A Winnipeg woman says she was denied a pedicure at a nail salon because of her weight.
Kimberly Adie says the incident happened at A1 Nail Pampers in Winnipeg on Saturday, when she and her fiancé went in for a pedicure. Staff agreed to serve Adie's fiancé, but employees allegedly refused to do the same for Adie. "She said, 'You can't fit in the chair. You won't fit,'" Adie told CTV Winnipeg on Tuesday. "And she kept repeating it, over and over again."
The couple left the salon, ashamed.
"I'm sitting in the car and I'm gutted," Adie said. "I couldn't get out. I was crying my eyes out."
Salon owner Kim Lam said she's upset about how Adie was treated, and that everyone is welcome at A1 Nail Pampers. She also said she wants to make things right.
Lam explained that the salon was busy at the time Adie came in, and that there wasn't time to accommodate her properly.
She added that the chairs used for pedicures are expensive and have broken in the past. "Because (it) has happened already and people sometimes fall down," she told CTV Winnipeg.
"The damage is done," Adie said. "I was hurt. I don't want anyone else to experience that."
Adie said she plans to file a human rights complaint.
In an email statement to CTV Winnipeg on Monday, Isha Khan with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission said:
“The Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination in services available to the public, which includes stores and restaurants. Discrimination is defined as treating a person differently on the basis of one of the characteristics in The Code (such as age, sex, disability, ancestry etc.) but also as failing to reasonably accommodate the special needs of a person where those needs are based on one of those characteristics.”
With files from CTV Winnipeg’s Beth Macdonell
