Muslim waitress sues for over dress, gets £3k

[lbksig]

@Buttercup

But back to the OP, guys, if you had always worn a regular white shirt and black pants to work and then were suddenly told you HAD TO wear a tight white tank top and cycling shorts, would you shrug and say ‘OK’? Of course, it might not bother you, but it might. Saying it’s your religion allows an easily understandable, codified excuse. She can’t say; ‘I felt fat in in, and trashy, and I hated being told I had to put myself on show or be unemployed again’. the more I think about it, the less problem I have with the award, which certainly won’t keep her long in London.

I would agree that long term employees would have a valid complaint about their work changing their uniform. 8 days doesn’t make her a long term employee though and she doesn’t warrant an award that large for “hurt feelings and loss of earnings”.
That would be about two months wages for a waitress at a bar right?

The other thing I’d like to know is how much different the red dress is from her normal work uniform. If the normal uniform is a regular white shirt and black pants like you said, then she’d have a legitimate complaint. If the normal uniform for the Rocket bar looks like something from Hooters, then it would be a different case.

[Chris]

During the hiring process, you learn about what you are expected to do: this is known as the “job description”. If the bar failed to inform her that she would later be required to wear a slinky outfit, and she only found out after she agreed to start working, then yes, I could see that she has a case. But if the bar told her, and she agreed to take on the job knowing full well what she would have to wear, then she has no case.

In either case, though, there’s no way she deserves GBP3000.

[Buttercup]

It’s hardly the compo jackpot.

That would be about two months wages for a waitress at a bar right?

Thre months’ roughly, which is about what they’d have had to pay her is they fired her for not wearing it. She’s not exactly lucked out, here.

My sis does insurance fraud and according to her, there are much easier ways to get a lot more cash than this, which tends to make me think she was genuinely pissed off. She probably could have got cash for sex discrimination too.

[Dr_Jellyfish]

@Buttercup

But back to the OP, guys, if you had always worn a regular white shirt and black pants to work and then were suddenly told you HAD TO wear a tight white tank top and cycling shorts, would you shrug and say ‘OK’? Of course, it might not bother you, but it might. Saying it’s your religion allows an easily understandable, codified excuse. She can’t say; ‘I felt fat in in, and trashy, and I hated being told I had to put myself on show or be unemployed again’. the more I think about it, the less problem I have with the award, which certainly won’t keep her long in London.

If the headline was: Waitress sues for over dress, gets £3k, I wouldn’t have questioned it (and it probably wouldn’t have made the news). I just find it odd that religion comes into the picture, when surely her muslim beleifs would have stopped her working in a cocktail bar in the first place? I recon that kind of cancels out any religious base for her case.

[Lord_Lucan]

[quote=“Buttercup”]It’s hardly the compo jackpot.

That would be about two months wages for a waitress at a bar right?

Thre months’ roughly, which is about what they’d have had to pay her is they fired her for not wearing it. She’s not exactly lucked out, here.

My sis does insurance fraud and according to her, there are much easier ways to get a lot more cash than this, which tends to make me think she was genuinely pissed off. She probably could have got cash for sex discrimination too.[/quote]

I was thinking that too. A quick slip-and-fall can get you quite a few thousands. As can cutting your finger whilst slicing lemons.

[Elegua]

Well, she did try for 20k, so points for ambition.

[housecat]

I’d really like to agree that she should have gotten the money, but I can’t. I can’t see any way in which she should have had a case at all. That same religion she’s siting prohibits her to serve alcohol (I think, not completely sure) so I don’t know how she could have worked there anyway if this was an issue.

So, maybe, as Buttercup says, the religion was simply a handy excuse to complain and not have to wear the dress. But so what? A friend’s niece made the cheer team at her high school, but when the new uniforms where chosen, the skirts were so short, and the tops showed so much midriff that the girl felt umcomfortable wearing it. So did she sue? Although this is America and she probably could have, no she didn’t. She quit the team.

I get contact dermatitis on my hands rather easily. One summer I had part time job in a gas station. This was register work, but this fine establishment also offered things like deep-fried burritos. When the “cook” quit, I was told I’d have to take over her duties as well until someone else was hired. I said I could not do that because the almost constant need to wash my hands between the register and the kitchen would make them break out. I was right, too. Then I was laid off. Not fired, but not given any hours. When I asked why, it was because my hands “looked nasty.”

