"Can you give me your number?", "Shall we meet when you go out?", or "Hot! Another beer!" These are just some of the comments that waitresses still have to put up with during their workday. And that's not all. Some also fear that the man who has been watching them from the bar throughout the shift will be waiting for them on the street, or that the boss will send them messages, insinuating himself. We are not inventing anything, these are situations that four waitresses from Oviedo, Vienna, Vitoria and Barcelona have told us about. None has been freed from these caveman attitudes and they denounce that in 2023 some men still treat them with very little respect.
Originally from Oviedo, Génesis García has worked as a waitress since she was 16 years old. Now that she is in her early twenties, she is studying for an early childhood education degree which she combines with a part-time job. Some will know her story thanks to the Twitter account @soycamarero, which after sharing her case went viral. “I put an ad on a job portal. I wanted to find something in the morning because in the afternoon I was taking care of an older woman." But when they contacted her, they were not interested in her experience in the hospitality industry. "A man called me and asked me if I had any problem working with cleavage. It was quite surprising. It was a job from 8:00 in the morning to 16:00 in the afternoon.”
He also asked for a photograph where his silhouette could be seen well. “I sent him a very formal first image, with a high neck, and he told me that it was not worth it. Seeing that she was not willing to send him another, she offered to look for it himself on social networks. I told him no". At that moment, Génesis decided to cut off the conversation, but that man contacted her again on other occasions. "I was wondering on WhatsApp if she had called him as an excuse to continue talking to me." Weeks later, they contacted her again. “Again, a man tells me that I have a striking profile, but in this case he offered me a job as a sugar baby, that is, as a company girl. I got really mad. I have the suspicion that it was the same person, because I recognized his voice from an audio note ”.
Reporting was not easy. Many people told her that it could be dangerous, that this man could look for her and hurt her. But other classmates of hers had experienced situations similar to hers and she wanted to do something. "I still don't get anything, but I thought that if he denounced, some men would take it for granted and stop behaving in this way." When he went to the police station, an agent told him that this was not reportable, but he spoke with several lawyers and confirmed that it was. Now her case is in the hands of a lawyer friend of the family.
This has not been the only harassment that Geminis have suffered as a waitress. In another cafeteria in Oviedo, she was already required to wear a low-cut dress, make-up and have straight hair. Her boss continually made indecent proposals to her, just like her clients. “They asked me if I lived alone and offered to pay my rent in exchange for my company. In most cases older gentlemen. When she found herself in these situations, those in charge of her did not usually support her, but laughed at her. On one occasion she even forbade her boyfriend to visit her so that the clientele would not know that she had a partner. “It is what many hoteliers are looking for, to put young girls to attract the attention of men. When she wanted to respond to clients they told me not to do it, to put up with me ”.
Now Génesis has found a full-time job in a restaurant where he claims to be very comfortable. He has been given an indefinite contract and works the hours that correspond to him. “I hope that we waitresses don't have to continue to put up with these behaviors. I encourage everyone to report. The more we raise our voices, the more they will think about it. A complaint damages both the image of the person and the local. We cannot let them take advantage of our fear.”
The waiter Jesús Soriano, who through the Twitter account @soycamarero censors everything that those who practice this profession have to put up with, explains that the story of Genesis is not an isolated case. "I am constantly contacted by colleagues who tell me similar stories. Recently, a girl wrote to me because she had doubts about whether to report her superior, who was harassing her through text messages. She is afraid to do so because she does not want to lose her job" .
In some parts of Spain, Soriano denounces, hoteliers have WhatsApp groups to boycott those who do them harm. "They make your life impossible so you can't find work." Even so, he recommends reporting. "When waitresses write to me with questions about taking legal action, I encourage them to do so and, if they want, I share their story online so that the restaurateurs who have harassed them will think twice."
The young waiter defends that bosses should be on the side of their workers. "The client is not always right. The boss must know how to be a boss and make the clients understand that the waiter who serves them is only doing his job. Why do they get angry? Well, having these people as clients is not worth it ".
Aliae Yousfi (Ali to friends) has lived in Barcelona all her life with her parents, who moved from Morocco to the Catalan capital at just 20 years old. That is more or less the age she was when she decided to turn her life around and go to work as an AuPair in Vienna. Before that, she did her artistic high school and worked for a few years as a waitress in the city. Her journey in hospitality began when she was 16 years old. "In my first two jobs I wasn't harassed by coworkers or customers. I was mostly a dishwasher so I wasn't very exposed, and the team was great." Just before the pandemic, she became part of the staff of a fast food restaurant and there she did begin to see some behaviors that she did not like. "I was already 18 years old, and the cooks constantly called me 'pretty' and 'sexy.' Most of them were married men with children, at least 30 years older than me."
