‘Just a brutal place to work’: Baltimore-area workers on why they stay, go or return to restaurant jobs

Another customer at Cafe Troia called him “amigo” after demanding to know why the restaurant didn’t have a favorite dish on the menu. Celebrado-Royer was rattled. “If he was Latino, and called me amigo, I’d be fine,” says Celebrado-Royer, who studied Spanish language at Towson and also speaks French, German and several other languages. “But he was a white man, saying ‘amigo’ in a very derogatory way just because he didn’t get the food that he wants.”