When I was seventeen, I got my first job. I interviewed at an Italian restaurant that my best friend worked at and was hired on the spot! I was very excited to finally be able to go out to eat with my friends and not have to ask my parents for money. After memorizing the entire menu and learning the sources of the meat down to which oceans the fish came from, I was ready to start training as a cashier. I learned to greet and take orders from customers, verify the entrees coming from the kitchen, complete multiple side duties like packaging oil and vinegar and wrapping to-go utensils, and even got to run the drive-thru. I finally started to feel like I was getting the hang of things and beginning to excel at my job. And then I got fired.
In my almost two months of working there, I learned a lot about working hard, communicating with customers and my peers, and what I don’t want to experience in a work environment. To recap, I got my first real job, I worked hard, I learned some valuable skills, I felt like I was doing a great job, then was let go in the middle of my shift because “it is obvious that working here is not the right fit for you”. I was devastated! But let’s back up a bit. It was not until a few months later that I realized (and was filled in by my best friend who still worked there) that I was wrongfully terminated. I then understood that in reality, I was recommended at this restaurant by my best friend who is undeniably, ridiculously attractive and has a bubbly, consistently positive personality. She was good for business. I interviewed with one of the managers and proved that I also was an attractive teenage girl who could hold a conversation. I was hired on the spot. I was expected to do the job of a server without ever being recognized as one, or getting paid like one. I worked hard, communicated well with customers, made few mistakes, and learned quickly. However, I was young, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink on the job, didn’t steal, and didn’t sleep with my manager. But I guess I should have. Maybe then I wouldn’t have gotten fired? Maybe. Probably. But that’s not the type of person I want to be, and that’s when I really grew up and realized that I had two choices: to choose the easy way and play into society’s gender roles to “sleep your way to the top”, or to choose the hard way and work hard and stand up for my beliefs and not let my gender affect my entire life or determine my success.
It was my gorgeous, then assistant-manager-best-friend who informed me that I was fired, not because “the restaurant business isn’t a good fit for [me]”, but actually because I took the fall for one of the servers who decided to steal $175 from the cash register that I had been logged into. She must have been short on cigarette change that day because she notoriously took long breaks to walk across to the gas station to chain-smoke and take shots from mini liquor bottles. I personally did not agree with her life choices, but she was not my problem. My problem was with the owner, and one of the managers, who called me into their office to lie to my face when all they had to do was check the security cameras they claimed to watch to find out that I was not the one who stole from them. But, as my friend informed me, this particular thief/server was sleeping with the manager. In fact, she wasn’t the only one sleeping with the manager: another cashier was sleeping with another one of the managers and would bring her children in to get free food on a regular basis; but that’s a whole other story. I think upon learning of these gross indiscretions, I finally understood what the owner really meant when he told me that I was not a good fit for his business. And I am okay with that!
I never thought too much about gender roles or equality of sexes growing up, but after that experience I learned that I was a feminist. I did not want to subject myself to that kind of treatment, and I did not want other women to feel like they were expected to act and be treated in that way to get what they want. Had I not been so young and naïve at the time, I would have liked to speak up and ask why he did not feel that I was a good fit? Or what I had done that would compel him to fire me without warning or explanation? Instead, I found myself fighting back tears as I was told to leave in the middle of my shift, wondering how I was going to get home since I did not drive and my parents were out of town and my ride wasn’t available until the end of my shift – 4 hours later. Now I will not assume that these actions came as a direct attack on females, but I do know that the series of unethical events that occurred at that restaurant came from a place of ignorant, sexist behavior where most of the staff took advantage of each other and their respective gender roles. I have learned that it is important to stand up for yourself and say something when confronted with these situations because we cannot continue to concede to these acts of discrimination and inequality in the workplace, or any place!
