Wine & Spirits - April 2018 - 8

FINED&

filtered

Behind Bars

Bartenders Raise Harassment Issues
by Rachel DelRocco
"People equate alcohol with disinhibition and permission," says Lauren Taylor, director of Safe Bars, a nightlife
advocacy group based out of Washington, DC. Before they even take the first sip, people tend to loosen up,
become more intimate and relaxed. Drinking can be a catalyst for an enjoyable night out, but it can also inspire
inappropriate conduct on both sides of the bar.
While #metoo has effectively targeted a number of
famous chefs, shedding light on predatory practices
in a "kitchen culture" that thrives on machismo, bartenders have begun to raise their own issues. For
women behind the bar, these issues often revolve
around aggressive moves on the part of management, coworkers or inebriated patrons.
Taylor launched Safe Bars in 2015, when she realized that violence against bartenders has become a
significant issue in the industry. The pervasiveness of
the problem emerged during a class she was teaching in her existing program, Defend Yourself, which
combats gender-bias violence. After an attendee
asked about bartender resources, Taylor went home,
searched, and found very little in the way of programs. But, she says, "There was a lot [of research]
on sexual aggression in bars, clubs, restaurants, on
the relationship between alcohol and sexual assault."
As she points out, there aren't many industries
that require working long shifts in cramped, dark
quarters doling out alcohol to people; a female bartender in the corner well may be left attending to a
patron who's behaving inappropriately, leading to
physical and emotional unease.
It is, after all, the patron who pays the bartender's income. "Tipping creates a subservient relationship with patrons," Taylor notes, adding that some
may exploit that. Having tended bars both in cocktail bars and restaurants in Texas, I can attest to this
personally. When regular patrons commented on
my appearance or insisted on a goodbye hug, I had
to calculate quickly how I could end the interaction
subtly, without losing my pride or my tip.
The structure of the restaurant industry contin-

WINE & SPIRITS

APRIL 2018

ues to aggravate the issue. Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a national advocacy group promoting fair wages, has combed through job data and
found that women tend to hold lower-paid positions
in restaurants and are confined to specific sectors
of the business, including positions that are more
likely to be hourly and rely on tips. Its 2014 study,
The Glass Floor, looked at the experiences of 688 restaurant workers, past and present, across the United
States, and found that 66 percent had experienced
harassing behavior from their management, 80
percent from their coworkers, and 78 percent from
their customers. It concludes, "the already high levels of sex harassment are exacerbated by systems in
which tipped restaurant workers-primarily women
-endure legalized pay discrimination in the form
of a sub-minimum wage."
Chauntel Gerdes is a trauma therapist who works
with Outsmart NYC, a newly formed organization
of activists, clinicians, community workers and local
bar staff. They regularly hold meetings focused on
sexual harassment in the industry and raise money
through featured cocktails at participating bars-the
most recent at Brooklyn's Leyenda, run by Ivy Mix,
one of the few female bar owners in NYC. When necessary, the group also connects survivors of sexual
violence with medical, legal and local resources.
While Gerdes and Taylor have found bartenders
receptive to training for issues with customers, tackling the kind of transgressions that go on behind the
bar is more challenging. So far, they've chosen to
focus on "bystander staff training"-training bartenders to see and name the types of behavior they
hope to change, and learn how to handle it, even

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - April 2018