A waiter fired for being aggressive towards his co-workers has claimed he is being discriminated against because his French culture means he is more “direct and expressive”. 

Guillaume Rey, who worked for a Vancouver restaurant, has filed a complaint to British Columbia’s human rights tribunal against his former employer claiming they are discriminating against his culture.

The restaurant, operated by Cara Operations, has accused Rey of violating its code of conduct and said his bad behaviour continued despite verbal warnings and written performance reviews.

But in a written decision dated March 7, the tribunal denied the restaurant’s attempt to have Rey’s complaint dismissed.

Milestones agreed that Rey was good at his job, but told the tribunal he was spoken to multiple times about his conduct toward co-workers.

Rey was reprimanded for having arguments with other staff and “bothering” management, and after being temporarily suspended he was fired in August 2017.

“The General Manager told Mr Rey that he was being terminated for being aggressive toward other staff members. During this meeting, Mr Rey said that he was being terminated because of his French culture,” the decision reads.

“This was repeated in an email to Human Resources, in which Mr Rey alleged that the accusations against him were ‘discrimination against my culture’, which ‘tends to be more direct and expressive.’”

Milestones denies discriminating against Rey and says he was fired because his behaviour violated a workplace policy on respectful behaviour.

The case will now go to a hearing where Rey will have to explain why his French heritage could be misinterpreted as a violation of workplace standards.