As I staggered back to the kitchen from the dining room, the 50-pound tub of dirty dishes in tow, I saw the two cashiers out of the corner of my eye, gossiping about some girl at school while twirling their hair and sipping on a soda. While my back was breaking under the weight of a busboy tub full of half-finished chicken pot pies and glasses of Ibis Moon tea, the girls were frolicking at the front counter of the restaurant, not a care in the world.
Busboy job description: Keep dining room and patio clean. Take dirty dishes to kitchen. Sweep and mop. Assist dishwasher. Maintain drink station by restocking bread tray, refilling silverware containers, making tea and coffee, emptying trash cans, restocking sugar caddies and refilling drink machine with ice. Run food to customers. Slice more bread for bread tray and portion more jelly and jam. Tray up frozen bread to be baked tomorrow. Take out all trash in the restaurant and deposit in the dumpsters outside. Maintain clean bathrooms, including emptying used female-product waste bins.
Cashier girl job description: Greet customers. Take meal orders and payment for meals. Stand and look pretty when no customers are in line. Be attractive.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized those girls weren’t just having to do less work than I was. They were getting other perks, too. Whereas they had minimal cleaning duties and had been allowed to leave at the end of the night without any protest from the manager, it would take a miracle for me to leave any time soon. I knew that once I was done with my closing duties, the manager would come around with his dreaded flashlight and critique all of my work, something he would never do with the girls. Any speck or crumb he found would mean I would be cleaning everything again.
Earlier that night the girls had been allowed to take an extended break during dinner, although the company rules forbid it and I would be denied the same luxury. The manager even bought them their meals, something that was also against company policy and that my strikingly good looks could never get me. One of them would even get a raise a few weeks from the same manager that bought her meals.
After thinking about it, I realized there were also no girl busers. There was only one boy cashier, compared to the five or more girls. It seemed to me that the girls were being hired for the jobs that were more visible and less labor-intensive. The ones that focused more on appearance. Certainly no pretty girls would be stuck in the back with a stack of greasy plates to clean. But I guess it made sense. Most front-of-house jobs are solely comprised of attractive, well-dressed girls.
So really what that restaurant and our society reward is attractiveness, with the prettiest girls receiving unfair benefits and getting put out on display, regardless of if they are friendly or competent. My bosses were teaching them that the way to success was to use their looks, while forcing the boys to bear the main workload and deal with it. The busboys were being treated unfairly now and the cashier girls weren’t being prepared for a real career in the future.
Ultimately, they shouldn’t be rewarding girls based on attractiveness, while holding a different set of standards for guys or those unlucky girls society deems ugly. Instead, my managers should have been looking for the most qualified worker for the job. The smartest applicant, regardless of gender. The most hardworking person, whether they were male or female. The best employee, whether it was a girl or boy. Because, in the end, society isn’t helping anyone by allowing these outdated gender roles to persist.
