Students at Wilfrid Laurier are outraged after the operator of a popular campus café was fired for posting a tongue-in-cheek ad looking for a “slave.”
Sandor Dosman, who runs Veritas Café at the Waterloo, Ont., university, said the school’s Graduate Students’ Association called him into its boardroom on Monday, showed him a copy of the ad he posted and terminated his contract.
“I had the ad in front of me, saying, ‘What was it? Was it the word slave? Was it the word kill? As in try not to kill our customers?” he said. “I dug a little bit and said is there something more to this? But they just said, ‘No, it’s because of this ad,’ and that’s it.”
The student group had two security guards escort Dosman off campus. The café, which was set to close next week for the holidays, was shut down, too.
Dosman, who ran the cafe for nearly five years, posted the ad in late November in the Facebook group “Food in the Waterloo Region.” He said the ad received a good response, with many people applying for the job and others sending him messages complimenting his humour.
“I need a new slave (full-time staff member) to boss (mentor) around at Veritas Café,” Dosman wrote in the posting.
“Food safety certificate would help your cause too (we try not to kill our customers). We also operate a food truck (so man buns and tattoos are OK). But the truck is shut down for the winter so you will have time to grow that man bun or get inked (I won’t hold it against you if you don’t).”
Up until this week, Dosman said he never had any issues with the members of the students’ association, and their relationship had been “100 per cent positive.”
“They were my customers, they were my friends,” he said. “To have this happen is very shocking.”
“This little, silly, tongue-in-cheek help wanted ad, that caused this. If it was something bigger, like I violated the liquor licence or there was an altercation … the punishment would fit the crime. This doesn’t.”
Samantha Deeming, president and chief executive officer of the students’ association, said in a statement that it “will not be making any further public comment about the termination” but confirmed the group is “working diligently on a plan to re-open the cafe in January.”
Students who frequented Veritas Café are stunned. After learning about Dosman’s dismissal, two fourth-year political science and legal studies students started a petition on Thursday to have him reinstated.
As of Friday afternoon, the online petition had more than 600 signatures.
“He’s built a great community relationship with the people around Laurier,” said Michael Piaseczny, who co-started the petition.
“Any person would understand that Mr. Dosman’s rhetoric is different than practice,” he said. “He wasn’t getting any bite on his posting for jobs so he decided to connect with the student populus in a humorous manner and made jokes about man buns and tattoos.”
To have this happen is very shocking.
Even the former president of the students’ association, Robert P. Bruce, is against the group’s actions. On Friday, Laurier’s campus newspaper, the Cord, published an open letter from Bruce to the association, calling the incident a “mistake.”
“I am deeply disappointed and embarrassed by your actions over the course of the past few days,” Bruce wrote.
“If one lapse of good judgment is enough to condemn a man that spent the greater part of four and a half years supporting your community, then in turn, your own lapse of good judgment in this one situation is enough for your membership and the community to act against you.”
As the cafe is mostly visited by students and faculty, Dosman said he is going to miss the close relationships he built with his customers.
“You know their names, you know what they drink, you know how much sugar they take in their coffee,” he said. “Now that’s all been taken away.”
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