A waitress at Busboys and Poets received a bad tip yesterday, not because of lousy service, but because of Middle Eastern politics.
After picking up a customer’s check, Nuria Kalifa opened the billfold to find a 10 percent gratuity instead of the usual 15 percent, accompanied by a note reading that the short shrift was because of her T-shirt decrying Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Kalifa-Jackson had been wearing a black shirt branded with the phrase “Occupation isn’t pretty,” a reference to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza.
Clearly, the shirt did not sit well on the customer, who wrote, “Displaying your political beliefs on your shirt cost you a % of your tip.” The customer also left a brochure obtained from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which yesterday held its annual policy conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Busboys and Poets is open about its progressive leanings, and does not prevent its employees from expressing their political beliefs. “We actually encourage it,” another restaurant employee says.
The employee says that that Kalifa’s shirt was purchased at the Global Exchange store, a separate business specializing in clothing made from fair trade-sourced materials, that operates out of the Busboys and Poets location. The shirt’s slogan is messaging developed by the social-justice group Code Pink in response to an Israeli cosmetics company with a factory located on a West Bank settlement.
UPDATE, 4:50 p.m.: In an interview, Kalifa says that she wore the shirt without knowing that AIPAC’s conference was taking place just a few blocks from the restaurant. But, she says, the “Occupation isn’t pretty” message is something she believes in. She got the shirt on the recommendation of a coworker who is also an activist for Code Pink.
“It looked like something I would want to support,” she says. “I wore the shirt. I liked the shirt.”
But the party that left the note along with the substandard tip was not the first group dining at Busboys and Poets yesterday to take offense to Kalifa’s attire. A group dining at an adjacent table approached the manager to say her shirt’s messaging was offensive, but they were rebuffed when the manager said that it was in line with the beliefs of Busboys and Poets owner Andy Shallal.
Kalifa says she has not suffered any fallout from the incident; after all, Busboys and Poets is a restaurant that dishes out left-wing politics along with its coffees and sandwiches. “We’re a restaurant with a specific political point of view,” Pamela Pinnock, the restaurant’s marketing director, says.
