Sexual harassment in the restaurant industry

Sexual harassment in restaurants is a fairly common problem. We are not talking about harassment from customers; we actually mean the harassment that goes from bosses or superiors toward employees.

According to research carried out by ROCUNITED (Restaurant Opportunities Centers United), in the United States 70% of women who work in restaurants have been victims of sexual harassment from their superiors. Curiously, 50% of men have also suffered sexual harassment from their superiors.

If the figures in that country are that high, could you imagine the data a similar report would show in your country? without a doubt they would be quite revealing numbers.

Let's be completely honest

Those who usually visit the website know that I own several restaurants, and I have lived firsthand the human temptations that appear when we have very attractive female employees. We cannot deny that being owners or bosses of a restaurant gives us a certain power that can sometimes lead us to make mistakes or to think about using that power in our favor, but we definitely have to understand that it is not the right thing to do. We must focus on the business and not on how pretty or handsome our employees may be.

Harassment of employees, sooner or later, brings problems

I remember that a few years ago I hired a girl who turned out to be quite attractive and quite charismatic.

In my case, when a person has already been working with me for several months, a certain level of trust usually appears, the kind typical of any friendship, but always keeping the limits of the boss-employee relationship.

We had a good deal of trust, we joked with each other, just as I do with any of my employees to release the stress that workdays cause.

On one occasion the girl showed up with her hair dyed and styled. I did not hesitate to let her know; I told her it looked very good on her, hoping that would make her feel happy and that she would say to herself “wow, even the boss told me it looked good on me“.

Nothing out of the ordinary… the problem came up about 10 months later. The girl had personal problems with a coworker who had already been her friend before she started working, since they lived in the same place, some 6 or 7 houses away. They were very personal problems, apparently about “pants”, that is, over a man… in which even the families of both of them met to try to fix the problem.

The problem could not be solved, and the girl with the pretty hair decided not to work at my restaurant anymore so as not to see her now ex-friend again, who naturally worked in my business.

When her family asked her not to quit the job, she locked the matter down by saying the following: I don't want to have any contact with her, I don't want her near me, and on top of that the boss is a harasser; one day when I showed up all dressed up, he made a pass at me.

Excuse me? let me see if I understood correctly, she was accusing me, in front of her family, of being a harasser, and she accused me of having made a pass at her. Is that for real? in case it is not clear to you, “to make a pass at someone” means to hint, in a subtle or disguised way, at the desire to establish a romantic relationship.

That's right, dear readers, 10 months after simply having told an employee that her styled hair looked good on her, she did that. And that situation caused me temporary problems even with my wife.

That is why, as restaurant owners or managers, we must be very careful when addressing employees of the opposite sex.

If you are a harasser

I recommend that you stop being one; if by nature you are one, I recommend that you don't do it, at least not with your female employees, harass your trusted female friends instead, your ex-girlfriends, but not your employees 😀 because you can have a great many problems that can bring serious consequences for the restaurant and for you personally.

If you are not a harasser

Be careful, because any detail can be misinterpreted, exactly as in my case.

Personally, from that moment on I started a radical policy to avoid problems. So that you know, when I still worked in the direct management of my restaurants (now other trusted people do it and I devote myself to watching movies on Netflix, something like a well-deserved vacation after so many years of effort growing the restaurants). What I did was discard girls who were too attractive; I preferred to give the job to less attractive girls or to older ladies whom I knew would not bring me problems with my wife 😀

It was quite radical and extreme but I was not willing to go through another similar problem.

That is why I recommend that you take action on the matter. I am not recommending that you fire attractive girls, but rather that you keep a prudent distance so that your words are not misinterpreted.

If you want to know more about Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and its initiatives to improve the working conditions and wages of restaurant employees, I invite you to visit its website: http://rocunited.org you will learn a lot about what employees really want but will never tell you because you are the boss or manager.