As Shannon has risen through the ranks of the hospitality industry, she says being blatantly sexualised by male customers is a common experience. Photo / Getty Images
Warning: This article contains details of sexual assault
An early winter’s sun warms Shannon*’s face as she sets a window table at the quaint Auckland deli where she works as a waitress. Looking out at the bright, blue-sky day, she spies one of her regular customers taking up a seat outside and watches his age-spotted hands fumble with a lead as he ties up his little dog.
Delighted, Shannon steals a moment to say hello to the man and his cute pet who beams up at her as she kneels to pat it. It’s a pleasant scene that precludes a moment in which a young woman starting out in the hospitality industry will be affected by for the rest of her life.
When she stands to leave, the dog’s owner stands up too and, as Shannon recalls with vivid recollection, “very tightly wraps his arms around me in an awkward sort of sideways hug.”
He’s a large man in his 50s, and 5ft Shannon feels trapped. Her head wedged in his armpit, she remembers being mortified as “he turned to the other customers, mostly men, and announced ‘Her breasts are as firm as I thought they would be. I’m going home to have a w*** now.’”
In tears, Shannon “shoved him off” and ran inside.
“My male manager did nothing,” she tells the Herald, remembering the incident eight years ago. “The regulars who [the customer] did this in front of said and did nothing.”
Anxious at the thought of encountering him again, Shannon remembers pleading with her boss not to have to serve the man, should he return.
But when he did come back days later, Shannon says her boss “walked away”.
“I felt forced to pour him a wine while explaining how what he did made me uncomfortable. I was told ‘Oops, I wasn’t supposed to drink on prescription drugs.’
“Later he told me to put a glass of wine on his tab for myself as a ‘sorry’.”
Shannon says the incident and its impact “will stick with me forever”.
Now a bar manager in a high-end Auckland restaurant, she loves her job for the array of interesting people she meets and the part she can play in ensuring customers have a great night. But while rising through the ranks she’s found that, as a woman, being “blatantly sexualised” is still “all too familiar”.
She recalls a friend being considered for a role alongside her and her male manager deciding against the woman based on her appearance.
“Nah, she’s got a moustache,” Shannon remembers him telling her.
Working in an environment where men, sometimes inebriated, sometimes not, can become inappropriate, Shannon says she learned to “block out the small things.
“It often gets to a point where you sometimes don’t even notice it, which I would say is mostly my experience.”
But there have been plenty of incidents where she and fellow employees have wanted to speak up.
When a young female waitress suddenly left her shift early, “distraught and crying”, Shannon and her workmates wondered what on earth had happened.
It wasn’t until later in the night that she learned the young woman had been “grabbed on the butt by a customer.”
But, Shannon says, “nothing was done by my two male managers.
When, together with her colleagues, Shannon challenged her bosses about their lack of response to the incident, she says, “It was very upsetting for a number of us when we found out there were no repercussions for [the customer’s] behaviour”.
Since moving into management roles herself she’s watched time and again as customers have expressed their dismay at the fact that, as a woman, she’s the person in charge.
“‘She can’t be the manager. Let me speak to a man’,” Shannon would hear directed at herself and other women in bar management roles.
She tells the Herald: “Some men would prefer recommendations from a very new and less experienced male colleague based solely on his gender. I’ve been in these situations many times.”
But, she says, she’s also seen “male guests request me over a male colleague ... because they want someone to flirt with and tease. They like having the female attention.”
Spending her early adulthood in hospitality, Shannon says her confidence to speak up has grown as have her efforts to encourage younger women to do the same.
“It was much harder to stand up for myself as a 17- 18-year-old and I never did. But I have learned as I’ve gotten older how important it is ... for myself and others. I have worked with many young females and it is very important to me to try and help them grow that confidence earlier on and to speak up, whether that is directly to the offender, or to myself or other management.”
When it’s come to working alongside men or under male management, Shannon says she hasn’t had any altercations but often the support when customers have been inappropriate hasn’t been there.
Her experiences over the years have encouraged her to do things differently with her own staff.
“I make it very clear that their safety is a priority and they can always speak to me. I have a zero-tolerance policy for that kind of behaviour and no employee should have to feel uncomfortable or unsafe in their place of employment.”
But on a wider scale, Shannon says she hasn’t been made aware of support from the hospitality industry at large.
“I have just seen the proactive instances from leaders in a team, but nothing in the bigger picture, which is disappointing. My current employer provides free counselling which I think is very important.”
And while she says things have improved in her experience in recent years, she surmises that could be a result of moving from working in a pub setting to a restaurant bar.
“It hasn’t gone away, and I doubt it ever will.”
In 2020 a survey conducted by the Restaurant Association found that 15 per cent of business owners had experienced sexual harassment in their workplaces.
When it came to workplaces having a policy for preventing and responding to bullying and harassment on the job, 64 per cent said they had something in place.
Restaurant Association CEO Marisa Bidois says “considerable work has been done by the industry to lift employment standards and ensuring staff feel safe and cared for is a key component of this.”
She notes hospitality is an industry “dependent on customer service” and as such, “there may be some instances where workers feel pressure to tolerate harassment from customers to maintain their jobs, but this is certainly not what we want to see happening in our industry. Everyone deserves the right to feel safe in their workplace and that includes actions from customers.”
Bidois says that here in New Zealand, for the most part, hospitality offerings are made up of small to medium enterprises (SMEs), those who have less than 20 staff.
What’s challenging for these businesses is that they are “unlikely to have the resources to undertake formal workplace investigations in-house, nor enact preventative measures and develop material that will assist them with creating a positive workplace culture to prevent situations escalating,” she says.
So conducting a formal investigation can be “both a costly and stressful exercise”. She suggests support from an external organisation like Restaurant Association “is extremely helpful navigating these serious issues”.
The Association made a submission to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) in 2020 suggesting the government help employers with access to pre-emptive tools, “to enable them to build a positive workplace culture rather than rely on reactive policies and tools to use when a workplace situation arises”.
Bidois says today several initiatives are in the works including the recently launched HospoCred which recognises exemplary workplaces and the Association’s workers support initiative - Tautoko Hāpai Ō.
Bidois says businesses in the hospitality industry should take proactive steps to prevent and address sexual harassment by:
Restaurant Association members have access to “templates and guidelines to help them to navigate their compliance obligations as well as access to our member advice line staffed by a team of experts who can provide advice and guidance on employment matters.”
*Shannon’s name has been changed
Where to get help:
If it’s an emergency and you feel that you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
If you’ve ever experienced sexual assault or abuse and need to talk to someone, contact Safe to Talk confidentially, any time 24/7:
• Call 0800 044 334
• Text 4334
• Email support@safetotalk.nz
• For more info or to web chat visit safetotalk.nz
Alternatively, contact your local police station - click here for a list.
If you have been sexually abused, remember it’s not your fault.
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