A Story of an Actor (Phillip Salvador) Who Became a Hero For a Day
On December 16, 2014, veteran actor Phillip Salvador with his wife, Emma Ledesma, went to Mega Mall to have a dinner at the Italian restaurant known as Sbarro. They were having a good time until Emma noticed a certain foreigner shouting and scolding a Filipina waitress in the restaurant. He was yelling at her and called the waitress as "stupid" and "idiot".
Philip Salvador couldn't take what he heard. He was totally pissed off seeing the waitress crying at the middle of the crowd. He stood up and approached the foreigner. The man asked Phillip, "who are you and why are you trying to get in between the waitress and me?" The actor said that it's no longer his business. Then Salvador said, "you don’t insult Filipinos, let’s get out of this place, I’m going to fight you. You are only good in yelling on these women.”
Salvador revealed that the foreigner almost called a police but he did not walk away, instead he stood for himself and wanted to defend the waitress.
A certain report mentioned that the foreigner was a Norwegian National. He was about 6 feet and he seems to be in his mid 40's. He was reportedly mad at the waitress because he didn’t get the spaghetti he ordered.
Many Filipino netizens praised the deed of Phillip Salvador and Emma Ledesma for defending the rights of the helpless waitress.
One of a Norwegian also speaks by commenting this:
Good! I'm a Norwegian myself, and this kind of behaviour should not be tolerated, it would certainly not be tolerated in a restaurant in Norway. In the same time, it would also be good to raise a question about foreigner’s rights and how foreigners are generally treated in the Philippines. We generally have no rights at all. If we get in to a situation like an accident, it doesn't matter who's fault it is, the foreigner is always the one who is blamed and has to pay everything, we always get this "white tax" when dealing with government and in certain places where the prices aren't posted. We also constantly get these stupid "hey joe" comments and are generally viewed as a walking dollar sign. Taking this into account, you can sort of understand why a foreigner sometimes "loses it" when he feels it's the last drop that makes him go off. I'm not defending this Norwegian guy for what he did, I would probably step in as well if I saw some foreigner go off on a waitress like that, but I'm also shedding some light on how it is to be a foreigner in the Philippines. I've lived here for 5 years now, and the pros outweighs the cons by far and I love it here, but there are some things that makes it difficult to be a foreigner here.
Far from the issue, no one is really allowed to humiliate people. Whether you’re a foreigner or a Filipino, you cannot scream or yell at anyone as if you are superior than them.