Rough service
Employees at a cafe in Oakland, California, were filmed in recent days denying a customer said to be Jewish from using the bathroom at their shop.
The female patron of Farley’s East was said to have complained to the staff about anti-Israel messages graffitied inside the bathroom and then wanted to go inside again to film the messages but was blocked from doing so by a staff member with blue hair.
“We’ve given you all of your food… I know Israel loves taking private property and saying it’s their own, but we got ahead,” a second employee is heard telling the female patron filming the interaction on her phone. “We have a right to refuse service.”
“Currently, this is a private property,” says a third staff member. “You’re also misgendering them, so I need you to leave.”
Also your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries.
The customer insists on using the bathroom with graffiti inside. “I should not be excluded when other people are allowed,” she says.
“All you’re going to get is a video of us saying that ‘Zionism is antisemitism’ because it is,” says the third employee.
“If you agree with [the graffiti], why are you afraid that I take a picture of it?” the customer responds.
The staff then acquiesce and allows the patron into the bathroom.
She films herself walking inside where the phrase “Zionism = fascism” is daubed on the mirror and “neutrality… is enabling genocide. Free Palestine” is graffitied on the baby changing station.
“History didn’t start in 1948, lady,” says the second employee, apparently referring to the year in which Israel was established.
“Free Palestine. Now please go,” the third staffer chimes in.
What lovely people.
So all Jews are now personally responsible for Israeli actions, right?
Misgendering!!? Well that does it; she’s a war criminal.
If your customer is now to be held accountable for the actions of others of whom you disapprove, I’d like to introduce the poor, precious misgendered staff member to “Naomi” O’Brien.
Funny, most establishments don’t want to have any graffiti on their property. Most staff of said businesses would thank the customer for pointing it out and apologize because they haven’t had a chance to clean it up. I’ll bet they would have removed anything they deemed “transphobic” immediately. Makes me wonder if the staff wrote the graffiti themselves; they certainly seem to approve of it. They certainly knew of it and weren’t apologizing for the resultant unceanliness and unfriendliness of their facilities, though they might soon regret this:
(From the same Times of Israel link above.)
I wonder if those “corrective measures” will include a dismissal or two. It’s one thing to express political opinions on your own time; quite another to do it on your employer’s time, on your employer’s property. It’s not your place to alienate your company’s customers with your political beliefs, unless the company belongs to you. If it doesn’t, then you keep your mouth shut and your pen capped.* If you feel so strongly about whatever cause that you can’t, then you at least wait until you’re off shift and away from the workplace, or you quit altogether and give yourself all the time in the world.
* Many years ago, I had racist-enabling/apologist psychologist Philipe Rushton as a customer in the store I was working in. Even decades-younger, more-idealistic, less-jaded me knew enough that my job was to treat him as courteously as I would any other customer of mine, and that my opinion on his views about anything were irrelevant to our interaction, which was perfectly polite and uneventfull (apart from my silent, internal exclamation of “Holy shit, it’s him!”).
I would put money on the staff being responsible for the graffiti. I’d also be very surprised if this doesn’t cost one or more of them their jobs.
Good news: all three of them were fired.