Well, this is becoming interesting. I used to work in a video game arcade and the owner made no bones about refusing to let in some people he considered "undesirable." It was always a highly personal decision for him; he never felt the need to justify his decision to bar someone from the arcade. His argument? What looks like a "public space" is, in fact, a space (and service) provided by a private, and privately-owned, company (that of his family): as such, he is well within his rights to offer or deny his services to whomever he very well pleases. I'm still not sure what to make of his view of things.
We always worked the shift alone (i.e., each of the three employees had their own shift) and, aside from an early morning visit to pick up the previous day's take, the boss was rarely there. He did drop by on occasion, and, once, he caught an "undesirable" playing a VLT. The boss came up to me and asked why I let him in and let him play. "Because," I said, "in the hour and a half he's been here, he's already spent $400." I told him that I wanted his business to be healthy because, in the end, the customers are the ones who gave me my paycheck, not the boss. If he didn't want to deal with "undesirables," then he should just stand back and let us front-line people deal with them. In the five years I worked there, I only met one customer I could consider undesirable (bomb threats, death threats, threats against the lives of my boss's daughters) and I did the sensible thing and let the local PD deal with this individual (he'd stabbed my colleague through the hand with an X-Acto knife).
Anyway, all this to say that, as opposed to my grumbly, opinionated, boss, all three of us had become masters of diplomacy and tactfulness. Given the kind of money that customers spent there, we had to be. And I was never taken with his argument that he had a right to pick and choose who could play. It just didn't make much sense to me, from a business standpoint, let alone from a legal standpoint. I'm not sure what Montreal's by-laws have to say about discrimination, but I do know the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms prohibits it (here's a link to the full Charter, for reference: http://publicationsduquebec.gouv.qc.ca/ ... C12_A.html). The meat of the Charter is in the first four Chapters--the first 48 Paragraphs--and Paragraph 15 would seem to suggest my boss was wrong in his thinking. I know that East of Eight would be in hot water, if the club were in Montreal, just as much as it appears to be right now down there.
I'll be following this with interest. Of course, if it were up to me, as management, I'd make a public apology to the TG community, and fire that bartender's butt!
Love,
CJ
