Male superiors regularly inspect me, making comments about my body and my appearance, rating my physical suitability.

A manager once checked me out in a low-cut shirt that was part of the uniform and said, “Hey did they get bigger? There are children in this place.”

I work long hours with no breaks. If I complain, I will be fired, or my hours reduced until I am forced to find another job.

I am expected to enter my workplace and wait around ‘on call’ for hours, unpaid.

“So, we’re not going to have sex?” a customer asked me, completely bewildered by the premise.

There is so much that goes into a job in service, so much that the client Is rarely aware of. When I am behind the bar I am expected to smile and look good, to be charming and confident, a brilliant conversationalist in multiple languages, a therapist, a DJ, a sports analyst. Carrying plates and mixing drinks are the most basic of the tasks that I complete on a daily basis, but also the most visible. At my last job I was expected to create Excel spreadsheets and write reports for the shareholders, none of which I received appropriate compensation for. On top of it, workers in this industry have very little in terms of job or wage security. The restaurant business is notoriously fickle, and the fluctuation of business and the profits of the restaurant is something that is directly felt by lower level staff like servers and bartenders who rely on tips for a living.

There is something particularly degrading about fulfilling all of the requirements of your job and still knowing that you could theoretically end up paying to work. Servers are often required to tip out a certain percentage to the kitchen and the bar, and are also taxed based on an assumption that they are being tipped an average of 15% on their sales. This is not always the case, and tipping still falls into a grey area whereby it is not considered mandatory. The amount of money a server is paid is almost entirely at the discretion of the client, thereby putting the server in a very uncomfortable position. There were times that I had to explain to customers why the system is in place, to ask them to please ensure that they tip accordingly as I will be taxed regardless. I have literally chased people through the streets after they left without paying, fuelled by the knowledge that after serving them all night it would be me footing the bill. It felt a bit like begging for money in my place of employment, to have to explain to a customer that if they choose not to tip the result is me being unable to pay my bills, and basically unable to afford to continue to serve them. As you can imagine, most clients do not respond very positively to this kind of negotiation tactic, but the reality is that I am simply trying to earn a living wage.

Let’s be clear; the salary provided by an employer in the service industry makes up but a small fraction of a server’s total earnings. The current rate for those who make tips is $9.45 per hour, though after deductions it is usually closer to $5 or $6, a salary with which it is virtually impossible to support oneself. This places the onus on the server to provide ‘good service’ in order to secure a generous tip. So what does good service entail? In my experience, it means providing prompt delivery of food and drink, oftentimes while scantily clad or wearing high heels, full make-up and, most importantly, ensuring never to trod on the precious male ego.

“Did you go out last night? You look like shit,” my manager said, looking me up and down, after which he assured me that he was “just joking”. I responded by asking him if he speaks to his wife that way, adding that I did not think it was very appropriate or respectful. He recently terminated my employment on the grounds that I did not smile enough, specifically during my shift on Superbowl Sunday, where I worked eleven hours straight so that management could enjoy the night with their friends. It is, in fact, quite challenging to keep a smile plastered across your face for eleven hours straight while dealing with drunken men screaming in your face, “Gin tonic sweetheart, you think you can handle that?” I tried to explain that I thought I had Smile Mask Syndrome, a term that was coined in Japan in the 1980’s, where smiling and being almost unbearably friendly is expected of all service workers. It is actually a psychological disorder in which unnatural smiling acts as a catalyst for depression and physical illness.

The expectation was set early on that I should be overjoyed to be in their employment, and every dollar I earned I should thank them for. Never mind the fact that once again I was the one doing all the heavy lifting, while management pulled a nice salary in addition to taking part of the tips. Never has there been an industry in which there is such a clear delineation of gender roles, and in which men feel such sense of entitlement to profit from the hard work of others, all the while patting themselves on the back for a job well done.

During my eleven years in the service industry, I have felt a significant decline of my mental and physical health. The long hours combined with rampant alcohol abuse and total disregard for basic human needs took a real toll on me. After I graduated from Concordia I started to work full-time at a popular bar not far from the university. My first day I witnessed the owner place his empty pint glass on the bar, head towards the service station and vomit into a garbage bin. He wiped his mouth with a napkin like he had just finished a steak dinner, and walked back to the bar to pick up a freshly poured pint. This should have been a red flag, but I was young, and really it was just par for the course compared to what I’d already experienced.

I pride myself on being adaptable and hard-working, able to effortlessly assimilate myself into any work environment, but this attitude has not always served me well. I have learned to minimize my own needs and rights as a worker, learned not to ask for things as basic as breaks or food. After all, who am I to deserve such luxuries? I have worked many a twelve-hour shift, sneaking bites of food while standing up in a supply closet, meanwhile my manager sits at the bar consuming his third free meal while getting rich off the labour I am providing.

“How many times have you gone to the bathroom tonight?” he would ask me. “You look tired, here, have a shot.” There was, in fact, nothing a shot of Jameson couldn’t fix.

I made a mistake once, of standing up to a man. I was working with at a catering event for a well-known Montreal tech company whose staff party that was being held at the Uniprix stadium. We had been working alongside one another the entire night, I had brushed off his comments that I seemed inexperienced, that he had worked there longer than me and I was clearly inferior. This comes with the territory, along with smiling pretty and swallowing any retort that might come to mind. I was well-versed in this, since I started working in the industry at the age of seventeen. At the end of the night, as we were cleaning up, I made a comment. “Aren’t you going to help?” I asked. He looked at me and snorted, what a preposterous concept. Instead he stood off to the side with his arms crossed, watching myself and another woman as we did all the heavy lifting. One of the managers of the company happened to pass by, at which point I disclosed to her that he had decided not to partake in the clean-up, and she told him he should leave. He walked off, clearly unhappy with how things had gone, shouting some insults in my direction, but I didn’t think much of it. I was making my final trip to the kitchen when I saw him walking towards me. I pretended I didn’t see him.

“Why are you such a bitch?” He asked me, once I was within earshot.

I kept walking, but he blocked my path.

“Why do you have to be such a bitch, huh? Why are you such a bitch?”

He just kept repeating this over and over again. There were people around, mostly drunken party goers who seemed to take no note of the altercation. I tried to sidestep him, but again he blocked me and put his hands on my shoulders, then around my neck.

“Don’t touch me,” I just remember repeating, at which point he put me in a chokehold, screaming in my face, over and over again, that I was a bitch. I managed to push him off of me, dropped whatever I’d been carrying and left the event.

I reported the incident to the catering company who said they would deal with it, but I never received any kind of follow-up. When I went to the police about it, I was told that if I wanted to report what had happened I had to be aware of the fact that I may have to appear in court, which seemed like a daunting prospect at the time. I chose to leave the man’s name, just in case anything similar occurred, that they could see he had a history of this kind of behaviour. This may seem shocking, and like a one-off, but in various ways I have been treated this way throughout my time in the service industry, and so have countless other women.

When your job requires that you show up with your face on and your tits out, it is hard to feel any sense of self-respect. Much less so when you are not guaranteed a living wage, irrespective of the fact that you do have a job and provide a service. In a world where women are made to feel that their value lies entirely in their appearance, their sexuality, working in the service industry in Montreal has only served to enforce these beliefs in an exceedingly toxic environment, one which desperately begs for mediation, regulation, some kind of adult supervision of the man children that run it.