65-Year-Old Cancer Survivor Leaves Store in Tears After Manager Tells Him To Hide His Face
Have you ever ended up stranded at a car dealership while waiting for your vehicle to get serviced? It’s not a fun experience, and I remember one particularly embarrassing time when I was waiting for an oil change.
It was lunch time and I decided to get a sandwich from a local restaurant. But when I walked back into the dealership’s waiting room, an attendant grabbed me by the shoulder and hustled me into a side office.
“You can stay in here,” he told me. “No one wants to watch you eat.”
Humiliation welled up inside me, but it must’ve been only a trickle compared to the shame a certain South Carolina resident must’ve recently felt. According to WTTE, 65-year-old Kirby Evans was diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, a terrible skin cancer.
He underwent life-saving surgery, but it left him disfigured. He has no nose or left eye.
On October 9, he stopped at a Forks Pit Stop location in Walterboro, South Carolina, to grab a bite to eat. As he began munching on a donut, the store manager stopped him.
“Before he could get seated at a table, the owner, Donna Crosby, grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him into her office,” his daughter, Brandy Evans, wrote on Facebook. “She told him, ‘If he was going to eat in here, he would have to cover his face!’”
What was the manager’s rationale? She thought Evans’ presence would disturb other customers.
“My father was discriminated against because of the way he looks,” Brandy stated. “He cannot help what the cancer did to him.”
Shockingly, Crosby didn’t disagree. She identified herself as the manager and responded to Brandy’s post, saying, “I do not see absolutely anything wrong with what I did.
“He would come in at lunch time and sit at the food booths right at my busy time everyday. I have bills to pay to and I work very hard to please my customers.”
For his part, a distraught Evans left the store weeping. He wondered, “How can a person eat anything with his face covered?”
Evans has pledged to never grace Forks Pit Shop with his presence again. Instead, he has started frequenting a nearby Dairy Land.
“When you spend your money at somebody’s place of business, you should be welcomed just like this man that owns this place here welcomed me,” he said. “I’m welcome.
“This is my table.” He also won’t have to eat alone.
Over 9,000 people have shared Brandy’s Facebook post as of Friday afternoon. What’s more, WJW reported that strangers met with Evans for breakfast after the story broke.
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