Ethnography

Ethnography

September 21, 2014

Boys will be boys

It's another Tuesday at the Silver Dollar. Weird as ever. In a strange turn of events, the casual dining room is practically deserted, and the fine dining room is bustling. The busser for the fine dining room, Isabella, is new to bussing, though she's worked at the restaurant for a while now as a hostess. She struggles with all the tables; tonight definitely being the roughest night she's worked. She keeps up fairly well though, and everyone can see she's working her tail off. Isabella is our only girl busser, she's the first female busser in quite some time. Most of the servers treat her no differently than any of the other bussers. There is one server however who is being exceptionally rude to her. She struggles with a trey of dishes and glasses that looks incredible heavy. She almost looses the whole trey getting through the double doors into the kitchen, but myself and another co worker rush to her and steady the sides.
"She's never going to get any better if you keep helping her" Says Vin.
Isabella gives him a glare but doesn't respond.
"Shut up Vin, none of us need to be cleaning up a kitchen full of broken glass and broken plates. Quit being a jerk" says a male coworker of mine.
Vin backs down slightly. I wonder if it's because he was confronted by another male, and what would have happened if I would have said the same thing.
Our manager is busy sending emails and keeping everything in order, so there's not much "supervision" in the kitchen tonight. It's a good thing, because that means we can eat bread and chips without caring, but it's a bad thing when tension arises.
Vin makes an extremely inappropriate comment about a girl at the bar.
I realize I am the only other girl here tonight, so I stay quiet. All the boys feed off of the inappropriate remarks. I notice that guys I know would never initiate remarks like this have no problem feeding off of them and adding to them. And the few boys who don't encourage it also don't do anything to stop it, which is just as bad.
I excuse myself from the kitchen, and when I return Vin is laughing at me taking offence to his comments.
I wouldn't mind if I was hanging out with these people after work, in a private setting, the comments wouldn't even phase me, but listening to guys objectify girls on the clock isn't incredibly appealing to me. I tell him this, and he brushes me off.
A male co worker of mine notices I'm put off and tells Vin to cut it out. Again, Vin obliges. I'm almost more upset that a guy had to do my bidding for me.
I leave work broke and offended on a couple different levels
Tuesdays here are weird.

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