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Taco Bell fires employee who refused to serve police

Posted at 11:20 AM, Jul 18, 2016
and last updated 2016-07-18 11:20:34-04

A cashier at a Taco Bell in Alabama wouldn’t serve cops. Now she won’t serve anybody else after the fast food chain fired her.

The firing came after a woman complained on social media about how the two deputies from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office were treated.

Tammy Bush Mayo, a wife of another deputy, said she was ticked off that two of her husband’s colleagues were turned away Saturday at the Taco Bell in Phenix City, Alabama. The cashier told the uniformed deputies that law enforcement would not be served and that they needed to leave, according to CNN affiliate WTVM.

“This really disturbs me that people have started treating law enforcement professionals in this manner when these same law enforcement professionals put their lives on the line every day to protect all people, including this woman with a very bad attitude at Taco Bell,” Mayo wrote.

And it wasn’t just the cashier that didn’t want the deputies around. A customer in line said she would rather get a refund than eat in the company of police.

Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones was not happy with how his deputies were treated.

“I’m very disappointed that simply because they were uniformed law enforcement officers that our deputies were treated in such negative fashion. We pride ourselves in giving people basic respect and only ask the same in return,” Jones said in a statement. “We won’t base our opinion of Taco Bell on one employee’s negative action any more than the general public should base their opinion of law enforcement on the negative action of one officer.”

A Taco Bell spokesperson said that in addition to firing the cashier, who was not identified, the fast food chain apologized to the sheriff’s department.