With all the people out there crying about equality for this or that I've gotten desensitized to it. When everyone has some mass injustice that they're the victim of you get sick of hearing about it. You get to thinking that everyone's just a little too sensitive. For me, when something unfair happens to me or I'm treated with disrespect or my human rights are violated, or I'm just plain old fed up with the way things are, I tend to stay quiet. I evaluate my feelings and think, "maybe it's just my mood today," or "what control do I have over the sitation? What can I take responsibility for and therefore change? what part in this is mine?"
I've dealt with a recent unfairness that brought this to light for me. I work in a restaurant where the employees are getting unfair wages for the amount and type of work that they do. A restaurant that abuses their servers and purposefully ignores clear signs that there is something wrong. A restaurant that assigns hours of kitchen work to a staff that's paid only $2.40 an hour to only do responsibiities of a server/waitress. And not only do they schedule servers for 10 hour shifts when they wait on tables for only 6, if an employee is taking a break for water or food, they are immediately and disrespectfully confronted in front of their coworkers and scolded for not doing something productive.
The moral among the staff is so bad that yesterday, on a Saturday night, two servers walked out of the restaurant and left their jobs, one left 5 tables he was waiting on. And one of the managers had the audacity to apathetically comment, "I've had worse days in this restaurant."
The abuse of authority and disrepect of others is rampant in this environment. This is a sitation worthy of a scene. Worthy of someone finally standing up and saying, "This is enough. We are not taking this kind of treatment."
But it's taken me months to get to this realization. At first, I thought I was being an overlysensitive millenial. I couldn't rightly quit a job just because it's "too much work," it's just not in me to do so. I've talked myself down from walking out several times. I've told myself just to get through the shift and sleep on it, figure it out another day.
It's easy to think that with today's labor laws, wage boycotts and taking a stand for your rights in the workplace is unnessecary, obsolete. Talking with my dad on the phone, I realized that I shouldn't allow myself to be disrepected anymore than Rosa Parks did, excuse the exorbitant comparison. And furthermore, I can't go any longer allowing my friends and coworkers to be treated with unfairness either. Circumstances like this where people are quite legitamatly being bullied don't have to be handled so lightly.
Granted, I could just quitely put in my two weeks, grin and bear it until then, stay silent, and find another job. I am voluntarily working there, just like anyone else who has the right to find happiness elsewhere... but why can't I be the one to demand fair treatment for myself, my current coworkers, and anyone else to work there in the future? Why am I worried about making waves, or having to explain in an interview why I only worked in this restaurant for three months and worry about looking like I can't commit or like I'm not a hardworking employee?
The part of me that wants to put in my two weeks respectfully and stick it out until I'm out of there is the part of me that's only worrying about myself. And what I'm going to do with this sitation is much bigger than me. It's about the priciple. I am not a victim and I am not whining but I'm also not standing for it. I will find some way to stand up for what's right and say my piece....
Now, I'm looking for creative input. Give me your ideas, folks. What are some ways that I can protest this injustice? How can I spark change without unnecessary fanfare? How can I make the greatest impact and leave knowing I've been fair but firm?
A completely unrelated photo of a newspaper collage I made
