U.S. Restaurant Culture Inadvertently Leads to Sexual Harassment

Fast Company ^ | 07-12-21 | Talib Visram

[nickcarraway]

The combination of tipping-based compensation structures with demands for overexaggerated friendliness lead customers to feel they have power over service workers.

Anywhere between 70% and 90% of restaurant servers and bartenders have likely been subjected to sexual harassment—from unwanted comments and looks, requests for dates, to physical touching—by customers. There are also many anecdotal indications that the behavior has heightened during the pandemic, with wait staff reporting what’s come to be known as “maskual harassment”: servers being asked to remove their masks and show their faces for the gratification of customers.

A new study aims to get to the reason behind sexual harassment in hospitality, and results point to an answer rooted in the combination of two common staples of the industry in America: workers’ reliance on tips, and expectations to give cheerful “service with a smile” at all times. Both these elements together—financial dependence on and emotional deference to customers—create a power dynamic that puts customers in a comfortable position to make sexualized gestures toward their servers. The researchers suggest that employers could significantly drive down instances of this behavior by eliminating just one of the two factors.

The study, carried out by professors from Penn State, Notre Dame, and Emlyon Business School in Lyon, France, was based on a theory proposed by a 2015 study, which suggested that examples of structural power—like dependence on tipping—only activate a feeling of dominance among individuals when an element of “deferential behavior” is added to the mix. In the service industry, that deference can come in the form of smiling, says Tim Kundro, assistant professor of management and organization at Notre Dame. “Smiling is really just an explicit form of deference,” he says. The researchers replicated the model to test whether, in a service context, smiling would activate a switch that made customers feel a sense of control over the server, which could increase the chances of sexual harassment.

To test the theory, the researchers carried out both a survey, from employees’ perspective, and an experiment, from customers’ perspective. The survey involved 92 hospitality workers, including servers, cashiers, and hotel clerks, were surveyed about their experiences with sexual harassment, as well as their reliance on tipping and employers’ requirement for “service with a smile.”

But, self-reporting has its limitations. So, in the experiment portion, participants acted as customers in a restaurant scene set up with different manipulations to test the financial and deferential elements together. They were given copies of receipts, either signaling that the server was highly dependent on tips and asking for gratuity, or explaining that the restaurant paid fair wages, and that while tips were appreciated, they weren’t required—which Kundro calls “more of a European approach” to tipping. They were also shown photos of a server, who was either smiling or displaying a neutral facial expression. Participants read a script of exchanges with the hypothetical server. (All participants were male, and shown female photos, to recreate the typical harassment dynamic; and all the servers shown in the photos were white, to eliminate any influence of racial attitudes.)

They were then asked questions on the encounter to determine how they’d viewed the power dynamic. First, they were explicitly asked if they felt they had power over the server, to which the response wasn’t so strong, which researchers said was expected, as people likely wouldn’t want to consciously admit so. But, they were then implicitly asked about power, by saying whether they’d agree or disagree with statements such as: “If I asked her for her phone number, she’d probably give it to me,” “If I told her she was attractive, she’d probably be pleased,” and “If I asked her out, she’d probably say yes.” The researchers found that among those who were faced with both tipping and smiley service, there were enhanced feelings of power. They were disinhibited toward the server, and felt that “whatever they ask for, they’ll ultimately receive in some form,” Kundro says.

The relevance of the study is that it offers a clue as to what employers could do to help reduce instances of sexual harassment towards their employees: namely, says Alicia Grandey, professor of psychology at Penn State, to change either one of the two factors. They could pay a fair wage—not to eliminate tipping, but to decrease over-reliance on the customer for a big portion of servers’ incomes. Or, they could rethink their expectations for cheery service. These are structural problems themselves, in businesses not properly compensating employees, or having overly high service expectations. But, that they could create a climate for sexual harassment adds to the impetus to change management methods. “Our idea is that when we, as customers, see that smile, it activates the awareness of that power differential,” Grandey says. “That is what creates the likelihood of abusing the power from the customer’s perspective.”

Kundro stresses that the theory should not be used to blame service employees for habits, like natural smiling. “We’re definitely very careful not to put the onus on the service employee,” he says, “—’hey, you’re getting sexually harassed because you’re smiling.'” Rather, the study is intended to take a management perspective, to question whether organizations that expect constant “emotional labor” from servers is inadvertently problematic. “Independently, it might not be that much of a problem,” he says, but “paired with tipping requirements, it really elicits a sense of power in the customers.”

While eliminating service with a smile may seem out of step with what we expect as customers at bars and restaurants, Grandey stresses that not smiling is not the same as being impolite, and “overexaggerated smiling” isn’t necessary in order to give friendly, efficient, and attentive service. And: “Right now, with masks, it’s a perfect time to ask that question,” she says. She’s working on an update to the study that surveys workers about incidents of sexual harassment during the pandemic. From the initial data: “It doesn’t look like masking versus non-masking made that much of a difference in customer’s reactions,” she says, “which suggests that maybe it’s not really the smile that matters all that much.” Direct eye contact, for instance, may be more valuable, and less deferent, than smiling.

