Iqaluit restaurant apologizes for refusing service to customer with disability
“I want my voice to be heard and to stand up for myself and my people”
Naiomie Hanson-Akavak was refused service when she tried to order food for delivery from Iqaluit’s The Snack restaurant. She has cerebral palsy which makes her speech slurred. Hanson-Akavak said an employee told her to call back when she was sober. (PHOTO BY COURTNEY EDGAR)
An Iqaluit restaurant has apologized after an employee accused an Inuk woman with a disability of being drunk last week and refused to take her home delivery order.
Naiomie Hanson-Akavak, an Iqaluit resident, lives with cerebral palsy and speaks with slurred speech. She has lived in Iqaluit her entire life and is a regular customer of The Snack.
However, when she tried to order a meal and a soda from The Snack over the phone on Tuesday, Dec. 4, she had to repeat herself four times, she said, and was told to call back when she was sober.
According to Hanson-Akavak, the employee also spoke about Inuit “being drunk at all times of the day.”
Hanson-Akavak said she had not been drinking, and is hurt and disgusted by the comment.
This was not the first time it happened to her, she said—and not even the first time at The Snack.
Hanson-Akavak said this kind of judgment happens sometimes at other restaurants and bars around the city. This is the third time within the last two years.
“I want my voice to be heard and to stand up for myself and my people,” she said.
Since Hanson-Akavak posted about the interaction on social media, The Snack’s owner apologized to her in an email, she said.
Idris Omar, The Snack’s social media and public relations manager, told Nunatsiaq News that the restaurant has already contacted the Nunavummi Disabilities Makinnasuaqtiit Society to help them provide training for all staff about serving customers with special needs.
Omar said this training will begin in January 2019.
The restaurant also posted a response on The Snack’s Facebook page shortly after Hanson-Akavak went public with her interaction.
In the response, The Snack said the staff member who took Hanson-Akavak’s phone call on Dec. 4 violated the restaurant’s customer service policy, which was “both unprofessional and discriminatory.”
“We are taking every step necessary to advance our customer relations, including but not limited to suspending and/or terminating the employment of the staff who violated our customer service policy,” the post from The Snack’s management read.
Additionally, it said the restaurant would begin new training for staff to avoid these types of situations.
“It’s our goal that all our customers go through an extremely satisfying experience and we will take any steps necessary to achieve this goal,” the post said.
Still, for Hanson-Akavak, it will take some time for her to go back to being a Snack customer.
“They need to know how to not judge people for how they sound or how they look, and to take time to be patient with them,” Hanson-Akavak said.
I just learned not to order out in Iqaluit. All food is overly expensive and for the most part all the food is under par and not very good.
Maybe they should have cultural training and sensitivity training and well…
The comment about all Inuit being drunk at any time of day should not be overlooked. The person should be fired for that alone. Failure to act on that sends a message that there is a culture of racism toward indigenous people among the staff and management. When there is a culture of racism in a workplace,
management puts themselves in a position where they can’t really fire an employee when they’re
caught making racist comments
because management has
tolerated or encouraged it for a
long time.
And for heaven’s sakes, if you can keep track of customers enought to blacklist them (as Snack does), you can keep track of a customer like Naiomie, so that she gets treated like the decent, loyal person that she is. Keep her number by the phone, with a note. Do they not have differently abled people in Quebec?
I think some sensitivity training all across the board is long overdue. The racism in the north certainly goes both ways.
If it was the other way around and the establishment said there are francophones drunk any time of the day I think this place would be shut down by Quebecers for being upset. Not being served for the way you talk and assuming you are drunk for being a francophone.
How does that look the other way around?
@ Peter – I think you place too much confidence on quebecers being able to shut a place down based on one of them being accused of being drunk..You might be shocked to see business actually pick up if quebecers boycotted an establishment.
Non Inuit make widely baseless generalizations about Inuit (like being drunk all the time) and Inuit make generally baseless generalizations about non Inuit (like having no clue about managing resources in “their” land). Same like the English don’t like the french and vise-versa.
That’s how it goes both ways. You’re welcome for the lesson.
Yes it does go both ways but for some reason it seems to be more with certain people from certain places. But don’t you agree that European Canadians aren’t that great at managing resources and there is a long history of that? But at least it is slowly starting to improve and baby steps are taken in the right direction.
Ignorance is also a huge problem but thank you for trying to give a lesson.
I can’t believe the business that used to be a drug front is providing bad customer service. I’m shocked.
If people would actually punish businesses like this with their wallets instead of their angry Facebook posts, they’d change. But I’ve seen just as many Snack cars this week than I ever did, speeding around town like madmen.
They should give her free food for life. Deliver to her home on a daily basis. Let’s see how sorry they are.
In the least, give Naiomie a gift certificate to show courtesy.
What time of the day did she phone to order food? Just curious.
I was having dinner at snack one evening in November and I witnessed another incident where Kululaa, an Iqaluit resident who also has disability and speech impediment as well was being refused service at the snack, I noticed the lady behind the counter was looking at him with dismay as he approached the counter. She refused to serve him initially as she said that he is drunk until I intervened and said he is not drunk, he has disability. I have not gone back to the snack nor will I order from them until they stop discriminating against Inuit.