She had classes most morning from 8 until 2, though some days she only had class from 8 to 10 or sometimes 11. Those days she would have to rush to get back on the bus to make her shift at the restaurant, where she was a hostess. She was always, always, always late. Habitually terribly, horribly late. She'd been told at least a dozen times that she was going to stop being scheduled unless she could show up on time, but it was literally impossible with public transport to be on time.
She usually worked either 12-4 or 4-10 or even 11 sometimes. She'd been told about a hundred times that eventually she'd made it to the tables. Eventually she'd be a waitress, but she was starting to suspect she was being tricked. She made minimum wage plus a tipout from the wait staff and bartender, but it was very little, sometimes as little as $7, and never more than $25. She knew full well that the waitresses could walk away with over $100 on a similar shift, and, if they worked all day, would walk away with several hundred dollars, plus the minimum wage.
She'd been told that it would be her turn, eventually, she had to stick with it, but she got the feeling her lateness was going to be used as an excuse why she couldn't be move to the tables. They were going to punish her for being broke and not being able to call a cab when she really, really had to call one to be on time.
And so, after all of that, she'd get back home sometimes as late as midnight, depending on things, and lie awake, too caffeinated, waiting desperately to get what little sleep she could, so much homework she never had to time to do somehow needing to be accomplished, and, dear God, the utter broke-ness. The terrible lack of a few dollars to be able to just, eat.
And somehow she was supposed to keep going, keep doing this day in and day out, and let people live on her labor, and treat her like nobody and not pay her, and if she lashed out, if they stopped for a second, well that would be her fault.
You know, it would be wonderful if Candy could isolate what was keeping her down. She was being kept down by an educational system that did not allow her to focus on school, and a restaurant industry that inequitably distributed the benefits of working, and individuals that made the inequities worse through their selfishness, but she blamed Hispanic people. It shouldn't be like that, but, sometimes, that just how people assign blame for the whole system. They blame non-White people, and when she looked around, at the people she saw as in her way, they all appeared to her to be Hispanic. The kids who got a free ride at school, the kids who made good tip money instead of just wages, got the best shifts, got the best days off, were treated as valuable despite less work.
But an inequitable system and timing were the blame only, for those Hispanic people were simply in the jobs which went unwanted in previous times, in times before White people had to work those jobs, in times when Candy was still in high school or even before, when she was a child. They had been toiling in those jobs, living as Candy had lived, or really even worse, for many years, before being treated as human, and they had gotten into supervisory or even management positions, not by merit, but, at the time, for lack of anyone else to do it. And once they became entrenched, well, they had come to be seen as indispensable.
Candy was not interested in all those details. All she knew was that she could not eat, and she thought the reason she could not eat was because Hispanic people were in the way of her eating, so, the more she could not eat, the more racist she became. And, well, it wasn't hard to find other racist people to connect with, who reinforced her view that if not for Hispanic people, people like her would get a better deal.
And every time that alarm went off, well, that added more evidence to the necessity of something being done. She began to think, something really, really needed to be done, and it did not involve politely asking for what she needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment