In 1993 a coworker of mine used this expression to a customer. He was fired. Location was Southern California. The customer was Jewish.
Had a similar gaffe, a bad one, about that year.
I honestly, in a casual conversation was thinking of saying the word “gypped” or “screwed” .. and of all the times to get tongue tied ... I said “Jewed”. !!!! To a feller last name Gold. He was not amused. I’ve since learned that “gypped” is probably perjorative too, but I never meant to say that word, and never meant to say anything bad. I’m sure I tried to explain this, though I’m not sure if I was convincing.
It’s occurred to me over the years that many bad things have happened to due to misunderstandings or miscommunication, or people hearing things, or saying things, that didn’t actually happen. Sometimes people just take things the wrong way. In this case I sure said it the wrong way!
It wasn’t until later in life where I heard some people throw around anti-semitic statements like that casually. It was kind of weird, like finding out someone you seemingly thought was reasonably intelligent is a liberal democrat.