A woman has claimed she was kicked out of a UPS store for speaking only in Spanish.
Cuban native Rebecca Prinstein, 47, has been in the US since 1992 and speaks some English, but prefers to communicate in Spanish, as she did at the Miami UPS store while seeking a $25 refund, the Miami Herald reported.
‘F**king Spanish,’ the clerk says in English, before adding in Spanish, ‘I know how to speak, but you can’t speak English.’
‘Why are you talking to me so nasty? Look, I am recording you because of your lack of respect,’ the woman tells the clerk in Spanish translated to English.
‘No, you don’t have respect for anyone, and I am not going to give you any respect,’ the clerk responds in Spanish, which the Herald chides as ‘faulty’.
Some moments later, the clerk says: ‘Out of my store. You’re disrupting my business.’
Ernesto Fernández said his wife Rebecca Prinstein had been ‘very stressed’ and ‘cries often’ following the incident in the UPS store in suburban Miami
The full context of the interaction, which occurred in the Kendall suburb of Miami, is not entirely clear from the video.
Printstein’s husband Ernesto Fernández, who was waiting in the car outside the store, blames the incident on President Donald Trump.
‘[These things] are happening because this president has given free rein to racism in this country,’ he told El Nuevo Herald.
‘They feel they have the right and the power to do and say anything. There was no reason for this to happen. She simply went there to do a transaction,’ said Fernández.
Prinstein was at the store with her mother, who only speaks Spanish, seeking a $25 refund for a package she sent that was returned to her after it couldn’t be delivered, according to Fernández.
The clerk ordered Prinstein out of the store, saying she was being disruptive. UPS says he is no longer employed at the company after the incident
The husband said his wife was an intelligent woman of Jewish descent who worked for a satellite television company in Miami, but had struggled mastering English.
He claims the UPS employee confronted him ‘with a screwdriver in his hand’ when he went back into the store after his wife left.
UPS said in a statement that the employee in the video no longer works for the company.
‘We value diversity,’ the company said in an apology over the incident.
Fernandez said that his wife had been ‘very stressed’ and ‘cries often’ following the incident.
‘She’s been feeling bad, doesn’t sleep. At first she was afraid of going near the store. That guy was very violent,’ he said.