#workerjustice

tw: sexual violence.

I stand on the other side of a glass barrier as my spinach wrap with hummus whirred through the oven on a conveyer belt, patiently waiting for it to exit the other end and an individual to layer on a mountain of dressings, vegetables, and toppings. The empty wrap clanked its way to a stop at the end of the belt, and an employee expertly lifts up the tray with the wrap with a pair of tongs.

“Any dressings?”

Sriracha and sun-dried tomato aioli, obviously.

“Toppings?”

I robotically list my classic Qualcomm order, consisting of a number of vegetables and avocado to top it off. The worker carefully rolls up my wrap with a layer of aluminum foil and paper and hands me my dinner over the glass barrier.

An interaction that for me took approximately four minutes to complete from paying in the start to receiving my food in the finish. A transactional process that as a student, particularly one from a middle-class background, I often take for granted. I exit the cafe en route to dance practice, ruminating on my personal experiences in relation to this one.

Despite never being very well-off, my parents always found some way to get food on the table. They jumped over hurdles and leaped through hoops, and with a few lucky breaks and plenty of willpower, landed here in the US in 2000 from the small sub-rural town where I was born--Maoming, China. My mother worked in a Thai restaurant for a number of years as a waitress when we first immigrated to help support our then family of three as my father was attending graduate school.

Thus growing up, I have always engrained in myself that the act of tipping was an act of respect towards those hardworking individuals in the restaurant industry who are indeed underpaid by the employer in many cases. I never thought twice about questioning the system, despite seeing mainly womxn with faces that looked like mine as well as black and brown working tirelessly to cater to the high demands of customers and general workplace, sometimes working double and triple shifts. And as we know, there are often no weekends known to the restaurant world--only work days and extra work days (known to many as holidays).

Perhaps it was an overabundance of optimism or just plain ignorance that caught me unawares when a prominent speaker in the movement for food workers rights came and spoke of the atrocities that many workers, particularly in casual and fast food, face in their workplace. Sexual violence is perpetuated by the tipping practice and cases have been reported in many cases, yet so many more go unreported (1). One could argue that it is a double edged sword and there should be a balance of individuals who choose to foot a little more on top of the bill and those who lean on the lean side of tipping to “keep workers in check”. But why should a professional waiter or waitress have to rely on the “generosity” of customers to make ends meet, rather than the employer? This power dynamic opens up the field for exploitation and abuse that is real, a burden disproportionately carried by womxn of color.

As I nibble my spinach-cabbage-cucumber-tomato-carrot-avocado wrap, I remind myself of the irony of existing in an era of technological innovation and supposedly higher standards of living when the fastest growing industry pays some of the lowest wages. The process of deskilling has prolonged the marginalization of these folx for decades since the rise of big food. It doesn’t come as a shock, considering the brief time it took me to get my food, along with the fact that hundreds of people that roll into the same cafe for the same wrap everyday, that we are increasingly desensitized to our own food system in which we move and operate in. And like interactions with our social systems, our economic system, and our political system, our many intersecting identities play into how we act and react in these spaces much more than we often notice or acknowledge. Definitely some food for thought.

Til next time,

Maggie