It is more than just a cliché. as we were reminded recently by a national pizza chain’s unfortunate customer experience, when an employee typed a racial slur on the customer receipt.

As expected, apologies were made and the employee was fired. A month prior, a similar incident with a different national chain led to another employee termination. Sadly, these stories are not unusual. As an Asian-American woman, former restaurant manager and an HR practitioner, I was able to relate to this story in a myriad of ways.

Could these incidents have been predicted or prevented? Who owns this problem - HR? The Hiring Manager? What kind of experience or training did this employee have? What is the fair expectation from someone who makes only minimum wage? Is it an issue relating to franchise management? What next? What are companies doing to mitigate this risk to their brand?

“Your Employees are Your Brand” is much more of a truism, if possible, with retail businesses. Yet it’s not the statement as much as the context of the statement that provides the painful “a-ha” moment, along with the missed window of opportunities, from the hiring of the employees to the dramatic firing of said employees.