An Arab banquet waiter at the legendary Waldorf-Astoria hotel says he was forced to wear different name tags at work to prevent guests from being frightened by being served by someone named Mohamed.
Mohamed Kotbi said the first time he was asked to do so was on Sept. 13, 2001 — two days after the attacks on the Twin Towers. Kotbi, who has worked for the hotel since December 1984, said he was given a name tag that said, “John.”
“I put it on. I was in shock,” the Muslim man said. When he later went to complain to hotel management, he said he was told, “We don’t want to scare our guests.” [he] was eventually given a name tag with his last name, Kotbi.
This past November, however, he was given a name tag that said, “Edgar.” Kotbi said he complained and was told by a manager, “It’s better to be Edgar than Mohamed today.” Now he is suing the Waldorf for religious and racial discrimination, charging that hotel management has created a “hostile work environment” with the nametag shenanigans and its failure to stop a group of co-workers from tormenting him.
I can atest that this does not happen in Jerusalem. All Arab workers in the hotels I have visited have their Arabic names on their nametags.
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Just the other night, I had dinner with friends in the dining room of the Crown Plaza Hotel in Jerusalem. The waiter's name was Mohammed, so I chatted with him a bit (in my broken Hebrew & Arabic as well as in English) to learn that he has Israeli citizenship and is studying calculus at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, working in the hotel dining room to pay his way.
You are right - what happened with Mohamed Kotbi in New York would NEVER happen here!
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