Today’s wild Ellen story comes to you courtesy of a former waitress, who claims the embattled talk show host tried to have her fired from a restaurant gig for having chipped nail polish.
Comedian Chris Farah first made the allegations in a March Twitter thread about horrible run-ins with Ellen, and this week, told her story to the US branch of the Daily Mail.
Farah says that she was working at vegan restaurant Real Food Daily in Los Angeles in 2014, when she waited on the host and her Australian wife, Portia de Rossi.
She claims that the service went well, but that she was called in to her managers’ office a week later, and told that Ellen had made a complaint about her.
Inside Edition tonight CBS 7pm PST pic.twitter.com/i2WAfPdXRO
— Chris Farah (@ChrisLFarah) August 7, 2020
Initially, Farah believed that she was being called in because Ellen wanted to pay her a compliment, telling the Daily Mail:
“I 100 percent thought it was a good thing. She was friends with the owner, and in my mind I was like ”oh this is going to be a really good thing for me. She wants me to come on her show and serve mini cashew cheeses to the audience in some adorable way.””
Farah’s bosses then revealed that the host had complained that her nail polish was chipped during service, and that they wanted to suspend her for two weeks. She was understandably unhappy, saying:
“She really went out of her way to try to hurt someone who was beneath her and serving her. You’re going to try to take money away from me for two weeks because you don’t like the way my nails looked? It’s shitty. It’s not anything akin to her image of ”be kind”. It’s unnecessarily cruel and out of touch, and doesn’t understand the repercussions. It’s a crazy thing to do.”
Farah added that she had closed the restaurant late the night before and opened again early the next morning, which meant she would not have had the time to fix her manicure, but that irrespective of that, she was friendly and professional in carrying out her job.
She has since quit her waitressing gig to pursue a comedy career, but says that the experience left her feeling like Ellen “somewhat gets off on perpetrating misery on others”, and that there is something “sadistic” behind her “be kind” facade.
In recent weeks, a number of current and former Ellen staffers have come forward with allegations of a “toxic work environment”, and several senior production staff have been accused of racism as well as sexual harassment of lower-level employees.
There are rumours that the host may walk away from her popular talk show, but nothing is yet confirmed.
