It’s Not Sexual Harassment If She Likes It.

As I sit here preparing to get completely wasted after a long, long night at work, I figured it would be a perfect time to write about probably the most serious subject in any workplace. Hey, if I’m gonna talk about laws, I might as well get drunk and make it interesting.

When I think about sexual harassment in the workplace, I always think of those silly “that’s sexual harrassment and I don’t have to take it anymore!” videos that you see some generic corporation showing their employees in the conference room or an image of some wrinkly, old geezer pinching his secretary’s ass. Although it’s a subject you never want to bring up, sexual harassment happens quite a bit in the restaurant industry.

Sure they give us those forms to sign saying that we understand the policy on the subject, but as most people do, we just skim over it saying “yeah, yeah, don’t grab asses” and just sign on the line. Noone in the restaurant industry really gives it much thought about what exactly is sexual harassment. So, I’m not going to define the phrase like some debate paper on the subject. You all know what it is. It just happens to come in many different forms in the restaurant.

In this business, the bonds that are formed between the employees are almost family-like. The kitchen becomes a brotherhood of men (and women-folk) always looking out for eachother’s backs, and the front of the house generally become really good friends. So, it’s hard not to bring that playfulness and humor that is shared outside of work into the restaurant. It’s hard not to become close friends with your co-workers. Generally the front of the house are college-aged students who after working a shift that’s long and hard (that’s what she said), enjoy going out to a bar or club and getting as fucked up as I will be at the end of this post, While the kitchen are either a bunch of guys from similar backgrounds, or they’re already ‘boys’ who got eachother the job.

So, playing grab-ass in the walk-in cooler is a pretty normal thing to see on any given night. There may be 10-20 servers working together trying to share the same space. People are going to rub asses whether they want to or not and comments get tossed around by everyone, even the managers. So, although it does happen more often in the restaurant, 99 times out of 100 it’s not going to be reported. And of course those times that are reported, that person generally ends up leaving since everyone is going to turn on them anyways. Punks.

Now, there are some guidelines about how to sexually harass your co-workers positively. You generally don’t want to slap the new guy in the balls because he didn’t know about the rule of the house that you don’t carry a water glass with your right hand on a thursday night when the Cubs are playing. New guys aren’t privvy to the way things work so he might get told about it and asked if he’s interested in playing. The problem is whether or not he’s interested in being with the crowd. So, he pretty much has to put up with it if he wants to get accepted as a part of the crowd by his co-workers. It’s even worse with women. With power-hungry managers with an eye for the hot waitresses, the college-aged and immature waiters, and the sex-crazed horny bastards in the kitchen, women get it from all sides (that’s what she said, again). But in the restaurant, the new girl’s going to be inducted with the girls club of the house and eventually become friends. So, even joking with them she could play those kind of sexual games in the restaurant.

Of course, there are people that just do not play along. It’s obvious to point out these people, because they’re generally straight-laced and at the job for the one purpose of making money to pay bills. It’s almost outright set in stone that this person is not interested in being friends and playing games. These people should obviously be let alone to their own and anyone who infringes on that personal bubble is out of their minds. These are the one out of 100 that report sexual harassment. They don’t usually care if they see other people having fun with it, but they just dont want it happening to them. The bottom line is to realize who is keen on it and who isn’t.

With all this joking aside, when it comes down to it everyone should respect a person’s right for refusal. The whole “No means ‘no’” bullcrap. We all know if she says “no”, she really means “yes”, right? Uh, no. I don’t think so. So, respect the boundaries of creepiness, but otherwise have fun.