Starbucks Latest to Suffer "Black Guy" Receipt Scandal (UPDATED)

Little is known about the photo at right, other than the fact that it was uploaded to i.imgur.com and then publicized by Buzzfeed.com. So we cover this with the proviso that it could be a hoax, but it's out there — and it's impacting the Starbucks brand.

It comes as mainstream media outlets (we're looking at you, TIME) are making hay this week with a Tumblr site that collects (and doesn't verify) user photos of their Starbucks order with misspelled (or just plain mangled) versions of customer names scrawled on the cup.

If this particular maligned Starbucks cup scrawl is real, it's a sign that Starbucks' internal brand engagement and employee training needs some work — and just the latest incident in a long line of poorly thought out moves by employees. Poorly thought out moves that cause loads of grief for the brands involved.

Way back in 2007, a New Jersey T-Mobile customer went into a US-1 Wireless store and left with a receipt printed "good morning my n***ers @ US 1 holla bak." The slur was chalked up to a bad internal joke not meant for distribution.

In 2008, the Kansas retail store Journeys found itself the subject of outrage when one of its employees printed "Dumb N***er" on a customer's receipt.

In February 2010, an African American Pizza Hut customer found "BIGBLACK" printed on a receipt where his name was supposed to be. Pizza Hut HQ offered an official apology and gift cards.

In August 2010, Domino's pizza's name got dragged through the mud when one of its employees issued a receipt to an African American patron with "N***ER DON'T TIP" printed on it.

Maybe worst of all was the April 2011 Landmark Steakhouse incident in which multiple receipts were issued with slurs like “McStinkyN***er" and "McNigSh*t." That led to a lawsuit against the California restaurant by one of its regular customers.

It seems, this isn't even solely an American "problem." In 2009, a British couple made the news after declaring outrage over their restaurant receipt that read, "UPSTAIRS BLK COUPLE."

While it would not have prevented it in the Starbucks example (which, we'll add, remains definitively unproven), maybe it's time the companies that make the register software create a patch that has a spam filter that blocks offensive terms. It would also save brands a ton of grief (and legal bils).

Moreover, examples like these are exactly why so many consumers believe fake examples such as the Twitter fiasco in June, when a photo of a (fake) sign in a McDonald's window charging African American customers an extra $1 fee swept the web and did untold damage to the McDonald's brand.

UPDATE: As our commenter below and a Twitter follower (thanks, David Thomas!) point out, the source of the photo of the Starbucks "Black Guy" cup was no less than NFL star Chad Ochocinco, who posted a pic of the cup and noted it was an "#EPIC moment when the white guy said my coffee was ready."

But this shouldn't ease Starbucks' execs' minds all that much. That tweet and photo upload was posted by Ochocinco (clearly a Starbucks regular) a month ago, on June 8th. The picture that's gone viral on Buzzfeed and continues to spread amongst tens of thousands has no explanation or source attached.