College Dining Hall Shenanigans

                I woke up this morning thinking of Lehman Dining Hall for the first time in at least a decade.

                Lehman Dining Hall was the primary eating establishment on the SUNY Potsdam College campus, where I attended college.  I worked there for about two years.  I was officially a dishwasher, but there were always open shifts for every position posted on the bulletin board that you could pick up to make extra money. 

                As with any job that is low skilled and boasts plenty of peers to pal around with, it was a fun place to work.  My job was gross but easy.  There were four dishwasher positions.  Two people stood at the conveyor belt where students shoved their trays loaded down with uneaten food.  Their job was to dump the uneaten food into the garbage disposal and place the dishes in a rack.  A third person hosed it down then shoved the racks into an industrial sized dishwasher.  Armed with clean gloves, the person on the other side removed the hot plates and stacked them up.  Believe it or not, this job was the least popular although it was the cleanest.  Clean dishes were often in demand which meant you didn’t have time to let them cool before stacking them.  Veteran dishwashers often boasted that they’d burned off the nerve endings on their fingertips.

                The dining hall closed at seven each evening.  We would finish washing the remaining dishes then “break down” the dish room, which entailed hosing it down and making sure everything was clean.  We were usually released from our duties by eight fifteen.

                Occasionally it was later, especially if we were short a person or training a newbie.  None of us would be happy on these occasions, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights.

                During the fall of 1997, as a new Lehman Dining Hall employee, I was asked out by one of the student supervisors.   I was flattered, particularly when he revealed that he’d had a crush on me for months, having noticed me when I used to come for breakfast the previous semester.  We dated a couple of times, but I found him too clingy and broke it off.

                 Honestly, I was unable to have a healthy, functional relationship with anyone at the time.  I would have regarded a boyfriend who smiled at me while passing in the hall as clingy.  I had issues.  It wasn’t his fault.  He was understandably upset with me since I sort of led him on, although not on purpose.

                Fortunately, although he was a student supervisor, he wasn’t my supervisor.  But I saw him often, and I was aware he was mad at me, and I knew he talked about me to his friends.  It distressed me somewhat, especially since my best friend at the time (who was pretty toxic) took his side.  She thought I was a bitch to him.  To be honest, I kind of was.

                Over a year passed.

                In the spring of 1999, I found myself in a bad position.  He was my student supervisor on the Saturday evening shift.  The weekend shifts were the only times the Dining Hall Manager, a functional adult, was not on duty.  Those were the only times a student supervisor had any power.

                I wasn’t distressed about this initially.  A long time had passed, and he now had a girlfriend.  He couldn’t still be angry about me dumping him.  Things worked out well for him, and I was the one all alone.  That should grant him some vindication. 

                I figured things would be okay.  After all, what could he do to me?

                Turns out, he could pop his head in the dishroom every now and then and send every single person home early except for me.  Everyone was eager to leave; after all, it was Saturday night.  I was all by myself when the dish room closed.  The tasks that normally were done quickly when split up among four people were a struggle for a single person. 

                It was after ten when I finished.  By then he was the only other person left in the dining hall.  He was just waiting around to lock up.   Not once did he attempt to help me.

                As I left the dining hall to return to my dorm room, I decided he was just dumb.  Saturday evenings were slow.  A lot of students went home for the weekend or out to dinner.  He probably underestimated how much help he would need to close, and of course, he wasn’t going to send me home early.  It was a mistake.

                Except, it happened again the following Saturday evening.

                It was clearly being done on purpose.  He was bragging about how he was torturing me to all the other employees.  Everyone thought it was funny.  As I complained to my fellow dishwashers, one of the males shook his head and said, “Hey, if I was in a position to screw with a girl who dumped me, I’d do it too.”

                Everyone behaved as if he had a right to treat me this way.  As if I deserved it.

                Several weeks went by.  Every week he twisted the knife a bit more, one night dismissing the pots and pans crew so I’d have to clean them, too, before leaving for the night.  He was shooting himself in the foot, in a way; he couldn’t leave the dining hall until every task was done.  This didn’t seem to disturb him in the least.  Torturing me was his Saturday night activity.  It was nearly eleven o’clock when I finally had the dish room to rights and came out to beg to be dismissed.  He was leaning on the ledge that skirted the staircase. 

                “Can I leave?” I asked.

                He carefully considered my request, smirking.  “Those stacks of dishes need to be straightened up,” he said, pointing.  “Then you can go,” he finished, chuckling at my dismay.

                That was the limit. 

                The student manager was brand new. She was a slender, blonde woman who resembled a Barbie doll.  She was married, and had returned to school to get her degree at the age of twenty-seven.  Because she was beautiful, I felt she would be sympathetic to my plight.  She must have encountered the same thing at least once.   

