Life is not blessing. It is a curse and racism

The owner could be quite racist – sometimes I’d hear him talk about customers and be pretty disgusted. He wasn’t particularly friendly to me, but I just got on with the job." “I’m proud of my Turkish heritage, and I’ve really only experienced racism a couple of times in my life. I had this one terrible job in a restaurant. I liked the hours, because I was still studying, but it wasn’t a great place to work. The owner could be quite racist – sometimes I’d hear him talk about customers and be pretty disgusted. He wasn’t particularly friendly to me, but I just got on with the job. One day, he called me into a meeting and accused me of stealing. I denied it and asked what evidence he had. I’m a hard worker and I just wouldn’t do something like that. He told me my shifts would be suspended while he ‘investigated’ further. It wasn’t clear how he intended to do this, but it meant I lost a week’s worth of shifts. I spoke to a couple of the other staff, all Aussies, and none of them had to meet with him like that. When I did come back, I could tell he’d talked about me to the other staff. I felt like I was on the outer, and a couple of them were overtly hostile. They’d make fun of my accent and say disparaging things about Turkish people, Muslims and migrants. I ended up quitting the job, but I didn’t want anyone else to go through that. A friend put me in touch with the Commission and they arranged a meeting with the owner of the bar. He was pretty defensive and a bit reluctant to admit fault, but he agreed to pay me a small amount of compensation and provide a written reference for me.” The incidents portrayed in this story are inspired by real complaints received by the Commission, but all names and other identifying details have been changed.