A pregnant fast food worker has been fired after refusing to pay back the nearly US$400 stolen during an armed robbery.

A PREGNANT fast food worker was fired after refusing to pay back the nearly US$400 stolen during an armed robbery.

Marissa Holcomb was the shift manager at fast food chain Popeyes Restaurant in Texas when a masked assailant held up the store.

Video of the incident shows the robber running in holding a firearm before quickly jumping over the counter to rifle through the tills while employees laid on the ground.

And what did she get for her heart-stopping ordeal?

An ultimatum from her bosses: reimburse the restaurant for the money the thief took or lose her job.

“I told them, I’m not paying nothing,” said Marissa Holcomb. “I just had a gun to me. I’m not paying the money.”

“I don’t think it’s right because now I’m struggling for my family because what I had to do to keep my life,” she told local media.

After climbing over the counter, the robber tried to force Ms Holcomb to open the safe. “He pulled me up and he pushed me to the front (of the restaurant),” she recalled.

“He told me to give him everything out of my safe.”

Ms Holcomb was unable to open it, so the robber instead raided the cash registers.

The incident occurred on the March 31, and 36 hours after the robbery, Ms Holcomb was fired.

A spokesman for the company’s HR department said it was against company policy to have such a large sum of money in the cash register at any given time, and that doing so was grounds for termination.

He also said Ms Holcomb had been given the opportunity to pay the money back to save her job.

According to KHOU, Popeyes has since offered Ms Holcomb her job back.

“(The owner) just apologised and pretty much offered me if I wanted to go back to his business and work there again,” she said.

Supporters of Ms Holcomb had set up a GoFundMe page to financially assist her, but the page has since been removed.

Earlier, USAToday reported Popeyes CEO Cheryl Bachelder had intervened, though she stopped short of saying Ms Holcomb would get her job back.

“We have spoken to the local franchise owner of the restaurant, and he has taken immediate action to reach out to the employee to apologise and rectify the situation,” Ms Bachelder said.

“While the facts are gathered, we will closely monitor this until it is appropriately resolved,” she said. “We deeply regret the distress this situation has caused.”

It is not known whether the offender was caught.