Bodo’s Bagels workers at the Preston Ave. and Route 29 locations recently experienced two separate incidents of racial harassment. Owners responded by posting a message to Facebook condemning the harassment and calling for inclusivity.
At the Preston location, a man refused to go to a register manned by an African-American cashier. At the store on Route 29, a second incident occurred when another man in line made a discriminatory statement to women working in the store.
Workers at at the Bodo’s on Route 29 overheard a man in line talking to the people making his food. According to the workers, the man said, “Who’s making my sandwich? I don’t want that person making my sandwich.”
“There were three women back there, one was white, one was black and one was Hispanic, and none of them knew him,” Bodo’s co-owner Scott Smith said. “They hadn’t really heard [the comment] because they were busy with what they were doing, but when they started talking about it they figured out what was going on. It turned out later that customers who were in line with him had heard other more explicit things that we never heard.”
The managers did not respond immediately because they did not understand the meaning of what the man said, Smith said.
“What [the manager] thought was going on was something that happens all the time in the store — where someone will be talking to somebody back on the station who they know, making a joke with them,” Smith said. “But when he gave the guy his food, he had a wrong feeling about it.”
Smith said these types of incidents are extremely unusual and that he only deals with isolated incidents occasionally. He has been working at Bodo’s for 19 years and said he found it disturbing to have incidents so close together.
“They are years apart. They just never happen,” Smith said. “To have two of them right on top of each other is disturbing.”
Smith took to social media to address the harassment incidents with a Facebook post that has since been widely shared and liked.
“We responded to that situation with that post. Nothing about that post was any different than anything we have always done,” Smith said. “What’s different is that we have made it public and explicit, which never seemed to be necessary to do before.”
The post talks about the equality of all people and shares the restaurant’s desire to actively welcome everyone.
“By intentionally and actively welcoming everyone — and not just those whom we agree substantially with — we endeavor to foster an environment where everyone can feel good about being part of a community,” the post read.
Smith said the response to the post was much more than expected and mainly positive.
“We were really grateful for the response, it’s a heartening response,” Smith said. “Instead of being left with this very bad, negative interaction, you have all these wonderful positive, supportive reactions.”
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