Companies, Hit With Suits, Find Customer Isn’t Always Right

Nicholas Drayton-Hamilton worked for two years at a Capital One branch in Rockaway Park, N.Y., and says customers called him a gorilla, used racial slurs including the N-word, and told him he didn’t belong there because he’s black.

“When these things would happen, I would report it,” Hamilton told Bloomberg Law, but “nothing was ever done.” Hamilton was fired, he said, after one customer visited the branch three times in one week, escalating his verbal racial attacks, until Hamilton stepped outside to stop the behavior.

He sued Capital One late last month, alleging that he was racially harassed by customers, ...