Atticus charged with
discrimination
The Yale Daily News
By Colin Ross and Zoe Gorman
Staff Reporter, Staff Reporter
Published Friday, January 22, 2010
A showdown over race and discrimination is brewing at Atticus Bookstore and Café on Chapel Street.
In an announcement recently released to Atticus’s employees that opened with “Here we speak English,” the café’s management forbade employees from using foreign languages within earshot of customers. The policy, obtained by the News, further specified that employees could only speak Spanish in the prep and dishwasher areas.
The New Haven Workers Association, a group of local labor leaders and activists, condemned the policy as discriminatory Tuesday, as did Ward 15 Alderman Joseph...
#1 By Hospitality vs.Freedom? 5:28a.m. on January 22, 2010
"We only speak English here" is highhanded and arrogant.
There is a larger issue here than racism and that is hospitality. When your hosts have a private language which they use in addition to the prevalent language of the culture, it leads one to wonder if the guests are being satirized to their faces without their knowing it.
I once attended a party hosted by a Ivy League faculty person. The adult child of the host and his father visiting from
Serbia spent the entire party alternating languages since the father spoke little English. The result was
unsettling.
Political correctness requires that the rudeness of Atticus's memo be addressed. Economic survival might require that hospitality trump bilingual expressiveness.
PK
M.Div.'80
#2 By Hieronymus 9:05a.m. on January 22, 2010
Atticus? ATTICUS?!
Wow...
Oh, and speaking of English: past tense of "forbid" is "forbade" ('az a shoutout to y'all prescriptionists out dere, yo!).
#3 By Anonymous 10:01a.m. on January 22, 2010
Isn't it good for employees to learn english? Frankly i find it insulting when i find employees chattering away in a language that I dont understand me, ignoring me. For all i know they could be laughing at me. So the eng policy in the earshot of customers is a good one. these people need to stop crying wolf -and I was born outside of the US and am a non native speaker of english
#4 By dk 11:15a.m. on January 22, 2010
I also think that hospitality should be the primary issue. There's an argument for speaking other languages for clarity of work-related communication, but it should be done with an awareness of how it compromises hospitality. Atticus is a public cafe. Its employees should conduct themselves with that in mind. They are already unfriendly at times as it is, snapping at customers in English, then turning to each other and laughing in Spanish.
#5 By anonymous 11:41a.m. on January 22, 2010
English is the primary language of the United States, and store owners should have the right to ensure the customer service experience they want for their business. So what's the big deal?
#6 By Yale 08 1:54p.m. on January 22, 2010
Does Atticus exist for the employees or for the customers?
Your answer to that question tells me everything I will need to know about your political/economic beliefs.
#7 By '12 2:02p.m. on January 22, 2010
I find it interesting that the report paints the policy as "utterly ridiculous," yet all of the comments found here support the policy.
I don't think it's too much to ask service employees in the United States to speak English at the workplace. Also, the reporters should attempt at least a slight measure of objectivity.
#8 By Goldie '08 2:18p.m. on January 22, 2010
wow I agree with PK for once
#9 By Pierson '10 2:24p.m. on January 22, 2010
Once again, I'm pleasantly surprised at how sane the YDN comments are on an article where the writers made something seem like a travesty. (See also: Sissies t-shirt) I'll definitely be stopping by Atticus more often now.
#10 By alum78 2:48p.m. on January 22, 2010
So Rodriguez finds the policy divisive? How does he feel about the large number of illegal immigrants in Fair Haven who openly disregard the law. Think that isn't divisive? How does he feel about the large number of unregistered and uninsured motor vehicles in his ward. The legal taxpayers in the city have to register thier vehicles and pay taxes. The workers at Atticus came here for economic stability and a better life. The least they could do is use the language of thier adopted country and that of a majority of the customers. Maybe they'd like it better if the menus were changed to spanish and we could guess as to what we were ordering. This pc stuff in New Haven really has to stop. It get to a point where it's beyond absurd.
#11 By yale11 3:19p.m. on January 22, 2010
Honestly, I don't know if this is racist or taking it too far, but Atticus is a PRIVATE business, and have the right to impose these kinds of rules. If the employees don't like it, they have every right to quit their jobs — I'm sure there are many others out there who would gratefully replace them.
#23 By Holden Caulfield's Death of Etiquette 12:27a.m. on January 23, 2010
These posts are a diagram of what has happened over the last 50 years in the guise of political correctness: the death of etiquette.
We are a rude world today, but man (or woman) are we "liberated" (from politeness, among other things). In an attempt to eliminate the "phoniness" Holden Caulfield abhorred, we have become authentically abrasive.
