Court teaches lesson in handling abusive customer conduct

Workplace violence is a serious issue, and California has a statute that makes it relatively easy to obtain an injunction against a person who has displayed or has threatened workplace violence. But is aggressive, rude, impatient, and sarcastic conduct enough to justify a workplace violence injunction?

In certain cases, the involved parties don’t want to use their true name out of fear of possible harm. In the following case, some of the parties use only their initials.

Customer not always right

ML was a senior relationship banker at a Technology Credit Union (TCU) branch. His manager was AC. Matthew Mehdi Rafat is an attorney who was a customer/member of TCU. He is also hearing-impaired. AC first encountered Rafat at the branch sometime between 2015 and 2017. She had dealt with him four or five times over the years and considered him a “frequent customer.” She observed he was “easily agitated.” In her words: “If something didn’t happen the way that he expected it to . . . he kind of goes off, not on a lecture or a tangent, but he becomes aggressive.”

During an “unpleasant” June 2019 interaction between ML and Rafat, the attorney “ended up talking about the Holocaust and the borders.” ML contacted AC during the interaction, seeking an excuse to end the conversation. AC told her she “had to be careful when assisting” Rafat because he “would go off topic” and “get aggressive if things weren’t going his way.” ML found the interaction “awkward,” but she said she wasn’t concerned for her safety.