7 minute read
Re-Tale$: Overthinking Being Underpaid
Typically, by March, it is customary for college students to have some semblance of what summer will hold in store for them: landing an internship, going abroad for school, traveling for leisure, or even visiting family. By March, the only news I had received were emails from Indeed that Fogo de Chao was hiring in my area.
But hey, I can’t say that nepotism wasn’t on my side.
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While my peers’ connections brought them in New York City or Los Angeles, my family’s landed me in khaki shorts and a hand-me-down shirt that was three sizes too small. A camp counselor? How naive of you to think that my form of torture would be that cliche. Fate had something much better in store for me. My mother, someone who has known me since birth, thought it would be a swell idea to negotiate a job on my behalf (and without my consent) at a daycare. Me. Someone who treats children with the callousness of a Disney villain. It truly was a match made in heaven, which is why I quit (read: stopped showing up) after working a cumulative sum of 11 hours.
I was broke. My mother was pressuring me to find a job as though I had been on the unemployment line for eight years. And with my only other option being the zoo they tried to pass off as a daycare, I had reached a point of desperation. So, I headed to the mall, expecting an uphill battle. Turns out, all you need to be hired in retail in under a day is:
1. Be white. Or use your white voice over the phone to secure the interview. (***If you’re tired of this joke, do something to change the culture in which this joke exists.)
2. Casually slide in (who am I kidding?) RAM into the conversation that you attend the University of Michigan. They’ll probably ask you for clarification of which school. Reply the one with blue and yellow. Then they’ll know.
3. Describe yourself as “adaptable.”
Utilizing this lethal combination, I managed to come away with two new jobs: sales positions at both Bath & Body Works and Soma Intimates. Initially, they seemed to be decent enough. I was going to be paid higher than Georgia’s minimum wage of $7.25 per hour (I heart my red state,) and because of what the stores sold, I would face minimal interaction with creepy straight, cis men. I was, dare I say, hopeful, for these new opportunities. That ended quite swiftly.
While I never set my expectations too high for retail, the dystopian nightmare that I experienced is too hilarious not to share with others. In fact, there is a lot that happened over the summer that, in my immense boredom of selling candles and bras, I realized could be considered a microcosm for a lot of the broader ills we experience as a society. So yes, I took the jobs to make money, and even though that remained my sole motive up until...well... I started writing this paper, why can’t I pull a Gloria Steinem and expose the shit I saw while I was on the clock?
From me, to you: this is re-tales.
It’s no secret (but evidently not important enough to warrant real action) that women in service jobs are subject to harassment from men who lack the capacity to differentiate between obligatory friendliness and sexual attraction. I worked at Chick-fil-A when I was sixteen. I am well versed in the art of men screaming obscenities at girls from cars. However, what distinguished Chickfil-A from Bath & Body Works was that I never expected my superiors at Chick-fil-A to have my back. After all, my managers were conservative- leaning white men, who, if off the clock, would most likely be screaming the obscenities themselves. At Bath & Body Works, all of my managers were women. Further, 90% of the customers who entered the store were women. In the off-chance that a man did enter the store and make someone feel uncomfortable, I had the utmost confidence that my bosses would have my back.
The week preceding Mother’s Day is the only time of the year that the crowd in Bath & Body Works could be considered co-ed. Dead-beat sons from all over the metro-Atlanta area flood the store, all buying the same two $12.99 candles for their (probably soon-to-be disappointed) mothers. Thirty minutes until clock-out, I was approached by two men. It would be too kind to compare their attire to the pimps from Norbit, so I’ll leave you to imagine what two adult men who go to the mall at 1pm on a Wednesday dress like. Already robotically ringing up his items (can you guess what he was buying?), I quickly realized the situation that I was in. The sad reality of womanhood is developing the double consciousness that in addition to being looked at, you also have to act as though you are unaware of the surveillance. Over time, you associate looks with signals. Their looks were a clear signal of disrespect approaching on the horizon. Normally, I’d avert eye contact. I’d keep walking. I’d try to get through the transaction as fast as possible with the hope that I could stuff his receipt in his face before he could say anything that would make my blood boil and my vagina dry up.
That day, cowering didn’t seem to be on the agenda. Seven hours on my feet and the gut feeling that I had backup support gave me license to be combative. Too deep inside my own mind (preemptively planning a comeback), I missed the initial purposeless question he posed to me. I ignored him. As he leaned on the counter, I bluntly told him his total. He asked me how old I was. Nice. A classic. I asked him if he had coupons he would like to use. He pressed me again for my age, then asked if I liked coffee. I told him flatly that there was a line I needed to get to. The sole customer standing behind the men looked puzzled as to how she became involved in the tift.
Somehow still thinking that I was game for unemployed, mall-rat dick, he said in the corniest tone possible that he just wanted to get to know me because I was beautiful. Fighting the urge to question what he could possibly want to know about the person ringing up his items, I opted to smugly tell him that if he couldn’t afford the $24 tab, I could keep his items on hold. Realizing that I was not willing to be patronized (and thus must be destroyed), his friend piped up and asked me if anyone ever told me if I was a bitch. I grinned.
“Every. Single. Day. Of my life.”
He told me that he could see why. Sick burn, man. They left their items on the counter in a huff, and I took a breath, thankful to be rid of them. I rang up my next customer without issue, and then went over to a coworker, Amanda, who I considered a friend an ally the best assistant manager on duty at the moment, prepared to vent to her about what had just happened.
Her reaction was stern. A stark contrast to the time when she forced me to watch her (homemade and terrible) music videos on the sales floor. Before I could even finish my thought, she cut me off and told me that the men had already come over to snitch on me. In vain, I tried to re-explain the story to her. She cut me off again, this time to ask me whether or not they had completed their purchase. I told her no.
“We really can’t afford to be rude to customers.”
Bug-eyed and taken-aback that she didn’t immediately take her employee’s (and her fellow woman’s) side, I attempted to re-explain the story. She condescended me, telling me that she knew that I was “new,” but if I was ever caught in a scenario like that again, I needed to entertain the comments. Every transaction counted, and we really needed to make conversion that week. Making matters worse, she called over the general manager, Ellie, who gave me a similar “talk” and also threatened my position at the store.
Neither asked if I felt OK, but both asked me if I could stay for an extra thirty minutes past my clock-out time. Apparently, men twenty years my senior making me feel unsafe in my place of work is not as important as converting customers to sales. In addition to being horrendously capitalistic, this situation also proved yet another example of women being made secondary. I am supposed to be OK with men leering at me so that some CEO can make more money off of shitty lotion. Worst of all, in my situation, and probably a myriad of other women’s scenarios, this norm is being perpetuated by the women in-charge.
Thankfully, my workplace spat came with a safety net. I have the privilege of my parents’ financial support, so I did not have to rely on that job as my sole source of income. We act as though all women hold this privilege, but really, we know better. Are lower-income women supposed to be complacent in their oppression simply because they literally cannot afford to challenge the system they exist in? No one should have to decide between standing up for themselves or keeping their lights on. My managers told me that I didn’t understand the politics of the workplace because I was new. But the thing is, I’m not. My nineteen years have allowed me to observe how little things like what happened to me at Bath & Body Works can escalate. From my mundane situation, the stakes only increase. The power structure only becomes more unbeatable. Allies become more and more scarce, and complacency becomes more commonplace. We need to take the little things seriously, so that they do not reach the point of no return.
by Ally Owens