One Winter, I got contact dermatitis working as a gift wrapper for an up scale clothing store. I was simply fired because my hands looked bad to customers and I couldn’t really do my job anyway with my hands all yucky.

I guess I could have sued, right? But that’s silly! It wasn’t like these were careers, or like I had some sort of contracted position. I just moved on and found another crap job.

[TheGingerMan]

My hair hurts.
Give us.

[Sleepyhead]

[quote=“KingZog”]http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/06/16/muslim-bar-girl-wins-3k-compensation-after-made-to-serve-in-bright-red-dress-115875-21444651/

[quote]A muslim cocktail waitress who quit after refusing to wear a bright red dress for work has won almost £3,000 in compensation for sexual harassment.

Fata Lemes, 33, was handed the payout even though a tribunal panel rejected her claim that the dress was “sexually revealing and indecent”.

It concluded that the Bosnian Muslim “holds views about modesty and decency which some might think unusual in Britain”.

But it accepted that Miss Lemes genuinely believed that the short, low-cut dress was “disgusting” and made her look “like a prostitute”.

She told the tribunal she quit her job at the Rocket bar in London’s Mayfair after eight days as she “might as well be naked” in the dress.

She added: “I was brought up Muslim and am not used to wearing sexually attractive clothes.”

However, a Facebook picture of Miss Lemes emerged showing her in a skimpy outfit after the tribunal in December was finished.[/quote][/quote]

Her claim that wearing a low-cut top at the beach “isn’t relevant” is a joke. If modesty is her concern, why isn’t it a concern 24/7? :liar: :boo-hoo: The defence raising the beach-top picture is not the same as raising the sexual history of a rape victim. Nobody is forcing her to work there, and she’s choosing to wear the same type of clothes.

What’s not mentioned in the story is very relevant:

• Did she know about the dress before being hired?
• If she worked for eight days, was she wearing it in that time?
• Was the dress given to her after starting the job?

If the last one is true, then the bar owner is a jerk and should probably cough up. But if the first two are true, then she’s just a gold digging hypocrite too lazy to work…or she took the job to pretend to be offended so she could raise a stink about “oppressed musliims” and maybe get the bar shut down. After all, as others have mentioned, why would a muslim work in a place that sells alcohol?

[GuyInTaiwan]

I do find it a bit ironic that a bunch of people who (most likely) work in English teaching in Taiwan – an industry where bosses can be notoriously devious because they know your very ability to stay in the country depends upon your willingness to put up with their petty bullshit or be able to find someone else’s petty bullshit to put up with quickly (not so easy in this economic climate) – are so quick to pass off workers’ rights as though they’re not that important. Maybe this woman was an arseclown, gold-digger, or something else. Maybe this whole thing is ridiculous. Maybe she was genuinely exploited.

[Rascal]

There is no law against selling alcohol, there are many Muslims that work in bars in Malaysia or Indonesia that serve alcohol.
Muslims are just as selective in their values as Christians, or do you guys think everyone that considers him/herself a Christian live to the strictest rules of that religion?

This would be a no-story if she weren’t a Muslim; even she is exploiting the situation for her own gains she is just an individual, and surely there are many Christians that do so, too.

[Lord_Lucan]

The point is that she is claiming that wearing a certain dress is against her religion. However, one of the strictist rules in Islam is not drinking or selling alcohol. Therefore her religious convictions and no other issue are the point in question. Anything that calls her bona fides into question is relevant.

It is a criminal offence in Kelantan, for example, for a Muslim to be involved in the sale of alcohol. In other parts of Malaysia it is more or less up to the individual, but many working in bars get around this by not actually taking the money, merely delivering the drink and so on.

A Muslim working in a bar complaining about a cocktail dress is like a born-again Christian working as an assassin but wanting Sundays off.

[Rascal]

Don’t get me wrong, I actually voted “no”.

[Chuanzao_El_Ale_Dest]

[quote=“Lord Lucan”]
A Muslim working in a bar complaining about a cocktail dress is like a born-again Christian working as an assassin but wanting Sundays off.[/quote]

Pretty much.