Women/Sexual Harassment
What Being A Woman in The Food Service Industry Taught Me About Sexual Harassment
This is really happening.
Even though it’s been a while since the initial wave of the ‘me too’ movement, I recently took some time to think about the experiences I’ve had in my own life with sexual harassment.
As I reflected on the last 25 years, memories flooded into my brain that had essentially been buried there indefinitely.
The countless incidents I remember were just lying there, unacknowledged — banished from further thought. Most of the incidents of sexual harassment I experienced took place on the job — varying kinds of jobs. It didn’t matter if it was a restaurant, an office, or any other type of environment.
However, out of all of them, the one profession that left me feeling the most vulnerable was the years I spent in the food industry as a female food server.
When I was working as a waitress at age 22 (before there was internet or hashtags) I was hit on pretty frequently, usually by older men. The act of me serving certain men coffee or food was an open invitation for them to comment on my body.
These men had no qualms in telling me I had gained weight since the last time they’d been in or that they preferred the top I was wearing the day before. They also felt no shame in asking me very personal questions about my relationship status or why I didn’t have children yet.
None of these topics are anyone’s business — even a paying customer.
Nevertheless, it seemed, for a particular type of man, that to eat in a restaurant, to have a female wait on him, to pay for the food, and leave a big tip at the end was essentially his admission ticket to comment, harass, or feel somehow entitled to any part the woman serving him.
I know I’m not the only former server who has experienced this. There are probably people in the food industry experiencing it right now.
I once made lattes for a male customer and was told to stick my finger in the cup to make it sweeter instead of sugar. Who needed sugar when there was me?
Gross, right?
But what do you do? What do you do when you need that job desperately and the rent is due? What do you do when you know if you quit this job the next one will potentially bring the same kind of behavior along with it?
I could go on and on with this stuff. They are the same stories every female friend of mine has. Whether it’s a waitress/server/barista who puts up with creepy behavior because they live on tip money or an office associate who puts up with inappropriate comments from co-workers or a boss because of a fear of losing their job — it’s all the same.
Sometimes we don’t say anything because we’re worried about making ends meet. Sometimes we don’t say anything because we’re embarrassed.
But it’s also because sometimes it’s mind-boggling to accept that a certain experience is happening. It’s a stunned silence, a disbelief that this is really happening.
During my experience waiting tables, I learned that men towards women exhibit a normalized and accepted type of behavior. There are no lines, boundaries, or even regard for common decency. A woman’s appearance and personal life are always open topics of discussion whether she likes it or not for some men.
Not all men are this way which is why I say some.
I think and I hope that it’s getting better and I do know lots of men who would never condone that kind of behavior in themselves or from their peers.
Remembering my days working in the restaurant industry almost two decades ago highlights how issues like these were rarely talked about or even given a second thought back then.
Sexual harassment was normalized and accepted for a very long time, not just by women like me, but by everyone else witnessing it.
Though I’m pretty sure we’ve evolved past accepting that kind of behavior as normal, I also haven’t waited on tables for many years. I want to think that times have changed. I’ll leave it up to the readers to let me know if you see this behavior still happening to women in the workplace — to female servers, in particular.
Until then, I’ve decided to be optimistic that people and culture can change if enough people speak out about it.
