Love Laugh & Organize

I want to dive into the conversation of the objectification of people while at work jobs, more specifically, in the service industry. The people that work at restaurants, fast food places, coffee shops, cleaning services, super markets, nightshift janitors, receptionist, post office, and any other place where people provide a service for you to go about your day. I recently read a blog post about someone making a server feel uncomfortable at their job. Here is a link to the post I read.

After reading this post, it made me realize how we go about our day in our own little world. Never thinking about the interactions that we have with other people or how our words and attitude may affect someone else’s job performance and just plain comfort level in the workplace. I have seen this play out many times throughout my life. People get angry at the Latino behind the counter at Subway because they accidently put mayo on their sandwich, talking down to the Latina employee at Chipotle because she didn’t put enough lettuce on your burrito bowl, snapping your fingers and demanding your check from the Ethiopian woman at a restaurant, calling the owner of a cleaners “china-man” because he an Asian man, rudely rejecting a drink from the waitress because they put regular coke instead of diet in your rum and coke, not tipping the server because he did not bring your check when you asked for even though he has half the restaurant to serve, feeling like you can say obscene things to the woman making you your coffee just to make yourself feel better about yourself, and the list goes on and on.

We dehumanize people who have these jobs because we assume their sole purpose in their job is to give us what we want. In many cases, this dehumanization comes from racial profiling. An example of this is someone assuming that the Latin behind the counter will get your order wrong because they don’t speak English well or ignoring the Asian man at the gym folding towels because he probably doesn’t speak English.

We treat people in the service industry however the fuck we want. The result? For the person ordering the sandwich: they end up with a happy belly from the sandwich they ate and ignoring the way they treated the South Asian woman that made their sandwich. For the South Asian woman you raised your voice to because she put ranch instead of honey mustard in your sandwich: she will carry that frustration and hurt with her throughout the whole day even after she sits waiting on the corner of 16th and L for the S bus at midnight to take her to her home where her kids are waiting for their mother.

I hope by reading the blog post I linked and reading my blog post that you will change the way you interact with people. It hurts me to see that the older Latina woman you gave attitude at the CVS is the same women I see waiting for the 42 bus when I leave the bar on a Saturday night. Do not treat people like shit just because you are having a bad day.

By the way, ever example I used in this blog are real examples that I have witness during my time here in DC. These stories happen every day. They have families, emotions, hardships just like you do. Let's not keep this workforce in the shadows while we fight our own struggles.


Thinking about labor movements,
-DM