Two black men have filed a $12 million bias suit claiming a waitress at a Long Island Friendly’s restaurant refused to serve them but waited on whites who arrived after them.
The suit, filed against the restaurant chain in state Supreme Court in Queens, also charges Friendly’s with a pattern of ignoring black customers.
Arthur Spencer, 38, a city Correction captain, and his friend James Sease, 39, a construction worker, say they were refused service last Dec. 23 at the Friendly’s on Hempstead Turnpike in East Meadow.
Spencer said a white waitress ignored them but quickly served a white couple that came in 20 minutes after they did.
“She took the white couple’s order and then left,” said Spencer, who lives in Queens.
Spencer said the manager also ignored him.
After another 30 minutes passed – during which they say the same waitress served two other white couples – a second white waitress came to their table.
“She told us ‘The other girl doesn’t want to serve you. I don’t have a thing with black people, I’m not prejudiced – I’ll serve you,'” Spencer said.
“I felt like I was a criminal – like we weren’t even human. It was a slap in the face. My grandparents used to have to go to the back door of restaurants to get their food down south. I didn’t think it would ever happen to me.”
The men gave their order to the second waitress but an angry Spencer called the Nassau County Police – who advised them that no racial epithets had been used, so it was a civil, not a criminal, matter.
“It was a shock. It’s sad,” said Sease, of Uniondale.
“It’s not right” Spencer said he Sease went to lawyer Arthur Forman because he felt humiliated and degraded by the experience and because the woman still works at the restaurant.
A manager at the restaurant yesterday declined to comment on the incident but confirmed the waitress still works there.
Friendly Ice Cream Corp. Spokeswoman Vivian Brooks at the firm’s corporate headquarters in Wilbraham, Mass., said she was unaware of the alleged incident.
“Certainly, the situation you have described is a serious one,” she said. “It would have to be investigated.”