What do you call a person who, instead of leaving a tip at a restaurant, writes "none" on the receipt and instead jots down the n-word near the line asking for "Total"? A racist cheapskate would be fitting.
But don't call Devin Barnes one — he denies being the man who wrote the hurtful word on the receipt he left for his waitress, Toni Christina Jenkins. In an interview with Nashville News 2, Barnes said it was someone else who left the word there (although he doesn't deny not leaving a tip), and he hired a handwriting expert to prove it.
"There is evidence to indicate that Devin Barnes did not write the total entry. No significant handwriting characteristic similarities were noted," the expert, Thomas Vastrick, wrote.
Vastrick came to the same conclusion for Barnes' wife.
Barnes says he just wants to know who wrote it and says the restaurant should have done more to answer that question. Because of that, he is planning legal action.
In September Jenkins, a waitress at a Red Lobster in Franklin, Tenn., snapped a picture of the receipt and posted it to her Facebook page. The restaurant suspended her for posting the receipt online, a violation of company policy. But in the interim, her post went viral, leading to donations amounting to $10,000.
Read more at WKRN.
Jozen Cummings is the author and creator of the popular relationship blog Until I Get Married, which is currently in development for a television series with Warner Bros. He also hosts a weekly podcast with WNYC about Empire called Empire Afterparty, is a contributor at VerySmartBrothas.com and works at Twitter as an editorial curator. Follow him on Twitter.