A Bell Canada customer has been ordered to pay $4,000 by the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal for “discriminatory language” he used in a 2016 phone call with a customer service agent.
The customer, Jean-François Éthier, called to cancel his Bell service. The customer service representative, Mohamed Jied, told the customer his first name, causing the conversation to “degenerate significantly,” according to a Tribunal account of the recording.
“Take your bags, take your turban and get out of Quebec,” Éthier says in one part of the recorded conversation, to which Jied replies: “I am Canadian.”
The two individuals started hurling insults at one another.
“Get f—ed, okay? Young man, f— you …,” Jied is heard saying. Éthier replies: “You are all terrorists. That is guaranteed.”
Jied, who worked in the customer retention department for Nordia Inc., which handles customer service calls for Bell Canada. Jied was suspended six days later and fired four days after that, but he successfully appealed the decision at a Feb. 5 labour board hearing.