Last Sunday a regular paid me a pretty big compliment. At first, I wasn’t sure he was being serious but after some reflection I’m positive he wasn’t sarcastic.
The back story…
There is this guy in town, who reminds me of the sober version of my cousin Lonnie. He drives up and down mainstreet and stops in when he sees a patrons car he’d like to say hi too. He’s lived in the same small town for the majority of his life. He knows everyone and thinks he knows everything that’s going on. Imagine my frustration being the first newcomer in what feels like 300 years and this guy consistently asks my name no less than 40 times in 3 months… I swear a town like this has a council meeting to approve anyone new. Stop pretending you don’t know my name, you’re probably on the board that approved my employment. (End rant.)
Cars were the topic of day on this particular Sunday. One of the patrons drives an electric car. It turns out people that drive electric cars must stick out like a sore thumb. I’d like to think that Jeep people stick out too…but not so much. They started asking me if I’d taken my Rubicon off-roading yet. I haven’t. Then I mentioned Mahalla and how SHE goes off-road and I just haven’t had a chance to catch up with her and see where I could take my Jeep.
It’s interesting how the mention of someone can alter the conversation completely.
Mahalla was enough to completely change the subject. THAT’S a powerful woman. The local said, “speaking of Mahalla…”
I interjected RIGHT away. I told him before he said anything bad about her, he should know I LOVE her. I think that’s a fair warning. I dislike the people that allow the shit talking only for you to find out later they are besties with whomever you dislike. I like to tell people which side I’m on right away. I find it limits the gossip and shit talk that I’m not interested in anyway.
He didn’t care that Mahalla is my friend.
He told me about how she was their server and she NEVER smiles and how him and his nephew told her she NEEDED to smile.
I lost it about then. I looked him straight in the eye and told him that I hope he didn’t tell her to put a smile on because she was SERVING him. I think it’s disgusting that particularly men, think it’s OK to tell women to smile because they are on the opposite side of the bar. He tried to tell me how he had a job once where they went through a training that told them they NEEDED to smile for work and it should be the same for servers.
I countered that argument saying that he had to smile for a job and I didn’t feel bad for him. Being a female you are told to smile and be pretty your entire life or no one will like you. You’ll struggle in life.
We don’t get the privilege of just smiling for work. We are told from a young age to pretend and smile from sun up to sun down and it’s a bunch of bullshit. We’re humans with emotions and we should be able to express them.
I went further in saying that the service industry to me is comparable to a battlefield. Us against them. I would choose Mahalla Every. Single. Time. She doesn’t have thin skin. She can take those rude comments and not let them affect the remainder of her shift. When the going gets tough, she KEEPS going and that to me is priceless.
I’ve been on the battlefield with people that can’t handle the comments. A few words will send them crying and not able to work their shift. On the busy summer days we don’t over staff. We have people in their zones and when one of the zones isn’t covered the rest of us suffer.
She may not smile every single second, but I don’t care. She doesn’t have to. She’s good at what she does. And YOU have no idea what she has been or is going through.
Don’t be rude and tell someone to smile just because she’s female.
You’re just being a dick.
After he left, the electric car owner looked at me and said, “you handle misogyny well”.
You know what…I do.