All these brothas wanted to do was have some IHOP for lunch, but a white woman came in and messed up their meal.
Four Black soldiers from Fort Belvoir, Va., went to an IHOP on April 19 to grab a bite to eat during a work break, when an unidentified white woman offered to pay for their meal and placed $30 on their table. It is not an uncommon gesture for folks in the area to do that as a way to thank them for their service, said Joe Richard, director of public affairs for Fort Belvoir, in a statement to Military Times.
Moments later, though, the woman returned and took $24 dollars, left six bucks and exited. Then she returned and accused them of stealing her money and verbally abusing them.
“You guys are…shitbags,” she said. Moments from the encounter were captured on video and posted on TikTok.
She even sat in their booth and blocked one soldier from leaving. The soldiers asked her to walk away, but she refused. The soldier whose pathway out of the booth was blocked by the woman actually had to climb over it to escape her verbal abuse.
“Are you the thin blue line, are you BLM, are you antifa?” the woman yelled as they gathered their leftovers.
Another person tried to intervene, but she started verbally abusing him, too.
“Is this your restaurant? she said. “Motherfucker, I will fucking drop you. You wanna go? You wanna go?”
The soldiers left the restaurant and reported the incident. Neither the woman nor the soldiers were identified.
IHOP told the Associated Press that the incident did not reflect its efforts to create “a warm and hospitable dining experience for all guests.”