                 I didn’t want much.  I just wanted her to tell him to cut it out.

                I was in for a rude awakening.

                She oozed phony sympathy, the type you see directed towards stinking homeless people and other repulsive objects of pity.  But her eyes told a different story.  She kept looking me up and down, the edges of her mouth twitching in a smirk.  I had a feeling she was thinking I should not be dumping people.

                “Well, Shannon,” she said finally, “I’ve heard about this situation, and I’ve talked to people about it, and the sense I’m getting is you kind of brought it on yourself.”  She shrugged apologetically.

                Brought it on myself.  By doing what, exactly? 

                “If you can’t get along with him, you’ll have to quit,” she finished.  “He’s your supervisor.”

                I burst into tears.  “I can’t quit, I need this job.”

                 I wasn’t working as a dishwasher at the dining hall for fun.  I relied on those paltry paychecks to pay for laundry and necessities like maxi pads and shampoo. 

                “Aww,” she said, patting my back.

                 I was ashamed.  I had been judged by the goddess and found unworthy.  I felt like a hulking troll in the shadow of such ethereal beauty.

                I trudged back to my dorm room, humiliated.  Some of my own friends thought I was wrong.  I was afraid they were right.  But lurking beneath the shame and degradation and helplessness was a spark of defiance.  On some level, I knew this wasn’t right.  I knew this was sexual harassment.  But how could I stand up for myself when everyone said it was my fault?

                I poured the story out to my suitemate, who was surprisingly sympathetic.  Unlike the toxic woman I considered my best friend, Christina was automatically on my side. 

                “Quit that job and I’ll get you a better one, with my uncle,” she promised.

                A few phone calls later, it was all arranged.  I was grateful.  In a matter of hours, my problem was resolved.  I wouldn’t have to put up with being harassed another minute.  I was grateful to have someone on my side who believed me without question and took immediate steps to solve the problem.   I was lucky.

                That evening, Christina accompanied me to the dining hall for dinner.  I approached the director, a chef named Peter.  He threw his hands up when I told him I was quitting and why. 

                “Why didn’t you come to me about this?” he asked.

                “Well, the student manager was the next one up…”

                “She likes him, hasn’t worked here long, and doesn’t know how he can be,” Peter responded.  “I would have told him to knock it off. I would have threatened to take away his supervisor position if he didn’t stop.  You don’t have to quit.  He’ll never treat you like that again.”

                 I shrugged.  “I have this new job my roommate got for me, so…”

                I haven’t thought of this episode in at least seventeen years, although for the remainder of my time in Potsdam, I turned my face away whenever I encountered the student manager and didn’t say hello.  I was angrier at her than I was at him.  Her refusal to see his behavior as wrong was a betrayal, a knife in my back.  My last couple of years, I heard multiple rumors about alleged shady behavior on her part with the male dining hall workers, from credible sources.  I didn’t believe them.  To this day, I don’t know if they were true or false.  If false, it would be an interesting karmic turnaround that the men she protected were now slandering her as well.  I doubt she would appreciate the irony.

                This story, which just occurred to me out of the blue this morning, illustrates the many ways in which women repress and forget about incidents of sexual harassment.  This memory continues to be tinged with shame and humiliation.  The feeling of powerlessness never goes away. 

                This is why women don’t speak up about sexual harassment.  We are told it’s our fault and we’re to blame.  We are doubted, and our level of attractiveness is rated, as if that has anything to do with it.  Sometimes by people we consider allies.  Note that in my experience, I stopped seeking help once the “authority” figure stated that I brought it on myself.  Since she was a woman, and someone I admired, I decided she must be right.  She reinforced the message I was receiving from everyone around me.  Had I gone one step further and consulted the Director, I would have received vindication. 

                But I never got that far.  When I was offered an alternate option of employment, one in a cushy office instead of scraping salad dressing off plates (gag me), I took it and didn’t look back. 

                My story is that of every woman.  We all have at least one experience like this under our belt, a confrontation with a man perceived as being in the right, when he was so very wrong.  My own conception of the incident was tinged with shame and guilt, as I had rejected him and hurt his feelings.  I felt bad about causing another human being pain.  Contributing to my level of shame was the sense I got from certain key people that I wasn’t pretty enough to be sexually harassed, and I had a nerve rejecting him.

                It was my right to decide not to date him.  I did not need to explain why.   He did not have the right to use his minor position at the dining hall to punish me.  The fact that so many of the people around me…students, my supervisors, friends, could not conceive of that simple fact added to my confusion.  I was afraid to make a stand.  I didn’t want to suffer further humiliation.

                 The silencing of women by other women was our dirty little secret.  Now it’s out in the open.  Will things change, or will they calm down and go back to the way they were?  The time has come to decide.