person who hired this woman would have been able to know she’d do something so stupid.
You might be able to say the same thing about the UCLA admission rep that admitted Wallace, who planned a whole line-up of racist rants to follow her first.
