If you’ve ever thought customer service was going down the toilet, welcome to Exhibit A: a Cinnabon worker in Wisconsin is going viral for her racial-language laced tired after a Somali couple dressed in typical Muslim garb (hold on, this is an important point we’ll come back to in a minute) asked her a fetishized comment about her body in her Cinnabon uniform.
Now typically when a white person (which the Cinnabon worker was) says anything remotely racist or unhinged towards a member of another race, the narrative is “White person, bad!” or everything is their fault. Except in this instance, many on the internet are siding with the fast-food employee.
Here’s what happened…
Crystal Wilsey, a now-former employee of Cinnabon, was caught on video yelling the N-word at a Somalian couple, declaring, “I am racist and I’ll say it to the whole entire world.” That’s not customer service, that’s career suicide on camera. Or at least it used to be—until the internet decided to crown her a hero.
Now there are many edited clips of this interaction between the Cinnabon clerk and Somali couple going around. But an unedited clip of the viral moment reveals that the husband started the confrontation by asking Wilsey if “sexualizing your body makes you a better person.”
Ummm…what? Mind you this fast-food worker is a younger girl. And a man festishized her body in her work uniform and then had the gall to ask her that question. It escalated from there, with the wife recording the interaction and Wilsey eventually snapping. Not a good look by any metric.
Here’s where it gets nuts: despite being fired—rightfully so—Wilsey has now hauled in over $100,000 on GiveSendGo from people who see her as a victim of cancel culture.
Stu Burguiere of BlazeTV nailed it: “Not the best moment anyone’s ever had in a Cinnabon.” No kidding. Burguiere and Dan Andros made it clear—being provoked doesn’t give you a free pass to drop slurs while wearing a company apron. You’re not a free speech martyr, you’re an employee with a name tag and a job to make cinnamon rolls, not headlines.
But hey, if you scream something stupid loud enough, apparently someone will pass the virtual offering plate your way.
Watch the full video to see the moment that launched a thousand givebacks—and a whole lot of controversy.