It amazes me the way that people will sexually harass their servers sometimes. I'm not talking about occasional flirting--I'm talking about outright hitting on them, or just being crude.
When I was about twenty and waiting tables at a family restaurant, I had a table in the bar one night. Nothing unusual about that. The table next to them was my dad and a bunch of his friends, and I was glad they were there a few minutes after greeting my new table. A big, burly, bushy-bearded man about my dad's age put his arm around me and held me against his chair and proceeded to ask me to come to his house after work to "watch a movie". I said no, and he kept pushing. He wouldn't let go until I pointed out my dad was sitting four feet away. Even then he said, "I'm not doing anything wrong!" but he didn't finally let go.
More recently, I had a party of about eight on our patio. It was one of the guys' birthday, and they asked me if we sing for birthdays. I laughed and told them, "Only if you sing with me, I only do solos in the shower."
The birthday creep spent the rest of the meal telling me how I'd given him quite a picture, and how he just kept thinking about me in the shower. When I brought his cheesecake for dessert he really went in to overdrive, saying things like now I was really torturing him, blah blah blah. Made my skin crawl. And nobody at the table even tried to shut him up--even though he was harassing me in front of two children, who heard every word.
My point is this: Your server is there to bring your food. He or she is not there for your sexual gratification; restaurants are not meat markets. If you want to pick up chicks, go to a bar. If you want to oogle and harass women who feel they can't turn you down for fear of losing their jobs .... well, then you're a douchebag, but at least go to a strip club where the women can summon the bouncers to toss you out on your scumbag ass.
Fellow servers, feel free to share your stories.
5 comments:
my best one, i think, was when i was cocktail waitressing and this a-hole regular grabbed me in the ass. I hit him with my tray and i think he hit me back. then i got someone to throw him out. i think he got barred for a week. boy was he pissed.
Okay barred for a week? Wow, that's forgiving! Good job smacked the bastard back, what the hell makes people think they can behave that way?
I had a table last weekend who felt it was absolutely acceptable to treat me like their stripper-waiter. They demanded I take my (full length) apron off so they can see more, threatened to douse me with their waters when I told them I wouldn't, and otherwise were straight up a-holes - I've never experienced people so blatantly rude. All this before I even took their order. And, they were sober as far as I could tell and it was lunch, so I can't even blame it on alcohol.
When I told my amazing manager, he told me I'm exaggerating and went back to his conversation with the owner, who seemed to not care either. I had to get one of the male servers to take care of them before I puked on their food from disgust.
Elyse, that really sucks that management wouldn't back you up.
My former boss (at a mom-and-pop bar where I used to tend bar) would have held the guy who grabbed my ass just so I could get better aim with the tray, bottle, sock full of quarters, etc.
Elyse, I can't believe the owner AND the manager both blew you off, that is unbelievable. Sorry you had to deal with such dickery.
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