On Wednesday, a video appeared on social media in which a Movado customer told how he had been given a free meal by an employee at the store in Jerusalem’s al-Arroub neighborhood, just blocks from the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.
The customer, identified only as “Z” in the video, was sitting in front of a Movadore kiosk when the employee approached him and asked if he wanted to order something, Z said.
“She said she could give me something,” Z said in the interview posted on Facebook.
“I asked her why she said she would give me free food, and she said that she was an employee of Movadores and that she would take care of the customer.”
“I don’t know why she did that,” Z added.
“But I told her I would ask her later if she could come again.”
After that, Z returned to his seat and asked the store’s employee if he could get some food, to which the employee responded: “Of course you can come again,” Z told The Jerusalem Posts.
“And I asked if it was okay to go and get a drink.”
The video, which was posted to social media by “Z,” went viral, garnering more than 3,300 likes and 1,700 shares.
Z, who works at a kiosk in a nearby mall, told The Post he had heard about the incident on Facebook but did not know what the employee had done to provoke him.
“The customer said he had the same feeling and that he had a feeling that this employee would try to make him feel inferior, that she wanted to humiliate him, that I was inferior and that I didn’t deserve to get free food,” he said.
Z told the Jerusalem Post he contacted the Israeli government and that his request for free food had been denied.
“So I went to the police,” he explained.
“When I arrived, the police officer asked me to tell them what had happened.
When I told them, he was shocked and I said, ‘This is not normal, what did you do to provoke me?’
And he said, No, he didn’t do anything to provoke you.
He was very polite.
But then he started to tell me that I had a right to complain about this incident, and I told him that I’m not an employee.”
The officer then said that he would investigate the matter.
“He told me that they have the right to investigate.
I said I’m very happy, and he gave me the number of the police, and after that he said that they will take the complaint,” Z explained.
The Israeli government, which had announced on Monday that it would launch an investigation into the incident, had declined to comment on the incident.