Today I worked at my weekend restaurant job. Tonight, I go to my least favorite of the four jobs I’m working—the one as a night auditor at a hotel. It’s not that the work is hard—you literally sit for hours, and maybe check in one or two guests a night. At 5 am I spend about 30 minutes setting up the breakfast buffet. And that’s pretty much it. I can sit on the internet if I want and read or watch movies, and many times I can even sneak in a little nap in the chair—vitally important since I go straight from this job to my regular day shift job. I work here on Sunday through Tuesday nights, which are generally some of the slowest of the week at a hotel. Easy money, actually, except for the lack of sleep.
The problem is that my boss is a creep. He constantly makes nasty, sexist comments. The other day he was going on about what a good cook I must be and how he would like for me to fix him something to eat. Another time he told me I was a good, reliable worker for a woman. On others he has made mention of the fact that I am single, and wants to know why I don’t have a man. You get the idea.
He has never actually made a physical pass at me, thankfully. But he has cameras throughout the whole place, including some of the areas of the office that are nowhere around the cash drawers or anything sensitive. And what is creepy is the way he will make comments about the fact that he was watching me on camera while, say, I was watching a movie or reading something on my laptop at 3:00 in the morning, Or that he watched me walk from the front desk to the bathroom. This guy apparently thinks it is hilarious.
I thought I was too old, broken down, and overweight to be the subject of that sort of thing anymore. But then, sexual harassment is not about sex, it’s about power and control.
There is only one area of the front office that you can sit and not be on camera all night, and that is where I have started sitting for most of my shift. If I want to catch a nap this is where I go so the creep can’t watch me if I nod off—but also, if he tried to sneak up me, I would know because I am sitting against the door he would have to enter in order to get into the area. I am half expecting him to say something to me about sitting in the area where he can’t watch me, since he has not mentioned it yet.
While this guy sure knows how to create a hostile work environment, it would be very hard to prove what he is doing is illegal, or would constitute sexual harassment. Especially around here—even with hard proof, such as recordings or witnesses, it would be difficult to get a judge to side with any female victim of sexual harassment should she sue—this is Kentucky, after all.
I have heard stories of women in this area endured outright sexual assault from their bosses, and when a complaint was filed, she was the one who got fired. The only time I have known of a man getting fired for sexual harassment around here is if he was black, or if he was just a low level worker the management didn’t care for anyway, and it gave his company an excuse to fire him. Business owners and upper management at many companies can treat women—most especially low income women—any way they please.
The police, the courts, our Republican lawmakers don’t care. And this is how things are for women across the USA, from the highest paid positions to the lowest— it’s just a near impossibility for a poor woman to get any justice when she is treated like this.
Any woman around here who actually sues a company for sexual harassment runs the risk of being blacklisted from future employment, in any case, for being “difficult” to work with. A woman’s only recourse is to quit—but for many women who desperately need the money their job provides, just quitting isn’t an option. The rent has to be paid and their children need to eat. So like me, they have to grit their teeth and tolerate their bass’s bad behavior. I have it mild compared to a lot of women out there, who have to put up with much worse.
But when I finally have my medical bills paid off, I am going to quit. I might even do it with no notice. It would serve him right.
Now (at 7 pm) I’m going to go and care for my autistic daughter until her bedtime at 9 pm. That is another one of my jobs—I get a little bit of money from the state for caring for her. I won’t sleep for more than two or three hours each day until Wednesday. And this is how it has been every week since July, and how it will be for the next two years. Ain’t the American economic system great?