Alexandria just expected to make a little extra money while in high school when she started her job at a Germantown, Tennessee, pizza restaurant, but only three days after starting, she faced something she never thought would happen at the front cash register, let alone from her 45-year-old manager.
“He brushed past me, very fast, and he took his hand and squeezed my ass, and then really fast walked away,” said Alexandria, who, along with the other women interviewed for this story, did not want her last name used for protection of privacy. “And the whole time, I was behind the counter talking to a customer when this happened.”
The now shocked, red-faced 17-year-old girl made a 180-degree turn and at first, thought it was an accident or just in her head. This was her supervisor after all, an authority figure at the restaurant.
“First off, I gave him the benefit of the doubt … I mean, clearly he wouldn’t have done that in front of a customer,” Alexandria, now 24 years old, said. “I think he did it on purpose to where that would be even more of a sneaky move, to do it when I’m talking to a customer. Looking back in hindsight, that’s what I see now.”
These instances of sexual harassment happen often in the food and drink service industry, and they can range from more common small gestures or suggestive comments to full assaults.
Of all 41,250 total sexual assault cases reported from 2005 to 2015 in the United States, food service accounted for 14.23 percent, the most of any individual industry, according to the Center for American Progress.
Alexandria reported the harassment to another manager, who listened but did not act on her claim, as she said the restaurant had a ‘misogynistic’ culture imbedded in the workplace.
She would later find out that before she started the job, one male server took bets to see how long it would take for her to sleep with another man who worked there. Alexandria said a different manager would make sexually suggestive comments to the female servers.
A 2014 study by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROCU) found this issue was more prominent for women who worked tipped jobs in restaurants, and 69 percent of female food service employees said coworkers made inappropriate sexual remarks towards them.
An employee of four restaurants in her life, Hannah, 23, said she saw harassment happen just about every shift at each job.
“At my first job while I was in high school, one of the kitchen workers followed me into the walk-in freezers and pinned me against one of these racks, and he kissed me,” Hannah said. “And then he quit right after that.”
This issue goes beyond just the staff, as the ROCU study found 78 percent of food service workers said a customer had sexually harassed them before. Hannah said she has seen bar customers act out of line, but it depends on the culture of the restaurant.
Another woman, Ashley, who has worked in five restaurants, said she notices the kitchen staff is usually worse when it comes to sexual harassment. She said at the businesses where she has worked, the kitchen is less individually supervised than the serving staff, so issues are not noticed as quick.
Ann, who has worked three different restaurant jobs, agreed that the kitchen staff can have harassment problems. Many people in the kitchen only spoke Spanish, and she said they would make provocative comments towards her, thinking she did not understand. Her one report of harassment was taken seriously by management, she said, but some other workers were not so lucky.
“A place I worked at hired a 16-year-old girl, and one of the cooks was kind of grooming her,” Ann said. “My boss let her go instead of the cook because he would rather have someone who knows what he is doing rather than a 16-year-old girl.”
If claims of sexual harassment are not taken seriously by management, employees can file with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a government agency that will then investigate the claim to see if legal action should be taken.
“Unfortunately, (sexual harassment) is happening in all industries,” EEOC public affairs specialist Joseph Olivares said. “From what I see, people are scared to report it, and people might not even know that our agency exists and what our agency’s purpose is. I can’t tell you why it happens, but I can tell you there’s a lot, like fear, that the person has that they might not report it.”
Only somewhere between 15 and 35 percent of all assaults of this nature are reported, according to a survey from the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault. The women in the survey cited reasons like not wanting reprisal or not thinking reporting was important at the time.
Bartender Avery Parks mixes up a drink at The Bluff on the Highland Strip. Of all 41,250 total sexual assault cases reported from 2005 to 2015 in the United States, food service accounted for 14.23 percent, the most of any individual industry, according to the Center for American Progress.