Employers aside, if customers are generally more aware of the potential for a power dynamic in such scenarios, we may be more willing to change the way we behave when we’re being served. “It’s not good people and bad people,” she says, “it’s just how the situation can be adjusted.” Ultimately, she and her team wanted to shine a light on sexual harassment in hospitality, because it’s often ignored in the #metoo discourse in favor of cases within corporate America. “[That] is much more like a cover story,” she says. “This is just everyday people interacting with service workers. This isn’t like the CEO of a company.”

[eyeamok]

The Clinton Rule was one free grope

[Organic Panic]

And in other news humanity has been the same since we emerged from primordial ooze.

Do a follow up study of these young women in 15 years when no one pays attention to them and let me know what they think about unwanted flirtation.

[ptsal]

Surprised to learn this.
Whodda thunk a bar keep would hit on the staff. /s

[Rurudyne]

Ole had to take an overnight train trip one November night, and agreed to be assigned to a sleeping car with another single traveler. As it turned out, his roommate was a very pretty young lady.

After their initial shock an embarrassment, they agreed to just try and make the best of it. The young lady took the upper berth, and Ole took the lower berth. After an hour or so, the young lady leaned over the side of the berth and said “Excuse me, Mr. Ole, but I’m rather chilly up here. Would you mind getting me another blanket?”

Ole got a rather mischievous gleam in his eye and replied “I’fe got a better idea. Vhy don’t ve pretend, you know yust for tonight, dat you’re my vife, Lena?”

The young lady though for a moment, then giggled and said “OK, sure! Why not?”

“Great!” exclaimed Ole. “Go get your own blanket.”

[bigbob]

On the other hand, more than a few rode hard put up wet barmaids should be required to wear masks

[jimfree]

So much of life is performance. You could write this drivel on practically any activity to make it sound oppressive.

[bgill]

Fine, no tipping. It isn’t the customers’ job to evaluate employees job performance. The manager or owner should evaluate employees and give them an appropriate wage.

[Paladin2]

Clinton is a regular at Hooters?

[caww]

.....”The study, carried out ‘by professors’ from Penn State, Notre Dame, and Emlyon Business School in Lyon, France”....

Like when are they going to do the work they’re hired to do...teach students! Professors need to clean up their own aisle before they go out to clean out other businesses!

[a fool in paradise]

I've seen male bartenders who c@ckblock customers and give certain women free drinks.

I've seen a lesbian service crew manager who’d get her latest flings a job and then summarily fired the young women when the relationships soured.

and these are liberal Democrats over 40 I've seen doing these things.

[a fool in paradise]

And when the waitresses treat their customers like a sugar daddy??
—
Female servers who touch customers lightly on the shoulder, hand, or arm receive higher tips than customers who are not touched. Customers who were touched by female servers drank more alcohol than customers who were not touched, thus, giving customers more opportunities to tip the server.Jul 18, 2012
https://www.psychologytoday.com › ...
Six Tips to Get Higher Tips | Psychology Today
Fe

[MercyFlush]

Fine by me. I’ll stop tipping since it’s supposedly wrong.

[Chicory]

The Left seems to really hate tipping, where what you earn is directly related (more or less) to how well you do your job.

I have met waiters at upscale restaurants who raised families on tips. Now the Left wants them to go to minimum wage?

Oh, well, they’ll see what happens to the service at their toney DC hotspots...

[SharpenedEdge]

What this is really all about is leveling the playing field so the cute hottie with social skills doesn’t make more in tips than the fat tattooed lesbian with gauged ears, facial piercings and green butch hair.

Create “science” to advance the agenda.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

The left wants to eliminate tipping and pay wait staff a wage. This eliminates the inequity in that friendly, attentive waiters and waitresses make more in tips than the angry, surly types that typify the left. This is irregardless of how they look (though good looks probably help a bit). In fact, the better grade of wait staff wants nothing to do with a wage, because they would be taking a pay cut.

[EasySt]

What this is really all about is leveling the playing field so the cute
hottie with social skills doesn’t make more in tips than the fat tattooed
lesbian with gauged ears, facial piercings and green butch hair. ‘

“Create “science” to advance the agenda.

“ ~~~~~~~~

I have a different theory about what this is about.

This part right here gives it away:

”There are also many anecdotal indications that the behavior has
heightened during the pandemic, with wait staff reporting
what’s come to be known as “maskual harassment”: servers
being asked to remove their masks and show their faces for the
gratification of customers.”

They are making every narrative managing attempt at maintaining the
unprecedented level level of liberty crushing control over all of our lives.

Now they want to make “maskual harassment” a thing.

More stuff to fight with each other about, so we don’t fight the
PedoDementoCorruptoCrat Regime nor its handlers and masters.

Every server I meet wants out of the masks as much as the rest of us.

~Easy

[Chicory]

Good point! Don’t want (Dem-voting) people to have to suffer consequences for their decisions!

[.44 Special]

No. This is is just another facet of the decline of the human race. Not only is the decline evident in politics but in every day human behavior. None of this would have ever been acceptable at anytime. Just another sign of the end times.