Waitress Fired After Refusing to Serve Transphobic Customers

A waitress in Wisconsin said she was fired after refusing to serve a couple who tried to rope her into a transphobic conversation.

Brittany Spencer used to be employed at Fat Joe’s Bar & Grill in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin. When she was working on Saturday night, she says a customer who appeared to be a transgender woman came in and an elderly couple felt it necessary to express their discomfort with her.

“They were asking if I thought it was disgusting and wrong and why we would let someone like that in the establishment,” she said. “I answered, ‘No, I do not agree with that,’ and walked away.”

Though Spencer tried to switch tables so she wouldn’t have to interact with the transphobic couple any further, her manager wanted her to suck it up. But she refused, and went home.

That night, she shared on Facebook that she “got sent home from work early because [she] refused to serve a table who were making transphobic remarks about guests at one of [her] other tables.”

The next day, she said on the same page that she was fired over the incident.

The co-owner of Fat Joe’s, Tad Wallender, insists that Spencer should have just brushed the incident off and continued on like normal.

“I’ve heard hundreds of conversations I didn’t agree,” he said. “She refused to do a duty we hired her for. That’s the bottom line in a nutshell.”

Spencer, on the other hand, insists the issue isn’t that she refused to serve the couple, but that the couple weren’t asked to leave after both engaging in and trying to spread hate speech — something the restaurant is referring to as maintaining a “neutral stance towards all point of views.”

“Everybody has their opinions, everybody is entitled to their opinions,” said Whitney Wallender, another co-owner of Fat Joe's. “Us as a business, we have to stay as neutral as possible.”

While Spencer also wants to drive home that the way the management reacted to such bigotry in their establishment bothers her far more than being fired, Spencer does plan on filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“If anybody sees hate or hears things like this, they should say something,” she said. “In my opinion, ignoring it is no better than saying it yourself.”