Tales from the Frontlines: ‘I’ll Have a Waitress With Nothing on It.’
Today in reader-submitted stories, from a 23-year-old teacher in northeast Indiana:
When I was 15 years old, I worked at a tiny, local restaurant. I had only worked there about a week when I went to take a customer’s order at the drive-up window. When I asked the man what he wanted, he looked me right in the eye and said, “I’ll have a waitress with nothing on it.”
I didn’t know what to say or do, so I just stood and looked at him. He immediately got defensive, “It was just a joke!”
No, asshole, it was NOT just a joke.
I don’t know which aspect of how wrong that statement was made me the most angry. Was it that he treated women as just a consumable commodity, even going so far as to use the pronoun “it”? Was it the fact that I was only 15, and looked only 15, when he said this to me? Was it the fact that there was small boy sitting next to him in the car, learning how to treat women and food service workers as things? Was it that he acted self-righteous because it was sooo my fault that I couldn’t take a joke that would have made him not only disgusting, but also a sex offender? Was it the fact that when I told my boss, he laughed? Or, was it because I had no idea what to say back to him?
I should have screamed the preceding paragraph. I should have taken his license plate number and reported him to the police. I should have refused to serve him. I didn’t. I made his ice cream.
No one will ever treat me like that again.
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