Race, Class and Gender in a Local Restaurant

I’ve worked at an IHOP restaurant in Bedford, New Hampshire for a little over a year now, and although I don’t feel that discrimination or preferential treatment exists notably based on race, class, gender, or any other category, the disparities between different groups at IHOP have become more apparent to me over time, and there are demographical trends within the workplace that stand out sharply. The most striking of these that I have come to notice are the disparities between different positions at IHOP, notably by gender and race. Throughout the time I have worked there, of all the serving and hosting staff, there have been only two men in either of these positions. Conversely, the cooks and kitchen staff are comprised solely of men. While the bussing staff exhibits more of an equal mix in terms of gender, nearly all of them are Hispanic or Latino. The managers comprise the most diverse group, and the restaurant has seen a male as well as a female general manager over the past year.

While I don’t see any observable or underlying negative differences in how these different groups are treated, I do believe that the lack of diversity in positions is not ideal, and that it fulfills and plays into a number of stereotypical ideas. The role of women in positions of service is one that has been seen throughout history- the film Miss Representation highlights how this has been the way for decades, dating back to the World War II era when women were expected to stay in the home and care for their families rather than obtaining a paying occupation. Although the situation at work today is nothing like that, the nearly exclusively female population of IHOP servers perpetuates the idea that working to please others is a role meant for women. Likewise, men are seen traditionally as occupying the more heavy-duty jobs that require more skill; the all-male kitchen staff mirrors this. The idea of certain groups occupying certain jobs, lifestyles and roles is one that is widely discussed; in Lori Lakin Hutcherson’s editorial on her experiences as a black woman, she shares many instances where she was expected to, or not to, occupy a certain position because of her race, a striking example when she was repeatedly second-guessed when discussing her admission to Harvard University, while a white man who had been admitted to Princeton was congratulated without question. Dorothy Allison discusses this issue in A Question of Class as well, describing how she felt the need to keep her job as a maid secret from her family, because there were “some forms of work” that were “only for black people, not white”. While the racial disparities at IHOP are not as apparent as those of gender, most of the servers and hosting staff are white, and most of the dishwashing and bussing staff are Latino or Hispanic. This once again reflects societal truths that exist even today- in Race, Class and Gender, Margaret Anderson and Patricia Collins discuss the unequal opportunities afforded to Americans of different races, as well as differing social class and gender. Black and Hispanic Americans have significantly higher poverty rates than those of other races, and are “concentrated in the bottom rungs of the labor market”. Even though nothing visibly negative has come of it that I have seen, simply the fact that the employee pool of the restaurant upholds these statistics and stereotypes is something that should be changed.

Social class intersects all of these disparities, and although it is difficult to determine on the surface, through discussions with many of the other IHOP employees I have found that there are quite a few who rely solely or in large part on their restaurant income to sustain themselves and their families, and I have encountered a few who depend on their paychecks weekly to pay important bills like insurance. As a college student who took the job in high school as my first one, to help pay for my own expenses and earn money for myself, I am near the opposite end of this spectrum, and along with being white I am in a relatively privileged position within my work community. On a basis of class, this is something clearly reflected: I have a high degree of flexibility in when I can work and how often, and if I don’t want to or can’t work many hours in a week, it is not as much of a problem for me because I don’t rely on my IHOP income for my own basic expenses, like some others do. Although it isn’t something I would have chosen to think about a lot in the past, it is apparent enough that it has affected how I feel around others at my workplace; I often feel the need to be careful in what I say regarding work hours because many of those I talk to need as many hours as they can get, and while I have the privilege of being able to work less, many others don’t, and my time there has made me very conscious of that.

In discussing the boundaries of race, class and gender at work, I think it is also important to balance the importance of these distinctions, and what can be done to lessen them, with the acknowledgement of their somewhat essentialist nature. In analyzing the differences I have observed, I hope not to reduce the groups I discuss to simply their race or their class, but rather to become more aware of what these clear differences mean and how they could be changed in the future. I think that through a conscious effort to hire more male servers and hosts, more female cooks and more employees of all races, the compartmentalized nature of the workplace could be greatly reduced. However, through a more intersectional viewpoint, more diversity exists than can be seen on the surface: though most of the servers are women, they come from a variety of different backgrounds and personalities; though most of the cooks are men and most of the bussers are Latino, the less superficial individualities of each of these people are far more important than the observance of their race or gender alone. Additionally, I see it as a very positive attribute of the restaurant that the management staff represents a variety in gender, race, class and other factors; thus the leadership roles in the restaurant are not at all restricted to one group and even show more diversity than in most of the other positions. I think it is in large part because of this that the power structure of this environment, as I has observed it, is based almost purely on position and experience rather than on a basis of race, class or other designation, and I believe this is good. Without any sort of discriminatory barrier, I believe that it is even more achievable to reach higher standards of diversity, and I hope that in the future, the stereotypical outlines within this workplace will begin to fall away, creating a more vibrant community that is more aligned with modern values, and leaving behind antiquated assumptions for good.

 

 

Works Cited

Allison, Dorothy. A Question of Class.

 

 

Andersen, Margaret L., and Patricia Hill Collins. “Conceptualizing Race, Class, and Gender. “Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, 5th ed., Wadsworth, 2004, pp. 75–98.

 

Lakin Hutcherson, Lori. “EDITORIAL: What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White Privilege.” GOOD BLACK NEWS, 21 Sept. 2016, goodblacknews.org/2016/07/14/editorial-what-i-said-when-my-white-friend-asked-for-my-black-opinion-on-white-privilege/.

 

Newsom, Jennifer Siebel, director. Miss Representation. Girls’ Club Entertainment, 2011.