July 8, 2008
Restaurant Worker Says She Was Fired for Speaking Spanish
Restaurant lawsuit season is in full swing! The latest is a $5 million lawsuit filed by a former employee against the Gramercy Park Hotel Chinese restaurant Wakiya, which Times critic Frank Bruni once derisively described as “a swindle.” A Dominican Republic-born American citizen is suing the owners for firing her for speaking Spanish when she was allegedly assaulted by a Spanish-speaking co-worker in the employee cafeteria. Her lawyers are seeking $5 million, which is “the sum she expected to earn at the hotel in a lifetime.”
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She was taking in $100k/year working in a hotel restaurant? Wow, I picked the wrong job.
Of course, if her skills are so awesome that she's worth that much money, she should have no trouble finding a new job at a different restaurant.
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"Her lawyers are seeking $5 million, which is “the sum she expected to earn at the hotel in a lifetime.” "
If I had known you could make that much as a restaurant worker, I wouldn't have gone to law school. (sigh)
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you guys are so sad being professional and all thats why I got my GED and I am applying for her old job I wonder what I can get fired for?
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I heard some Dominicans from the hinterlands can live to be a thousand years old.
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She'll probably get only $500 once the she pays for all the lawyer fees.
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So she gets assaulted by a coworker, tells him off in spanish and then the restaurant fires her.
I hope she takes them to the cleaner.
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$5 million for a lifetime of work? I'm in the wrong field of work.
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Never mind the money, the issue here is speaking the language. Those advocates of allowing people to speak whatever language they please have to look at it another way. If a person doesn't learn to speak English because they are locked into their mother tongue (even if they've never lived there), what happens is they have to go to the end of the line forever. People are judged on how they communicate and the vast majority in this country speak English.
The exceptions are very talented people that can overcome that hindrance however, they are but a few- (highly paid baseball players come to mind, but the smart ones understand it's value and learn fast).
True, we are a nation of immigrants,my early years were spent in
a household where English was a poor second language, I loved my parents, grandparents and heritage as much as anyone, but I knew the way into that other world was through the language. I am not a scholar but I learned.
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Do you people not have savings accounts or run up credit card debt? She may well make $5 million over her working life at the restaurant by simple compounding. Get a calculator and count up how much money you will make over the next twenty years simply by getting cost of living increases.
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[9] Yeah, maybe if she didn't splurge on luxuries like rent, food and Metrocards like the rest of us high rollers.
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This seems more like a retaliatory dismissal claim rather than anything about language.
Also, there's nothing in the article that says she can't speak English. She is a citizen, so theoretically she has some English skills (you're not supposed to get citizenship otherwise).
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#1. Ummmmmm... seriously?
#2. This girl must be serving dessert to Eliot Spitzer if she expects to make $5 million from a restaurant job. Accounting for future raises, albeit for cost of living, is a rather lofty presumption for a waitress.
#3. ¿Es así de perezosa que no piensa buscar otro empleo? ¿Insiste perpetuar el estereotipo de los dominicanos flojos?
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As a coach of a traveling baseball team comprised of guys who are in their late teens, with half of the team players being Dominicans, I find for the most part they are trying their best to speak English. It's their parents who are suffering from the adaptation to English. It's the first generation who arrive here that are not ready to speak English. Same went for the Italians and others that immigrated here. How about the Irish? I have a good friend that's been here from Ireland for over twenty years and I keep telling him "SPEAK ENGLISH!"
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So when the restaurant goes out of business from this lawsuit, maybe the newly unemployed workers will be able to sue her.
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I'm surprised she wasn't fired for speaking English. Is it not a Chinese Resturant mention in the article?