Drybar under fire after customer discovers racist slur on her appointment slip
12/22/2018 UPDATE: Drybar issued a statement to Yahoo Lifestyle on the incident, saying both the company and its founder, Alli Webb, apologized to the customer for the unacceptable behavior and have immediately terminated the employee.
“We have zero tolerance for racism and negative behavior towards our team members and customers at Drybar, and we1re making sure that all of our staff clearly understand our values
and reinforce them every day so that this never happens again,” the company said.
Tae released a statement as well following conversations with the company.
“I want to thank everyone for their immense support and willingness to help me share my story. Drybar has since taken action and responded. All I wanted to do was to make sure that this never happens to anyone else again,” Tae said.
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A New York woman was unsettled when she discovered that a salon employee had used a racist slur to describe her on an appointment slip — and she shared about the upsetting experience on Facebook.
Briana Tae went to one of the Drybar salons — Drybar is a chain that solely provides blowouts — in the Murray Hill neighborhood of New York City, around 6 p.m. on Monday to get her hair done for NYU’s Nursing School pinning ceremony the following day. The happy celebration of all her hard work, however, was overshadowed by the racist note she found.
She took a photo of the note and posted it to her Facebook page.
“I have never in my life been so appalled,” she wrote. “All of my hard work and successes simply came down to a girl with ‘c***** eyes.’”
“Since when is it okay to describe your paying customers as something so racist?” Tae wrote. “When I confronted the ‘bartender’ (girl who works at the front desk) regarding this, she could not understand why it was an issue and why it was highly inappropriate to write such a description.”
Tae, who did not want the employee to get fired, did expect an apology.
“That word is pretty much congruent to the ‘n-word.’ Very offensive,” Tae told CBS New York.
Alli Webb, the founder of Drybar, responded to the incident on Instagram, writing, “There was recently an unacceptable issue in one of our shops where a stylist described a client in a completely inappropriate way. We sincerely apologize for the hurt this has caused. We do not tolerate racism. The employee was immediately terminated, and we are committed to working harder on improving our training to ensure this does not happen again.”
A post shared by Alli Webb (@alliwebb) on Dec 20, 2018 at 9:10am PST
“I wanted to take a moment to apologize and acknowledge the incident that took place this week,” Webb added in a statement on her Instagram Story. “We deeply regret the completely inappropriate note made by one of our employees. This employee was immediately terminated and this behavior does not in any way reflect Drybar’s values.”
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