Photo by Mr. T in DC.

An update to our earlier post about a Safeway employee who called a gay couple “faggots” while they were shopping at the chain’s Waterfront store last weekend, then was videotaped offering a half-hearted apology — the employee has been fired, and the grocer has apologized.

Safeway’s Eastern Division President Steven Neibergall released the following statement to Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells’ office this evening:

“We were shocked and appalled to learn of the statements made to two of our valued customers by one of our employees. This incident is personally offensive to me and to the rest of the men and women who proudly represent us in our stores. This goes against everything we believe and practice in terms of serving and welcoming our customers, and in being a part of the diverse communities we are privileged to serve. We are at a loss to explain how one of our employees, even one who has been on the job for less than a month, could consider this kind of behavior to be acceptable. The employee has been terminated.

Besides investigating the incident itself, we also are looking into the unsatisfactory response our customers received when they attempted to bring this to the attention of local store management. The complaint should have been dealt with immediately and we apologize that this was not the case.

We have reached out to the customers involved to extend our sincere apology. We are truly sorry this happened in our store and are taking decisive and urgent action to ensure it does not happen again to any customer in any of the communities we serve. No one should face what these customers faced, and we are humbly sorry it happened to them in our store.”