PK
#42 By Immigration mess 6:13p.m. on January 23, 2010
Wouldn't a solution to the immigration mess be to create a new category in the route to citizenship: longterm visitor.
Such a person would have to pay his/her own social security and health insurance. If granted citizenship, his/her payments would be credited retroactively toward maturity (26 working quarters is required to be vested in Social Security I believe.)
To hound people out of this country in police "raids" seems inhumane, if not gestapo-like, especially if they have children who were born here.
Can't the brains at Yale Law School offer a solution to this mess, a mess which provides so much fodder to the right-wing element?
PK
#43 By Jetsfan 6:37p.m. on January 23, 2010
Immigration enforcement is "gestapo" like ? Didn't you know FDR and Eisenhower deported every single illegal alien in the 1940's and 50's ? Look up operation "Wetback".
#44 By Yale '08 7:20p.m. on January 23, 2010
JetsFan-
Once again a misplaced analogy. How does operation Wetback in anyway legitimate state anti-immigration practices today? And how does it all relate to the more symbolic and basic issue at hand: the remaining xenophobia in a multicultural America?
Is it 1940's America?
#45 By If the French can do it... 3:16a.m. on January 24, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_dIBpQuXLI
#46 By Dollarphobia 9:16a.m. on January 24, 2010
#44:
I'm not sure it's xenophobia as much a dollarphobia. People are afraid of the dollars which seemingly "go out the window" to those who haven't "earned" them. Hence my call for a "permananet visitor" status which requires visitor workers to make payments to Social Security, to be held in escrow and invested by the government until citizenship is granted (if ever).
PK
#51 By @ Dollarphobia 3:16p.m. on January 24, 2010
Right on. I think you hit the nail on the head with that one. But honestly, dollarphobia is somewhat justified. With the employment crisis facing Americans today (especially young ones) it seems unfair in the extreme for precious jobs to go to illegal immigrants who do not pay the taxes the rest of us do, and it adds insult to injury if they do not interact with customers in English (which should be a a basic requirement of almost ALL jobs in America).
Atticus controversy continues
By Colin Ross and Zoe Gorman
Staff Reporter, Staff Reporter
Published Monday, January 25, 2010
More than a dozen protesters picketed outside Atticus Bookstore and Café on Chapel Street on Saturday, demanding a boycott of the eatery unless its management reverses its policy requiring employees to speak only English within customers’ earshot.
In response, Atticus manager Jean Marcel Recapet came outside and read a statement, saying Atticus is proud of the diversity of its employees and customers. He did not comment on the future of the controversial policy.
Speaking after Recapet, Eloy Lira, a Hispanic employee who has worked at Atticus for 13 years, said Atticus is “like my...
#1 By The Right to Be Rude 4:56a.m. on January 25, 2010
Censorship causes Blindness? Well, Rudeness causes Bankruptcy.
PK
M.Div.'80
#2 By ? 10:21a.m. on January 25, 2010
Tempest in a teashop?
#3 By Anonymous 10:30a.m. on January 25, 2010
Liberalism will be the ruin of everyone. Dont people understand? If they dont learn English, the employees will forever be relegated to low paying jobs? The best way to learn a second language is to be forcefully immersed in it. These liberals need to stop worrying about everyone else's rights and minorities need to stop squealing discrimination at every point. No, I am not White, I am a minority, non-native English speaking, offended by such rude employees. As #1 above said, I take my business elsewhere.
#4 By What country are we in? 1:58p.m. on January 25, 2010
When in Rome do as the Romans....when in the United States speak ENGLISH please!!!
Oh, and I am Cuban!!!! Minorities for English only!!!!
#6 By To #3 3:58p.m. on January 25, 2010
The employees at Atticus can all speak English very well. They just choose to occasionally communicate with coworkers in Spanish.
Since when is it rude to speak a different language? Is it a right of the customer to eavesdrop on employee conversations?
#7 By Here we speak English 4:54p.m. on January 25, 2010
In my experience Spanish-speaking employees often discuss customers in front of their faces. I've done it myself before. I agree with #3.
#8 By Etiquette, the Dinosaur in the livingroom. 4:57p.m. on January 25, 2010
#6:
The highest purpose of etiquette is to make others feel comfortable---i.e. to NOT make them feel uncomfortable, at all cost.
In a public place those who provide service are required to be mannerly.
It's part of the job description.
Period.
Perhaps the most famous example of etiquette is Mrs. Herbert Hoover (apocryphal?) at a White House State Dinner where the guest of honor accidentally dropped a $10,000 crystal drinking goblet shattering it. To make the guest feel more comfortable about his expensive accident Mrs. Hoover dropped and broke her own $10,000 goblet.
PK
No comments:
Post a Comment