Employee from Chicago's Brookfield Zoo fired over racist social media post

Brookfield Zoo officials in Illinois are scrambling to remedy a situation started by a comment an employee posted to social media that has been deemed racist.

The post was created by an African American employee who was wearing the Brookfield Zoo hat and shirt. She posted a selfie and wrote “Wassup y'all? At work serving these rude a-- white people.” She tagged the zoo in her post.

NBC Chicago reports when her post was discovered on social media, someone reposted it to the zoo's Facebook page, calling it "extremely racist." It was shared over 6,000 times.

The employee has since been fired and zoo spokeswoman Sondra Katzen told Chicago Tribune, “We do not tolerate this behavior.”

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Brookfield Zoo also explained, “We became aware of the actions of a single employee which we agree are unacceptable. This employee's statements in social media are in violation of our policies and do not reflect our institution's values,” ABC7 reports.

“We have zero tolerance for these kinds of divisive behaviors. We treat all employment matters confidentially, but rest assured that we have taken prompt action to remedy the situation.”

The spokesperson ended the statement saying the zoo hopes the poor choice of one employee doesn’t “overshadow the longstanding good work” of the establishment as a whole.

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