I WASN’T RUDE, I WAS BEING FRENCH, B.C. WAITER ARGUES.
A waiter in Vancouver who lost his job for being rude and aggressive with co-workers says he was actually just being “French.” Guillaume Rey filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal against Milestones Restaurant and its parent company, Cara Operations Ltd., after he was fired in August 2017. He alleges they are discriminating against his French culture, which “tends to be more direct and expressive.”
He said he was fired for his “direct, honest and professional personality” and because he has high standards, which he learned in the French hospitality industry. His manager, he claimed, had “mentioned casually on more than one occasion, that it might be because of my culture that other staff members think I am being aggressive.” His argument is a novel use of section 13 of the Human Rights Code that states employees can’t be fired because of their ancestry or place of origin.
The restaurant asked to have the complaint dismissed on the basis that it had no reasonable prospect of success. But tribunal member Devyn Cousineau decided earlier this month that Rey’s claim will proceed to a hearing.
‘Mr Rey will have to explain what it is about his French heritage that would result in behaviour that people misinterpret as violating workplace standards of acceptable conduct,” Cousineau wrote in her decision. Rey started working as a waiter at Milestones in October 2015. He got along well with customers and was often assigned as a shift lead. In April 2017, Rey’s manager noted that he received “great feedback from guests” and was “very friendly and professional with his tables.” His co-workers, however, told a different story. They described him in job reviews as “combative and aggressive,” and that he likes to “have fun and joke but should watch (his) temper in the moment.” In the summer of 2017 Rey had a disagreement with another waiter and his manager and was given a warning. Less than a month later, he was working as a shift lead when he got into another argument with an employee. While Rey says he was merely trying to get one of the other servers to complete his duties, the server claims Rey was “berating and yelling” at him and that the incident caused him to “have issues with his anxiety.” The restaurant says the server was “borderline in tears.”
Rey was fired and his manager noted that he was “aggressive, rude and disrespectful to the manager and another employee,” and that “this behaviour is repeated.” According to Paul Venesoen, a lecturer in the department of French studies at Western University, people in France can be perceived as rude, especially when compared to Canadians. “There is a bit of a stand off-ish attitude in France, it’s not the friendliness that us Canadians are use to,” he said. Venesoen said that certain topics Canadians bring up in casual conversation (like how many siblings one has) are seen as an invasion of privacy by the French. For this reason, Venesoen said it isn’t too far-fetched to imagine a French waiter might unintentionally give off the perception of being unfriendly to strangers.