Recent incident involving bar employee highlights importance of effective training, reporting mechanisms, and investigations, say experts
Earlier this month, a 43-year-old man in Guelph, Ont. faced multiple charges after allegedly abducting a bar employee against their will.
According to local police, the incident occurred after a co-worker dropped off a female bar employee at home, and she then noticed a man—a regular customer—following her. The customer convinced the woman to get in his car to talk.
Once inside, the customer ignored the employee’s request to be let out and locked the doors. She eventually managed to escape with the help of another driver.
The next day, the man called her 16 times, claiming he wanted to return items she had left in his car. He is now charged with kidnapping, forcible confinement, and criminal harassment, according to police.
While abduction cases like this are rare, the incident highlights ongoing harassment and abuse faced by hospitality workers.
“We can't really create an environment where we're training staff for every possible scenario,” says Nita Chhinzer, associate professor of human resources at the University of Guelph. “We generally train for every plausible scenario. And stalking is a plausible scenario. Kidnapping is not.”
A 2023 survey conducted by Western University found that more than half—57.9 per cent—of respondents experienced at least one incident of sexual harassment and violence in the workplace. Of those, 25.7 per cent said it involved third parties, such as customers and members of the public.
A study published the year prior in partnership between Western University and the Canadian Labour Congress found similar results, with 71.4 per cent of survey respondents reporting some form of harassment—28 per cent involving third parties such as customers.
The Guelph incident raises questions about the obligations that employers have—especially in hospitality—in protecting staff from customer abuse.
“If we had addressed the stalking, maybe we would not have escalated to the point of kidnapping,” Chhinzer says.
According to Christine Ashton, partner at Wilson Vukelich Law, Ontario's Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) might not necessarily apply in a situation like the Guelph case. That’s because employers are not responsible for employee safety if incidents happen off the clock or off company property—even if the harasser is a customer at the bar.
However, she says employers are still accountable for addressing any harassment that occurs during the shift.
“Speaking generally, if a worker has concerns that a specific individual poses a danger to them, the employer should support the worker in contacting the police and in ensuring a safe work environment,” Ashton explains. “This could involve adjusting work hours, ensuring a coworker is always present, enhancing security measures, etc.”
Under OHSA, employers are required to take all reasonable steps to protect workers from workplace harassment and violence. This includes interactions between workers and customers, or anyone else who may be at the workplace, Ashton says.
Employers must also prepare policies and procedures based on a risk assessment of their workplace. These policies must be in writing, posted in a visible area, and reviewed at least once a year. Additionally, employers are required to provide adequate training to their staff.
She stresses that employers must realistically assess workplace risks in order to develop effective policies and procedures to mitigate them.
“For example, pharmacies are finding themselves to be more prone now to incidents of workplace violence due to robberies... so to mitigate some of those exposures there... you may want to have a policy that when it's down to only one person working, you have the door locked, and essentially a customer would have to ring a bell in order to come in,” Ashton says.
Ashton explains that there is no universal standard across security features or protocols. However, in the event of a prosecution, the Ministry of Labour would assess whether the employer took reasonable steps to mitigate risk and ensure employee safety.
“As an employer, if you were facing a possible OHSA prosecution and you were on the stand and the Crown asked you: ‘If you could do it over again, would you do anything differently?’ And if your answer [to] that question is yes... then...you have violated the OHSA because there was something reasonable that you agree that you would have done,” she says.
Ashton notes that courts will frequently consider what risk mitigation measures other businesses have used, what risks were disregarded, and whether employers breached their own safety policies.
Failing to act could result in OHSA prosecutions, Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) claims, or even damages under the province’s Human Rights Code, she adds.
So, what are reasonable steps employers can take? According to Chhinzer, it starts with training that actually works.
In many hospitality industries with high turnover rates, employers hire staff quickly and train them slowly—if at all, she says.
“Someone might be hired on Wednesday, but they don't get the training until the next batch of training happens.” That delay can make it harder to train employees on OHSA or how to handle harassment.
Even when training is offered, it often fails to address real-life challenges. Whether it’s handbooks, online modules, or lecture-style sessions, Chhinzer notes these formats are limited in their impact.
She encourages employers to focus instead on experiential training, which can be done through simulation and class exercises.
“We actually go through an in-class exercise where someone pretends to be the aggravator and someone pretends to be the employee, and how they can de-escalate issues, what tools are available, what their options are,” she explains.
Chhinzer adds that training often fails to account for power imbalances, and in many hospitality businesses, there’s a culture of the customer being the “king.”
“There’s high levels of hostility from the customer, and the front line has to bear that hostility, even though they're not the decision- makers, even though they might not have had any impact on the situation,” she says.
This dynamic often discourages employees from speaking out about mistreatment, Chhinzer notes. That’s where she says managers come in.
When things escalate, Chhinzer says managers tend to be the first line of support. That’s why they, too, need training—especially as many are promoted from within.
“So, someone who is great at, say, being a bus person or a waiter gets promoted up to assistant manager or management,” she explains.
Chhinzer says managers need to know how to prioritize, respond, and advocate for their employees. They also play a role in coaching and creating open forums for workers to report inappropriate behaviour. However, there can be an opposite effect if they are toxic.
In these workplaces, there is often a high degree of toxicity—particularly from managers, Chhinzer notes. That becomes a major hurdle.
“If these managers build a subculture of fear, then the individual can't see the manager as a resource for safety, and that's very important to the training,” she adds.
While training is an important tool, it shouldn’t be the first or only line of defence against customer harassment, says Kristy Cork, a specialized consultant at Workplace Safety & Prevention Services (WSPS).
Employers should prioritize creating changes in their own processes that prevent issues from arising in the first place.
“Training really only goes so far, because you're still allowing that hazard to interact with the worker,” she says. “But if we can prevent people from being agitated in the first place, that's so much more effective.”
That can mean, for example, fixing processes in restaurants—like making sure to book enough time per table so people aren't left waiting and becoming impatient, Cork says.
Prevention, she adds, is about understanding what causes people to escalate and recognizing the unique nature of each workplace and how people interact within it.
So, if employers change how things operate—by improving systems or processes—staff won't always have to be the ones responsible for de-escalating situations, Cork says.
The Western University report also found significant barriers to reporting abuse. Some survey respondents who did report their incidents believed that reporting either made the situation worse or had no effect. Additionally, many were dissatisfied with the responses they received from supervisors, HR, and managers.
Underreporting—and the lack of encouragement to report—is a major issue, Cork says. It undermines efforts to improve training and implement safeguards to protect employees from customer abuse.
“When employers don't know what's going on... when they don't know what people are experiencing, what the level of harm because people don't report, then it doesn't make it a priority for employers to focus on,” she says.
Cork encourages employers to focus on making employees feel safe to report—and to implement reporting mechanisms that are quick and accessible.
“A server or someone that works in the hospitality sector doesn't have 25 minutes to stop and fill out this incident report and probably doesn't want to stay late at the end of their shift or use their break to fill this out,” she explains.
Ashton adds that a proper report form should include the nature of the incident, the alleged perpetrator and victim, the time of the event, and any potential witnesses in order for employers to conduct a thorough investigation.
“There is an obligation to still investigate and address workplace violence harassment, even if the employee or worker who's impacted doesn't want it to be investigated for whatever reason,” she says.
