I was only 18. I was working as a waitress during my gap year before university. It was my first full-time job after school; my first time living and working in the adult world. I accepted the hierarchy and treated my managers (male superiors) with respect. But I soon learned that some of them didn’t respect me back. One of them constantly tried to kiss me every time he got drunk, even though he had a girlfriend and I refused his advances every time. Another one repeatedly spoke about women in lewd and explicit ways.
At the Christmas staff party, he turned to me and started describing women in his home country of Brazil in terms that can only be described as vulgar and demeaning. It was so inappropriate. I felt embarrassed and sat speechless as the rest of my co-workers looked at us in silence. Shortly after, we moved from the restaurant to a club nearby. At one point I was standing near the bar with a colleague when I felt someone smack my bum so hard it was sore for a whole 10 minutes after. I looked around in shock, but the perpetrator had already disappeared into the crowded low-lit room.
My colleague immediately informed me that it had been the manager that had embarrassed me just an hour earlier. I’d never been touched in such an aggressive way, on what was supposed to be a private part of my body. I felt utterly violated. All I did was stand in a queue.
Words by Anonymous