An employee at the Tropical Smoothie Café in downtown Winter Haven has been fired, after his manager found out he reportedly refused to serve two police officers who went to the restaurant Sunday.
WINTER HAVEN, Fla. (WTSP) -- An employee at the Tropical Smoothie Café in downtown Winter Haven has been fired, after his manager found out he reportedly refused to serve two police officers who went to the restaurant Sunday.
Officer Adam Leatherberry of the Lake Alfred Police Department posted about the experience on Facebook. He explained he was off-duty, but Officer Geoff Price of the Winter Haven Police Department was in uniform.
He wrote that when he and Price walked into the store, the employee said, “Hell no!”
“’I’m not serving them! You can… it’s the cops! I refuse to serve them!’”
Leatherberry said the employee made the comment to his coworker. They left the restaurant without buying anything, and Leatherberry posted a picture of the employee on Facebook.
The same day, Tropical Smoothie Café in Winter Haven posted on its Facebook page that the employee was fired.
We would like to thank everyone for the feedback! Our company doesn’t tolerate any discriminate of any kind. We have investigated into this case and terminated this employee immediately.This employee's comment about the police officers was very disrespectful and absolutely unacceptable! We have always supported law enforcement and military. For the past years, our cafe has served to numerous law enforcements who has patronized our café.
Thank you very much for all of your feedbacks, which has helped us improve and do better!
We sincerely apologize for the misbehavior of our former employee. His comments about the police offers were very disrespectful and absolutely unacceptable!
In an interview Monday, Manager Beth Lawrence identified the employee as Jake Hadden. She said what he did was against company policy.
“I just sincerely want to apologize to the officers that were offended by this and hope that they will still come to our establishment,” she said.
Lawrence added that the restaurant wants to welcome everyone and serves law enforcement on a regular basis.
Officer Leatherberry told 10News WTSP that an employee of Tropical Smoothie Café apologized to him.
“Not everyone’s bad,” he said. “There’s certain people out there who don’t understand what all we deal with.”
Meanwhile, Hadden said it’s all a misunderstanding. He said he has nothing against law enforcement. He explained he was frustrated, because he had been taking orders all day and was trying to clean up before closing.
“I shouldn’t have said it, but what’s done is done. There’s nothing I can do about it,” he said. “I just hope people can forgive me.”
