I was recently terminated from my job 2 weeks ago. In the beginning I was continusoulsly picked on by servers and management. They would deliberately find things that I was doing wrong so that I would quit. The management team would get feedback from servers who already didn’t like me, and then talk to me or write me up based on that feedback without even speaking to me about it or seeing it for themselves. One of my managers and another server used to walk right into me and purposefully shoulder me. When I was on my third day of training the general manager yelled at me in front of the entire staff who already didn’t like me, and after that everyone started treating me poorly. The general manager would also get drunk at work and then yell at employees in front of customers. The managers were very close with many of the servers who had been there for a long time. The general manager treated those servers with respect and spoke to them like a person. These were also the same servers who he golfed with outside of work. The way that he spoke to the female employees was disgusting and sexist. He also had tried kissing me once outside of work while he was drunk. The management team were completely inconsistent with their rules as well. They would let the employees who had been there for longer get away with everything, but made a guinea pig out of the newer employees. When I had first started, there was one other black person who worked for them. A few weeks after I started they fired him and didn’t hire another black person until a week before I was terminated. I spoke to one of the servers who had been there for a while and they said that “Every single black person who has worked for this establishment doesn’t make it because the management team is racist”. The same server who told me that also treated me poorly. Because he had been there for so long, they would make him manager every so often. He was well known for doing drugs while on his shift, along with a few other servers. When he was put into a management position he would also pick on me, but let the other employees do whatever they wanted. For example, I was clearing my plate after staff meal and I took a bite of it. He came back and told me I wasn’t allowed to do that unless I asked him to. A few minutes later another male employee was standing there eating and he walked right by him and didn’t say anything. The night before I was fired, he told me to do an unreasonable task that wasn’t my job, and I told him that the management team personally told me it wasn’t my job. He then raised his voice at me on the floor and told me that he didn’t care what the management team had to say and that he was the manager. The next day, the management team told me that I wasn’t taking guidance and that they were terminating me without getting the full story. I had spoke to the female manager previously, and I explained to her that this server didn’t like me and she understood.

Do you think any of this is worth bringing to the ministry of labour? Many of the servers agree that for a fine dining restaurant, the way that things are handled is completely unprofessional. What are my options?