His next stop was a bar in Sant Cugat del Vallès, El Siglo. There he was very comfortable both with the boss and with the rest of the team. "But when he would ask customers what they wanted for an appetizer, some would say 'you!' I would tell them I was working, not fooling around with them." In 2021, he packed his bags and went to Vienna. After five months, when he stopped being an AuPair, he returned to the hotel business. "Now I'm in a well-known downtown fast food chain. In the room, the girls are the majority, we are all of a similar age. But the men, who are over 35, make some comments that are out of place." Aliae explains that since the establishment has two floors, when a waiter stays in one of them with many girls, the rest of the men usually say to him: "what does it feel like to work with such sexy girls?", or "be careful not to hot, concentrate on your work".
He also remembers that once he was working with a man who was on the sink and many waitresses were complaining about him. "On my first day, he asked me my name and my age, and since I had already been warned about him, I lied to him and told him I was 16 so he could leave me alone. He was 40-something. After that, I He asked for the phone number. I was shocked." After accumulating many complaints, she and her companions thought they would kick him out, but the day did not come. "Until one of the waitresses started going out with another employee, and since he was annoyed that this man bothered his girlfriend, she complained to the bosses, and they did not hesitate to fire him."
Clients have also bothered her on more than one occasion, and she insists that they are usually older than her. "I remember a table that I attended a while ago. They would have been 40 years old and were celebrating an anniversary. The honoree asked me if we could take a photo together, that his friends had challenged him." But the next part of the game did not please him at all. "She asked me if I could give her my bra. When I said no, quite angrily, she told me it was a joke and had a good laugh with the rest of the group."
If the waitresses on her team want to react to these situations, Aliae points out, they can't act on their own. They must notify the manager first. "I would like to be able to respond if they disrespect me. Clients take advantage of your little freedom, because if you speak badly to them without first dealing with the manager, they know that you are leaving," she laments.
Despite everything she has had to put up with since she started working as a waitress, Aliae believes that the new generations have less macho attitudes. "Younger waiters and customers do not behave the same as older ones. They are more respectful. It is also a good sign that large companies carry out tests to prevent sexist behavior, even if it is later difficult for them to put it into practice," she concludes.
In her 10 years of experience as a waitress in Vitoria, María Perdiguero points out that she has put up with a lot of macho behavior and comments from colleagues and clients. Now she is in a cafeteria in the center of Gasteiz, but she has worked in all kinds of bars and restaurants. "Sometimes the look is already uncomfortable," she explains. "They're supposed to do it in a nice way, but you get another undertone." She has encountered clients who have asked for her phone number, her social media profile or if she wants to meet them after her work. "I remember an older man, married and with children, who invited me to go with him to the swamp. He insisted for a long time, it was quite uncomfortable. Since you're working, you can't respond as you would like, and on top of that, you have to see him more times, because he is a regular customer", he laments.
Statements such as "the customer is always right" or "the one who pays rules" are very out of date, he says. "Many clients are still governed by these ideas, it doesn't make sense, because they think they can tell you anything that comes to their minds. Sometimes they have even told me that I can't get angry because they are saying nice things to me. I answer them that I have not asked for their opinion or I turn a deaf ear". Maria, who is a waitress and cook, explains that when she was younger she responded worse and nipped these behaviors in a rude way.
"But now I answer in a different way, trying to make the client see that he is not behaving well. When I ended badly with a man, I was afraid that he would wait for me in the street, he thinks that many times I closed the bar alone." She says that they even threatened to wait for her when she came out, but what scared her the most was how her gaze changed. "If I told them something they didn't like, they would go from pretending to be sympathetic to looking at you with hate and disgust. You could see violence in their eyes. Also, they were mostly very big men and that was scary."
They never waited for her on the street to hurt her, but she explains that it happened to a colleague. "She works in a place located in Judizmendi, a somewhat dangerous neighborhood where drugs are the order of the day. She had a fight with a client and had to call her brother to pick her up at the exit because the man was waiting for her outside. of the premises". María admits that even if you think you know how to defend yourself - "this friend had taken self-defense classes" - the fear does not disappear.
