It isn’t privileged but it is a little dense. While these are the proper steps for dealing with sexual harassment they’re really meant for two things. First more stable and controlled employment circumstance than restaurants can offer (like offices!) and second for complaints against fellow employees and employers not customers. Policies like this tend not to be ineffective on customers because customers are transient and the business has limited power over them. Also you can’t really file an EEOC complaint against some rando who wandered in.
“sir I have to inform you I’ve filed a formal complaint with HR department, which doesn’t exist and has no power over you, so you should stop grabbing my ass”
If its an employee or your boss who’s doing this to you, you should certainly attempt to follow through on these suggestions. You’ll likely have better luck figuring out how to do so if you work corporate or large restaurant group places (most smaller and independent places wouldn’t bother with a formal policy and don’t have HR departments). But with customers the best practice is this: Talk to your manager. At which point your manager, yourself, or another employee will inform the customer that physical contact with employees is inappropriate, and that they’re firting is making staff and other customers uncomfortable. If the comments or contact were bad (ie out an out sexual harassment and contact rather than creepy flirting and shit like arm touching) the customer should be asked to leave. If they protest or make a scene they should be asked to leave. If the contact is out and out sexual assault (ie grabbing of asses, boobs or balls), or if they refuse to leave (or pay their bill), the police can and should be called.
If management won’t allow these things to be dealt with properly you should follow the advice from NOLO and AAUW but against management for allowing the harassment or refusing to deal with it. And yeah tips often suffer when you follow this up the right way. But over time enforcing strict rules of decorum on your customers tend to either chase off these sorts of people or shame them into behaving properly. And you’d be surprised how often the people with a problem customer are actually quietly ashamed or angry about their acquaintance’s behavior. And will over tip to compensate when they’re called out. It can take a bit, but the problem will become far less frequent, and if management had done their due diligence from the start it wouldn’t be so large an issue now.
Unfortunately few places in food bev bother to follow up on any of this. It probably doesn’t even occur to most owners and managers that it might be an issue. And more than a few would prefer to keep making money of scum bags than rock the boat by trying to change things. Women I’ve worked with in this business have often been told to deal with it, and that it was part of their job to “please” these customers. Its super fucking creepy.
Ultimately the problem is waitressing is a 100% fungible position, and we as a society have decided to completely abdicate responsibilities for workers’ health and wellbeing in 100% fungible positions in deference to the almighty dollar.
Don’t come to the South then. Sixty+ year old waitresses will call you “hun” or “sweety” and even smile at you. Heaven forbid you look like you need a hug because you are getting one and you don’t even need to ask. It’s fucking hell.
If you honestly don’t see the huge difference in our society between an older waitress behaving that way toward customers and older male customers behaving as described to a young waitress, then you are part of the problem.
Not privileged:
Asking a harasser to stop
Expecting support from management
Expecting company policy to be enforced
Filing a complaint with the EEOC
Asking a lawyer for advice
Not good advice:
“She’s on tips, so this misses Dear Abby’s point that she has no choice but to tolerate sexual harassment”
There’s also the problem that, when the harassment is from customers, management has a very limited incentive to displease the customers unless they are particularly low-value customers pissing off high value employees.(And that probably isn’t the case here: ‘firing the customer’ is a thing; but tends to involve customers who run up costs that exceed their worth, not customers who will pay better if you look the other way while they try to grope the waitress).
When it’s an internal matter, the incentive is at least to make the problem go away. It’s often still the case that the default method of doing that will be “Yeah, how about you quit complaining and put up with it.”; hence the need for regulatory pressure to have any real hope of getting the perp disciplined and/or removed; but there is at least a base-level shared interest in making the conflict go away.
If a restaurant thinks that making low-intensity sex work an unofficial part of the job description is good for their bottom line, you aren’t just fighting an uphill battle over who should be made to change to end a workplace conflict, you are fighting an uphill battle over whether a conflict exists at all.
