Why is sexual harassment so rife in the restaurant industry?

UNITED STATES

The Washington Post via The Independent
November 20, 2017

By Maura Judkis and Emily Heil

In interviews with dozens of women, a picture of rampant assault and pestering emerges. And not just by powerful chefs

If you’re a woman, what makes a restaurant dangerous isn’t the sharp knives or the hot griddle: It’s an isolated area of the kitchen, like the dry storage pantry.

That’s where Miranda Rosenfelt, 31, then a cook at a restaurant in Silver Spring, Maryland was headed one day seven years ago to help out with inventory, at the request of one of her direct supervisors, who she says had been harassing her for months. When she walked into the narrow basement room, far from the bustle of the kitchen, she turned around to find him “standing there with his pants on the floor, and his penis in his hands,” blocking her exit from the basement, she said.

“I felt cornered, and trapped, and scared, and what ended up happening was that he got me to perform oral sex, and it was horrible. And the whole time he was saying things like, ‘Oh, I’ve always wanted to do this.’” Her instinct was “not to do anything, and wait for it to be over. Because that’s what will make me the safest.”

Or maybe the dangerous place is the walk-in cooler. That’s where chef Maya Rotman-Zaid, 36, says she was cornered once about 12 years ago, by a co-worker who tried to grope her. But after years of working in kitchens with handsy, misbehaving men, she had remembered an anecdote from Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, in which the famous chef struck back after being grabbed repeatedly by a colleague.

“The guy tried to feel me up, and I stuck a fork in his leg,” she said. A friend she had confided in confirmed details of this story to The Washington Post. Although she doesn’t think she broke his skin, he “screamed and ran out of there like it never happened. I mean, talk about embarrassing. But he never tried to touch me again.”

Women are vulnerable in just about every inch of a restaurant. Behind the bar. The hostess stands where patrons are greeted. Behind stoves and in front of dishwashers. From lewd comments to rape, sexual misconduct is, for many, simply part of the job.

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