She hasn't had so many problems with her colleagues, although in some cases she has felt undervalued for being a woman. She cites a very uncomfortable situation that she lived with a boss. "I was in a bar in the old town of Vitoria, it was called Jalas-Leku. The place belonged to a man in his 60s, who happened to have some daughters who were my age, I knew them. One day I was in the kitchen , he pinched my thigh, just below my ass. I asked him what he thought, to which he replied that he was very stumpy. I, who was just cutting vegetables, warned him that he had a knife in his hand, as if to say: "Maybe the next time you touch me I'll cut you off. He didn't do it more times, but I ended up leaving the job anyway."
On another occasion, the manager of a local also demanded that she wear dresses and short skirts. "It's a total objectification. Working with that is not comfortable at all, you bend over and you can see everything. I told him no, and I left the job."
Have you noticed any change in the behavior of men towards waitresses in all the years you have worked in the sector? "No. Now they are more careful with what they say because they know they could get hurt more. But I think they still don't understand it. It scares me even more now, because there is a double truth: they behave better, but they don't teach what they think really". María assures that this is the case because it is difficult for them to understand what the objectification or sexualization of women is. "For men, sexuality is always good. They have been educated from toxic masculinity, which is why some tell you that they would not mind being a sexual object."
However, in these 10 years, Maria has observed that some young men are more respectful. "There are bars that are narrow and whether you want to or not, you have to touch the other person to let them know you're there. Young colleagues, instead of touching your hip, touch your shoulder, something that doesn't happen with older men. It's what yours".
Carmeta Torrents was born in Barcelona, but at the age of 8 she moved to Calafell with her family. She there she took her first steps as a waitress in a hamburger restaurant when she had not yet reached the age of majority. Over time, she returned to the Catalan capital in search of new opportunities, but before she practiced her profession outside the country, in the famous Cheers in London. Currently, she is head waiter at chef Oriol Ivern's Michelin-starred restaurant, Hisop.
"Since I was young I have met clients who have told me 'how beautiful you are' or who have invited me for a drink after the service, but then I did not give it so much importance. I suppose it was more normalized," he explains. He is now more aware, with many years of experience behind him, he claims to be more aware of what he should or should not allow while working in the restaurant. "I remember a situation that bothered me a lot. We were in a pandemic, and a group of men came to eat at Hisop with an attitude of 'let's have a good time.' At first they made the typical jokes, but then they asked me what my name was and they told me that I had very pretty eyes, among other things. In the end they asked me to lower my mask. It was very uncomfortable." Of course he refused.
Carmeta assures that at Hisop they are free to answer whatever they want to diners who do not respect them - "Oriol gives us carte blanche" - but that they have never reached the point of kicking out a client. "You don't want them to put on a show and start shouting in the middle of the restaurant, so in the end you end up passing so that the rest of the customers who do behave are comfortable." Other behaviors that she has had to put up with are some men placing the chair in the middle of the path so that you have no choice but to brush past them. "And there are looks, of those that review you, that are also very unpleasant."
The Hisop room manager continues to explain that these comments and behaviors, which are highly disrespectful, affect the way you work. "They throw you off balance and doing your job is much more complicated, because serving that table again makes you very nervous." And she adds that the diner takes advantage of the fact that you are not on an equal footing. "They know you're in full service, based on the belief that 'who pays rules. And you can't help but wonder: would they do the same on equal terms? If we were both on the street? "They know that in your job you are more limited", she says about this type of men, who generally behave like this when they go with friends, and their wives or partners are not there.
Carmeta has not felt endangered by the behavior of a client, but she says that it has happened to other colleagues. "At a time when I worked in a cocktail bar, a man sat at the bar and stared at the waitress. When she angrily asked him if he wanted anything, the client said: but you don't know who? am I? It was a policeman, he even took her badge. And then she was waiting outside the bar, but since she was accompanied by the team, nothing happened."
And although it seems that outlandish clothing requirements are only made in nightclubs, Carmeta explains that she once had problems in a restaurant for this reason. "They made me wear a very tight shirt, it was extremely uncomfortable. So I went into the office and took one two sizes larger. When they caught me they gave me a good fight, but then they gave in."
We take this opportunity to ask her if she feels valued working as head of the room, a position that historically has been occupied mainly by men. "Sometimes they don't take me seriously. Also, if you're young people are more shocked, but Hisop's philosophy is different and there are three girls in the room, Paula, Sofi and me, and we feel at home".
Will the situation change in the rest of the restaurants and bars? "I would like to believe that he will do it in a short time, thinking of leaving a better world than the one we have found to those who follow us."