Sometimes the difference between the world I used to live in and the world I live in now is highlighted by hearing other people’s assumptions. No, seriously, those are privileges too, and in most cases waitstaff simply do not have access to those options.
For example, even if you have internet access and can figure out how to get free legal aid, you still have to get an appointment and find the time to go there. And then listen as they explain how the law can’t really help. How does that work to get some anonymous guy’s grubby hands off you?
Other customers making a big deal about it, though…that has a tendency to work. No one listens to waitstaff, but they’ll listen to another customer.
Which just goes to show how messed up it is to require service workers to make up their income to an acceptable level from tips. It’s just a mechanism for keeping the lowliest in society ‘in their place’.
If wait staff were paid a decent hourly rate, they would have the power to stop this.
Thank you Ryuthrowsstuff, this is what I wanted to say, only better. Clearly Rob Beschizza has never worked in a restaurant either. EEOC etc. don’t require management to protect you from individual, temporary customers, only other staff. It’s your manager on duty who is supposed to ensure you can work without uninvited attentions. If persistent abuse by customers is permitted or even encouraged (“think of the tips!”), you have a legitimate gripe about the management and should follow through. As our cleaver-wielding chef friend noted above, it only takes one person with some authority (and not even weaponized, really) to tell the offending customer to can it. If your manager won’t get your back when creepy customers attempt to feel you up (and trust me, I’ve had it happen many a time) then you need a new manager or a new workplace. Or a cleaver.
Yep. Lawyer consults cost money. EEOC complaints–any idea how long those take to filter through? Meanwhile, your customer is long gone and EEOC isn’t required to help you with that sort of transient thing, anyway. Asking a manager for support depends on the manager, and better hope they like you enough to get in the face of a drunk customer and be subject to a dust-up on your behalf, or aren’t too busy With some other task.
Makes me wish hatpins were still in fashion, a quick jab would probably do the trick. I myself was so clumsy once I spilled hot coffee down the neck of a guy who had been repeatedly harassing me–dunno what happened, I just stumbled when I was delivering beverages to the table. Hate it when that happens.
BoingBoing is definitely more of a Hints from Heloise kind of place.
I imagine she would have been able to tell the waitress how to discourage the offender with some toilet paper rolls, empty two liter bottles, ammonia, and leftover egg yolks.
I was literally just at a restaurant conference about sexism and abuse in restaurants.
This is so prevalent we had an entire night dedicated to talking about. The stories of abuse from customers (FOH) and abuse from chefs (BOH) were flying fast and furious. We even had a lawyer speak about criminal charges and personal rights (which was generally met with derision, as that way leads you to being blackballed and never being hired again) but talking about the culture of the industry and why/how this is acceptable and having people speak up and finally say “enough” is a good start.
It’s definitely worked on me, as a male patron who’s asked a bartender if I could buy her a drink after her shift. She pointed at the ring, I apologized and gave her a 50% tip, because I always overtip everywhere. Service jobs suck, and I’m glad I don’t have to do them.
But that’s completely anecdotal. I’d expect that the ring thing probably doesn’t work nearly as often as I’d hope it does, and hey, I don’t get propositioned.
Well management who routinely ignore this sort of thing or require staff to put up with or engage with this sort of shit are very much creating a hostile work environment and engaging in they’re own sort of harassment. So the eeoc, laabor laws etc do very much require your employer to protect you from customers like this. They just don’t have any effect on the customers. Filing internal paperwork with a business that has zero power over these people outside of denial of service is pointless. Likewise the eeoc , labor board and civil courts aren’t in the business of protecting you from any asshole on the streets. It’s their job is to protect you from your employer. If the harassment amounts to a crime it’s the police it goes to, but short of that your employer is on the hook.
Some one in this situation should be aware of the info Rob posted. But you follow those steps to get compensation or protection out of a recalcitrant employer. Unfortunately there’s a real lack of enforcement of any of these sorts of things in food bev. Combined with all those tipped worker exemptions It’s really, really dis-incentivised for employers to care. And even more so for employees to risk doing anything about it.
