Six patrons of the Bridgeton location of Hotshots Sports Bar & Grill are suing the chain and its owner for discrimination.
While gathered at the bar to watch a Cardinals World Series game, the plaintiffs charge that they were essentially refused service because they are black. The weirdest part? The suit alleges the waitresses were outed as racist by their own manager.
We know what you're thinking. How could something go so awry at an establishment known for "School Girl Thursdays"? Well, here's how it allegedly went down.
The plaintiffs are made up of two separate parties. On October 22, 2011, Russell Green, Michael Shelton, Angela Millstone, and Michele Scott stopped by the Bridgeton location of Hotshots to watch game three of the World Series. A little later on, Leslie Deleon and Percy Green arrived together and took a seat at a nearby table (no relation to the famed civil rights leader Percy Green). Deleon, the Greens, and Shelton are African American.
A precocious young lady called only "Server 1" initially breezed past both groups, while waiting on white customers. When she eventually came over, the suit alleges she was "rude and abrupt" to Green and Shelton. After waiting an extremely long time again, the first group started getting desperate, even behaving like they were "waving an airplane into an airport terminal." Server 1 allegedly continued to ignore them, sitting down to chat with a group of white customers. When Deleon became frustrated and tried waving her over, Server 1 allegedly ducked behind a pole.
When the first group complained to a manager, he replaced Server 1 with Server 2, though he did not see the point, supposedly remarking that Server 2 is "just as racist as the first one." When the second group also complained about Server 1, the same manager gestured to the first group and said he'd been dealing with the problem all night. The suit claims he told Deleon and Green that all the servers were "so racist here."
"All white people are racist," he allegedly said.
