D.C. Cashier Apologizes for Gay Slur

A checker at a southwest D.C. Safeway store has apologized after calling two customers "fucking faggots."

When Jason Morgan and his partner, Brendan Harrington, dropped into their neighborhood Safeway market in search of dinner Saturday night, they weren't expecting to make the news.

"We put our groceries up on the conveyer belt, some frozen dinner and wine, and [the cashier] said, 'Oh God, they're faggots,'" Morgan told Metro Weekly. "And then Brendan said, 'I'm sorry I didn't hear what you said.' And she said 'You guys are fucking faggots.'"

The couple asked the checker for her name and she gave it to them.

"We just couldn't believe it," said Morgan. "She didn't seem apologetic or anything. We asked her for the store manager and she just ignored us. So we ended up leaving our groceries where they were and we walked [away]."

On Monday, Morgan and Harrington filed a complaint with the Office of Human Rights.

After reading Metro Weekly's coverage of the incident, concerned resident Andrew Kloman ventured to the store with a video camera and confronted the cashier, asking her to apologize.

"I apologize ... for calling him an effing fag," she said in the clip, which Kloman posted on YouTube, "and I'm deeply sorry if I offended him in any type of way." See the video below.

Despite the on-camera apology and two apologies by phone from Safeway -- one from the store's assistant manager and another from a corporate office -- Morgan and Harrington say they remain offended.

"I've never been called a 'fag' ever in my entire life," said Harrington. "It was absolutely appalling. We were standing there minding our own business, not even talking to one another. [Morgan] was reading the [National] Enquirer, and I was putting the stuff on the belt, and all of the sudden the checker is saying, 'They faggots.'"