Is it racism or just random ignorance?

So today I read an article about a well-known Pizza company Papa John's was apologizing to a customer for a "racial slur" on a customer’s receipt. When I began reading the article I thought to myself damn.. What could they have put on a receipt that would warrant a company to apologize? I thought the absolute worst. I thought the receipt said the "N" word or something derogatory.

Upon looking at the photo of the receipt where it said customers name the receipt read "The Lady with the Chinky eyes". This caused me to snicker then I read the article further and found that the employee had been fired. I am not sure if this punishment was too harsh. Maybe because I am having trouble trying to figure out if this was truly a racial slur.

Reader's am I looking at this the wrong way? I mean I can see that this was ignorant on the employee’s behalf. He/she could have asked the customer their name. To be fired for using descriptive terminology? Is not like it said "the Chink" Or "The cracker". I have a lot of family members who have chinky eyes. I think that the employee should have been counseled and maybe mandated to attend HR ethics training at most, unless this person was a repeat offender then it might be understandable.

To think about it if I worked at a pizza place getting paid minimum wage I would probably try to have fun with it too. Give me the power to type in a customer’s name and you would probably end up with customers named "bald headed guy", "Lady with a wagon full of kids", "Girl with a bad attitude", "black girl with blue hair". I'm just saying..

What do you guys think... Is this a racial issue? Or is it an issue of not knowing any better? Was the punishment too harsh?