Worried mom banned from Rainforest Cafe
Company says woman photographed staff not supporting strike
It wasn’t just dinner that brought Karen Morgenweg to the Rainforest Cafe that night two weeks ago. She was looking for someone:
The man who felt up her daughter, who worked there.
She wanted to know if he was somehow still employed, despite her daughter Brandi Reale and three other waitresses filing complaints with management about inappropriate touching. She was there with her ex-husband and his girlfriend, and while eating she decided to “play tourist” and take some photos of the restaurant’s colourful characters and scenery.
Seven days later she received a letter from Rainforest Cafe owners Falls Avenue Resort — a division of Canadian Niagara Hotels — that she was banned for life from the properties. Not just the restaurant, but nearly 20 other properties owned by the company, including the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Hard Rock Cafe and two levels of Casino Niagara.
“If you set foot on the aforementioned properties you will be arrested,” the letter stated. She couldn’t believe what she was reading.
“Are you kidding me?” said the Welland resident, who doesn’t know how the company even obtained her name or address. “I was more in shock at the beginning.” Now, she’s angry. About 95 employees of Rainforest Cafe, including Reale, have been on strike since April 7, and are citing sexual harassment on the job as a key concern as they fight for a first contract.
Reale, 24, has worked at the Clifton Hill restaurant for four years. She says during her shift on March 31, a co-worker came to her saying a male employee hired about a month earlier had touched her in an “uncomfortable” way.
“She described it as, he would come up behind her, touch her lower back and kind of drop his hand to touch her butt. As the shift went on, she mentioned he had done it more than once.”
Shortly after, she experienced it firsthand when he came up behind her. “At the moment, I just kind of walked away — I
didn’t know what to do,” she said. “After, I went to talk to (my coworker) and said, ‘It wasn’t an accident, he definitely did it on purpose. He did it to me, we have to go talk to management.’” They both filed complaints and finished their shifts. A few days went by, with the male employee not seen, before the waitresses were approached by the manager. They were told the employee felt “really bad about what he did, he was very remorseful.”
“I kind of thought about it after, and I was like, ‘Shouldn’t they be talking to us to see how we feel? Are you guys OK, are you comfortable to come back to work?’” Adding to Reale’s anger, the same manager who was apparently not taking her complaint about harassment serious once told her she could be fired for “sneaking a french fry in the kitchen.”
“They assured me he wasn’t getting fired,” she said. “(They said) ‘We just want to make sure he’s comfortable to come onto the floor with you guys and you’re comfortable to go onto the floor with him.’” The male employee then offered an apology, but not before asking her to take back her accusation. “He said, ‘This isn’t me, I’m not like that. I didn’t do any of this on purpose.’ Basically, it wasn’t an apology … it was like, ‘I didn’t do anything.’”
In the meantime, Reale had heard of two other female employees with the same complaint about the man. Reale skipped her next shift because she was uncomfortable, and the strike started soon after. That was when she heard the man had been fired — she suspects because the strike was going to “put pressure” on the company about the incident.
Contacted Sunday, Canadian Niagara Hotels spokesperson Sarah Vazquez verified “the employee no longer works at the Rainforest Cafe,” but would not discuss details of the incidents. “Due to employee privacy concerns we do not comment on individual employee matters.”
Both Reale and her mother suspect the reason the employee wasn’t instantly fired was because the company might need the “manpower” during the strike. As for her mother being banned from all Canadian Niagara Hotels properties, Reale called it “a joke.”
“All the PR they put out to try to make themselves look better just makes them look worse. Sending her that letter, that’s just their way of getting at me.”
Canadian Niagara Hotels said Morgenweg went to the restaurant that night with the purpose of photographing Rainforest Cafe staff members who do not support the strike. Morgenweg, who joined striking workers for a rally Saturday in front of the Clifton Hill restaurant, is taking the banning in stride: She didn’t intend to frequent any of the properties anyway.
She’s more concerned about her daughter feeling safe at work.
“She’s 24, she can make her own decisions, but you know what? As a mom it doesn’t matter if she’s 55 because my mom still worries about me.”