A South Florida man decided to leave his job at a restaurant after the business changed the name of their blackened chicken wings to “I can’t breathe”.
Brandon Gonzales was running a plate of the chicken wings to a customer on June 20, 2020, when he noticed something unusual and offensive with the kitchen ticket that was handed to him.
On Saturday at Hole in the Wall, the restaurant, which is located in southwest Miami-Dade, Gonzales noticed that the name of the chicken had been changed.
He explained:
I guess he thought it was funny to change a customer’s order from 10 blackened wings to 10 ‘I can’t breathes’.
The owner then went into the kitchen and had an explanation about the bizarre change.
He said:
He’s like, hey, we’re not gonna write blackened anymore, we’re gonna write, ‘I can’t breathe’ and he started laughing, and I stayed quiet.
The man then decided to put the restaurant and the owner of the restaurant on blast.
He explained:
There’s one main reason what absolutely offended me and baffled me, and it was the fact that they have a 90% Black kitchen. I can’t breathe” has been the rallying cry at nationwide protests for Black Americans who were killed at the hands of cops. It was also some of the last word spoken by George Floyd. You’re pretty much joking about the BLM movement. You think it’s a joke that George Floyd was saying ‘I can’t breathe’ an x amount of times, like, you think that’s funny? That’s not funny.
Sam Diedrick, the owner of the restaurant, wrote an apologetic post on social media and called his attempt as a lame one.
He said in the post:
I want to apologize for my insensitivity in a lame attempt at humor. My intentions were never to offend or make any employee or customer uncomfortable.
After leaving the job behind, Gonzales took the order ticket with him and shared a picture of it on Twitter, where he said:
Yesterday I was at work and my boss, hole in the wall co-founder Sam, thought it’d be funny to change the ‘Blackened’ wings to ‘I Can’t Breathe’. Attention miami locals do not support this disgusting establishment. I quit today. #BlackLivesMatter.
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