Democratic Diva

Because ALL men have women served up to them as objectified commodities from infancy on. This leads many of them to think that their unwanted attention will be taken as a compliment. Women in the service industry have it really rough. They need their meager paychecks to survive and the ‘customer is always right’ mentality prevails. Jerks like the guy in the restaurant know this. He can’t harass the women he works with anymore, at least not legally, and he has to put up with competing with them on a more equal level. So he’s going to take it out on the breakfast waitress, who probably won’t complain about it.

Young women are especially vulnerable to it because they often don’t know how to handle harassment or how to defend their boundaries. When I was working fast food and stuff back in high school, and during my first few years in the Navy, I remember being dumbfounded when some a-hole would behave inappropriately. On the one hand, I would feel uncomfortable and disgusted. On the other, I was strongly conditioned to be ‘nice’ and agreeable, particularly to men. So I’d usually just try to make a joke out of it and get away.

You’re absolutely right, Donna. The whole issue of societal conditioning when it comes to our young boys and young girls doesn’t seem to be improving a whole hell of a lot even though we’ve supposedly come so far since the 20th century. I’m especially sensitive to the “niceness” factor when it comes to raising my two daughters. No way they’re going to be conditioned like I was. I put up with way too much sexual harrassment crap at work back in the 80’s and early 90’s before Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas.

In this particular scenario, I would have been tempted to approach the owner or manager of The Good Egg to let him/her know that I wouldn’t be a future patron of a restaurant where a customer can get away with that kind of behavior. I would wonder about the working environment there and if the waitress kept quiet because she feared a lack of response from her management.

Somehow I would have tried to do something to instigate change, even if it only meant putting a seed of an idea in front of a restaurant manager.

Whenever I hear of something like this, it reminds me of one of my women’s studies professors in college. She was specifically talking about sexist jokes, but I’ve interpreted it for sexist/racist behavior in general.

What she said was that by not responding to a sexist joke (or inappropriate behavior), we’re basically accomplices and allow that behavior to continue. Only by pointing it out as sexist does the person realize the inappropriateness and cease to perpetuate that behavior in the future.

I know that I should have done something more in the situation instead of just coming home and blogging about it. And by not doing anything I did feel like I made the situation worse, or at least not better. I was just so dumbfounded I did not know how to respond, so I do appreciate the feedback. I feel lucky to have not worked in an environment where I have had to deal a lot with this kind of harassment.