Sexism &
Service
“Any tipped employee, male or female, is on a
stage… [Servers] have to act in a certain way in order to receive those tips.
That being said, of course that opens an opportunity for women and men in the
industry to feel that they have to accept certain levels of harassment – be it
sexual or any form of rude behavior for guests” (Dr. Miranda Kitterlin).
I have worked within the
service industry for the past four and a half years (and counting). Out of
three of those years I was a waitress. The topic I wanted to focus on for my project
is the harassment and sexism that occurs within the service industry.
To become a server, at first, was a very difficult thing
to do. When the answer is always supposed to be yes, the first thing you lose as
a server is autonomy. The value of the service industry is that it is always
the customer first and you second. You are serving someone else, which by
definition puts them in a higher place than you are. A waitress needs the consumer
to get paid, and through creating this paradigm, thus needs to provide good service
in order to get paid well. In that there are only minimal instances where a
customer takes the harassment too far to get kicked out, a waitress is dealing
with the other 99% of subjugation which is acceptable within this industry. To
make a good living is to accept being touched, yelled at, glared at, ignored,
hit on. In the New York Times Sunday Review, “Can You Be a Waitress and a
Feminist?,” Brittany Bronson writes, “This week I will be sexually harassed on
the job, like many women in the Las Vegas service industry, I will count my
tips at the end of my shift and decide that it’s worth it.” Waitresses are
taught to desensitize themselves to what occurs, to end their shift and tell
themselves it doesn’t matter.
Thus, for my project I would like to create a video of a series
of testimonials from the servers that I work with. I work within a lounge atmosphere,
where the cocktail servers deal with varying forms of harassment on a daily
basis. I want to create a video of their testimonials. I would like to put on
display the reality of the service industry in order to bring attention to an
area where minimal is provided. In my interview I will first ask them to
explain some of the most unconformable situations that they have been in or
maybe some of the worst things that people have said to them. I would then ask
them their interpretations of how it made them feel in the moment. To put the
reality into perspective versus the fake reality often created by media, I was
also thinking about introjecting material of the depictions of women/men as
servers that are created in the media. I want to create this piece in order to
bring attention to the server experience.
Develop more research on objectification and patriarchal hierarchies
within the serving industry.
Some Not Fun Facts (Why
Serving Harassment is Largely a Women’s Issue)
-Full-Time Female
Servers make up 71% of Nation’s Service Industry (Earn 68% of what Male Serves
Earn)
-Nearly 37% of all sexual
harassment charges filed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are
from the Restaurant Industry
-90% of women in the restaurant
industry report experiencing some form of sexual harassment while on the job
-Over half of women in
the service industry report experiencing sexual harassment on a weekly basis
Links
This is a neat idea. I think so many people in the service industry feel like their voices are very limited. I work in customer service and while not every person is like this, I have dealt with a few that seem to forget you are a person. They talk down to you or flat out ignore you. I think narrowing that focus to women's experience in the hospitality industry could be hugely beneficial. I think there's a lot of potential too to tie in things we've discussed in class/readings.
ReplyDeleteI am very interested to see the end result of your project. I come from a house that has many people that have worked I the service industry, and I have been raised to view any person in customer service positions as people.Currently, I am working as a customer service associate, and I have experienced how easily people forget that I am a person. For these reasons, I appalled by the blatant disrespect that servers, especially women, have to go through in order to make their money. I hope that your project sheds light on how dangerous the notion that "the customer is always right can be." Good luck i can't wait to see it.
ReplyDeleteI am very interested to see the end result of your project. I come from a house that has many people that have worked I the service industry, and I have been raised to view any person in customer service positions as people.Currently, I am working as a customer service associate, and I have experienced how easily people forget that I am a person. For these reasons, I appalled by the blatant disrespect that servers, especially women, have to go through in order to make their money. I hope that your project sheds light on how dangerous the notion that "the customer is always right can be." Good luck i can't wait to see it.
ReplyDelete