“Customers often treat me like I’m on the menu. I’ll go up to a table and ask for their dessert order and they’ll be like, ‘Sexy brunette please. Is that on the menu?’”
Working as a bartender, waiter, manager, chef, or any other position in the service industry is a difficult job. The hours are abnormal, there are rarely chances to sit down, customers are often drunk or demanding, and the pay is often unreliable, if not minuscule.
But a recent study found that for women, working these jobs is even worse.
Full-time female servers make up 71% of the nation's service industry, but earn only 68% of what male servers earn. Nearly 37% of all sexual harassment charges filed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are from the restaurant industry, and only 19% of America's chefs are women.
BuzzFeed News reached out to women working in the service industry and collected nine stories illustrating these problems, plus many more.
Alice Mongkongllite/BuzzFeed
One restaurant I worked at had a special qualification for hiring that I didn't notice at first: You had to be a "7 or above." I was prepping the bar when a cute college girl came in and dropped off an application. They didn't even check her work experience or references. All that was asked was, "What was she?" The head bartender said, "An 8. I'll call her tomorrow." She turned out to be a terrible waitress. Meanwhile, my friend with years of experience in customer service was "only a 5," so she didn't get the job.
—Gabbie Hanna
Alice Mongkongllite/BuzzFeed
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