Little Caesars staff fired after couple finds pepperoni swastika on their pizza

An Ohio couple wanted to enjoy a Little Caesars pizza, but when they opened the box, they were met with something truly disturbing.

The first thing Misty Laska noticed when she opened her pizza was that the pie wasn’t cut. Then, she and her husband noticed the pepperonis weren’t in their typical random positioning — they were arranged as a swastika.

The Middleburg Heights, Ohio, couple tried to return the pizza but the location had closed, Laska told Reuters, adding that the location called to apologize the next day.

Laska took to Twitter with a photo of the pizza, writing: “So my husband stopped at #LittleCaesars for a quick bite, husband brings this home. I’m truly disappointed. This is truly saddening and disturbing and not funny at all.”

“These aren’t funny jokes and shouldn’t be made period and on company time.”

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She told Reuters that two employees, who’ve since been fired, made the pizza as a joke and never intended to sell it. It was apparently accidentally purchased when Laska’s husband, Jason, chose a “hot and ready pizza” from the warmer at a Brook Park, Ohio, location near Cleveland.

“We were literally silent for a few moments,” Jason told CNN. “Misty asked me if I had ordered it and they had to make it and they gave me that on purpose thinking they were targeting me because they stereotyped me or something.

“Things like this are keeping hate alive in this world. We all need the exact opposite of that right now.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "Things like this are keeping hate alive in this world. We all need the exact opposite of that right now."

Jill Proctor, a Little Caesars Enterprises spokesperson, confirmed that the two employees were fired.

“We have zero tolerance for racism and discrimination in any form, and these franchise store employees were immediately terminated,” the company told Reuters in response to a request for comment. “This conduct is completely against our values.

“This kind of hate being spread around and not taken seriously is why the world is becoming so divided,” she told Reuters. “In the climate today a gesture like (this) is completely unacceptable … I hope the two responsible learn a valuable lesson from this. Spread love, not hate.”

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meaghan.wray@globalnews.ca