Florida McDonald’s Employee Fired For Refusing To Serve Paramedics: ‘We Don’t Accept Anyone With A Badge’

An employee of a Florida McDonald’s has been fired after she allegedly refused to serve paramedics, telling them, “We don’t accept anyone with a badge.”

As Yahoo Lifestyle reports, paramedic Anthony Quinn says that he and a colleague stopped by a McDonald’s in Madeira Beach to use the restroom. However, he wrote in a Facebook post that a female employee wouldn’t allow it.

“An employee goes, ‘We don’t accept officers in here. I tell her I’m not an officer. She then says, ‘anyone with a badge,’ then says it to my partner as he walks in to order food, says, ‘We don’t serve your kind here.’ Just insane how people are,” Quinn wrote.

The employee has not been identified. However, in a statement provided to Tampa’s WFTS-TV, Caspers Company (or Casper’s Company, according to different reports), the franchisee which owns the location where the incident took place, apologized and said that the employee has been terminated.

“What occurred does not reflect the values of our brand, our franchise, or the love and admiration we have demonstrated consistently for our friends in law enforcement and first responders,” the company wrote.

McDonald’s corporate headquarters has not responded to this incident, as of this writing.

Quinn, for his part, declined to respond to Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment. However, he did post later on Facebook that he regretted posting about the incident initially, saying that the situation could have been “better handled.”

In July, as reported at the time by The Inquisitr, an employee at a Starbucks location in Tempe, Arizona reportedly asked several police officers to leave, after a customer purportedly complained that seeing the police there made the customer feel unsafe. The officers left, but the cops’ union, the Tempe Police Officers’ Association, later called for a boycott of the company.

The company later apologized, although it remains unclear if the barista was allowed to keep their job.

At the time, it was the latest incident in which an employee at a business had denied service to police. In one particular case out of Oakland, California, the Hasta Muerta coffee shop owners made it clear that police are not allowed inside the premises at all. As CNN reported in 2018, the owner said that he was “keeping the peace” by asking cops not to come into his business. When the incident made national news, several police officers and their supporters promised to boycott the business.