Popular ABC show comes to East Meadow

A noticeably pregnant waitress named Mia served two women their orders at a diner booth. Then she sat down at a nearby table and took out her cell phone. Mia put her feet up on another chair and talked loudly on her phone. She stayed there for a while, ignoring her customers.

Mike, the manager of the diner, walked over and asked Mia to get back to work. She paid no attention. After repeated requests, she told him he couldn’t punish her because she was pregnant, referring to discrimination codes. Mike told her she was taking advantage of those rights, and before long he fired her on the spot.

If you were one of the customers where that scene transpired, how would you react? That was what John Quiñones, host of ABC’s “Primetime: What Would You Do?” asked some customers at the Empress Diner in East Meadow on March 17 during a filming of the popular show. 

“These things really happen, but usually they happen in darkness and in hiding, behind closed doors,” Quiñones told the Herald. “We bring the audience and put them face to face with an issue.”

“Mike” and “Mia” were both actors, as were some of the people sitting around the diner. But the two customers sitting in the booth unexpectedly became part of the show as they enjoyed their lunch. 

Florence Baum and her daughter, Carol, of Levittown, sympathized with the waitress. “I didn’t think it was fair that she would be fired,” Florence said. “Everybody has days that they’re just not that peppy.” The Baums said they are fans of the show and have been going to the diner for more than 10 years. 

Sisters JoAnn Papach, of Wantagh, and Terry Carroll, of Bellmore, who had met there for a late breakfast and didn’t know they were being filmed, were appalled by the manager’s treatment of the waitress. “If you want to say something to someone, you don’t do it in front of people — you take them on the side and you quietly say something,” said Carroll, “but he was doing it in front of other people and he was getting louder about it.”