Customer asked to pay extra for coffee

No link in English, sorry - you'll have to take my word for this one.

Quote :

"You're black, coffee is 1 euro": this heinous phrase could have been ascribed to 'ordinary' racism if the one pronouncing it had not been a Chinese immigrate. The owner of the Spilimbergo (PN) coffee shop does not deny the episode, but says the expedient has been suggested by her Italian customers. The incident happened on Easter Sunday: the customer, a blue-collar worker from Burkina Faso, was asked to pay 1 euro for the coffee instead of the usual 90 cents listed on the table. When he protested, the barmaid told him not to behave offensively and not to return. A treatment which did not go down well with the worker, who applied to the Carabinieri but did not file a denounce. The bar owner, Xia Peipei, 20, in Italy since five years, at first tried to put down the incident to a misunderstanding, then admitted that her behaviour had been suggested by the Italian customers of the coffee shop.

"I am sorry, I am a foreigner too and I am in Italy to work. When I was in Padua, my superiors told me to raise the price of consummations to undesirable customers so that they would not return. Last Sunday this boy behaved rudely and offended the barmaid when he saw the 10 extra cents. There was an altercation at this point, but not racist. My shop would close without the Italians, they suggested me not to be remissive with troublemakers and with those few who come here without taking care of their personal hygiene as they should."

The Major said he was 'outraged' and remembered in Spilimbergo there are 12.000 inhabitants and 58 different citizenships. For the regional coordinator of the PdL,
Isidoro Gottardo, "the hospitality of the people in these lands cannot be mistaken for a place where arrogance can be tolerated."

With the history of immigration most Italians have, I wish we knew better. Instead the other week I had one of the guys at the workshop refusing to be told what to do from a Senegalese coworker, despite the fact that a) he's a senior of his, and b) he was merely translating the Belgian customer's indications, and now I get to read this.
Perhaps he really was rude. Perhaps he really smelled, too. But the 10 extra cents were not for being rude or smelling, they were for being black. Nowhere, in the news I've read, she denies this (and my policewoman cousin tells me immigrates who are arrested often play the 'officer called me a n****' card, so I would have bought that). Bartenders have a right to refuse service, but the prices have to be clearly exposed and cannot change.

Spilimbergo is not that far away: I have a mind to go get me a macchiato at the Caffé Commercio, cussing like a sailor and smelling like a skunk, and see if they dare to tell me off.

The Unoriginal wrote:

No link in English, sorry - you'll have to take my word for this one.

Quote :

"You're black, coffee is 1 euro": this heinous phrase could have been ascribed to 'ordinary' racism if the one pronouncing it had not been a Chinese immigrate. The owner of the Spilimbergo (PN) coffee shop does not deny the episode, but says the expedient has been suggested by her Italian customers. The incident happened on Easter Sunday: the customer, a blue-collar worker from Burkina Faso, was asked to pay 1 euro for the coffee instead of the usual 90 cents listed on the table. When he protested, the barmaid told him not to behave offensively and not to return. A treatment which did not go down well with the worker, who applied to the Carabinieri but did not file a denounce. The bar owner, Xia Peipei, 20, in Italy since five years, at first tried to put down the incident to a misunderstanding, then admitted that her behaviour had been suggested by the Italian customers of the coffee shop.

"I am sorry, I am a foreigner too and I am in Italy to work. When I was in Padua, my superiors told me to raise the price of consummations to undesirable customers so that they would not return. Last Sunday this boy behaved rudely and offended the barmaid when he saw the 10 extra cents. There was an altercation at this point, but not racist. My shop would close without the Italians, they suggested me not to be remissive with troublemakers and with those few who come here without taking care of their personal hygiene as they should."

The Major said he was 'outraged' and remembered in Spilimbergo there are 12.000 inhabitants and 58 different citizenships. For the regional coordinator of the PdL,
Isidoro Gottardo, "the hospitality of the people in these lands cannot be mistaken for a place where arrogance can be tolerated."

With the history of immigration most Italians have, I wish we knew better. Instead the other week I had one of the guys at the workshop refusing to be told what to do from a Senegalese coworker, despite the fact that a) he's a senior of his, and b) he was merely translating the Belgian customer's indications, and now I get to read this.
Perhaps he really was rude. Perhaps he really smelled, too. But the 10 extra cents were not for being rude or smelling, they were for being black. Nowhere, in the news I've read, she denies this (and my policewoman cousin tells me immigrates who are arrested often play the 'officer called me a n****' card, so I would have bought that). Bartenders have a right to refuse service, but the prices have to be clearly exposed and cannot change.

Spilimbergo is not that far away: I have a mind to go get me a macchiato at the Caffé Commercio, cussing like a sailor and smelling like a skunk, and see if they dare to tell me off.

Do it!