Waitress Fired After Refusing to Serve Transphobic Customers

Apparently, refusing to reward hate speech with your time is a fireable offense now.

Brittany Spencer was working at Fat Joe’s Bar and Grill in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin on Saturday night when she overheard two customers making transphobic comments about another customer. When she arrived at their table, the customers asked her if she agreed that other person was “disgusting.” She said no. Then she asked her boss Whitney Wallander if she could switch with someone else so she wouldn’t have to serve those bigots.

The boss gave her an option: Serve them or leave.

She left.

The comments were made in private conversation, and were not harming anyone else, [co-owner] Tad Wallender said.

“We don’t take a stand on any conversation people have. We’re not going to impose anyone’s political beliefs, moral beliefs, ideals on any single person. We’re just here to serve food and drinks,” he told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin on Monday.

This isn’t about customers with different opinions. This is about customers harassing another customer, then inviting their server to join in on it. The debate we ought to be having is whether that couple deserved to be kicked out of the restaurant, not whether a waitress deserved to be fired for not wanting to serve that table.

(If anything, the conservative Christians who routinely defend pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control, saying another pharmacist can pick up the slack, ought to be defending Spencer here.)

Spencer said she plans to file a report on the incident with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

(via Out. Image via Shutterstock)