I'm leaving my job. I'm making a slightly lateral move to another restaurant. I have lots of creative reasons why I'm doing this: 'Because I'm ready for a new challenge.' 'Because any movement is better than standing still at this point.' 'Because I want to learn something new.' 'Because there is no existing opportunity for upward mobility.'
All of these are true, but they are not the absolute truth. The absolute truth is, I could make more money and work less hours somewhere else. Period. I have known this absolute truth for the past 6 years, and still I've staid. I'm curious about this. I'm curious why, after losing health insurance, taking a pay cut that was masterfully disguised as a hypothetical raise, being told that the benefit to taking on more responsibility was the opportunity to work more hours, and receiving little or no reward, financial or otherwise, for hard work, dedication, and consistency, I STAID. I didn't question, I didn't demand, I didn't look for another job. I just staid and accepted that something was better than nothing. I found the good in it and focused on that instead.
I've been talking to the other women I work with (it's a predominantly female staff, and all of the people sharing my position/wage/responsibilities are women), and asking them why they stay. I've been asking them if they're happy, if they make enough money, if they are satisfied with their jobs. Every single one of them has answered with a resounding NO, to each question. I started thinking about some things. I started thinking about the fact that women are still payed significantly less than men in our culture. I started thinking about the struggle my roommate is going through in asking for what she absolutely deserves at her job. I started thinking about the time when I asked for a raise and was told, NO, and I hadn't planned for that response. I remembered what it felt like to then have to make the conscious choice to stay and make less than I deserved.
And there are two conversations worth exploring here; the first is the topic of women in the workplace and fair and equal pay / the second is the topic of women in this life and asking for what we want, need, and deserve. This post will be about work, maybe because it's a safer subject than the latter. But there will most certainly be a post about the second. In a sense, they're one in the same, they are enmeshed, but still can be separated for the sake of examination.
I'm realizing that, in more ways than I've even begun to know, women are constantly staying quiet. There is a fear, maybe ancient, that we will lose something if we speak up. Our culture, and most definitely our corporate culture, has created an environment that is designed to bring shame to women who ask for more. Everything around the topic of money is veiled in secrecy. Why CAN'T we talk about how much we make? Why isn't it our right to discuss money in the workplace? There should be no secrets if it's done fairly. We have been conditioned to believe that we are breaking a cardinal rule when we ask someone about their salary, while no one even flinches at the gossip flung around the break room about someone else's marriage or sex life or neuroses. A culture of absolutely blinding bullshit storms has been designed to keep us all from knowing or asking. What about the truth? What about transparency?
I'm thinking, also, about how women disown their responsibility to change this. How we blindly accept the discomfort of accepting less than we deserve. We blame ourselves, we feel empathy for the business that isn't ours when it's struggling, we invest our time, energy, talents, and more into something that will never pay out. It is a horrible investment. We stay when there is clearly no room for growth. We stay when we aren't getting paid enough. What would happen if we all said, we'll leave if you don't meet this request? What would happen if we stood together and asked for what we want? What would we do, collectively, if the answer was no?
If the answer was yes, we would get paid what we deserve (that would be nice, right?). If the answer was no, there would be a lot of very talented, dedicated, hard-working women looking for work. What could we create then? There's a lot of possibility there.
I know that I can only start with me, and I am. I'm leaving the familiarity of this underpaid position and asking for more. But I want to do more than that. I want to find the white guy in the wizard's chamber and pull him out from behind the wheels and levers and microphone where he's been telling us that the world we live in is good as it is, and I want to kindly send him to a great therapist and burn it all down, but not before getting behind the microphone once just to say, 'You can have it, ladies. You deserve it, ladies. Ask for more. You have always had permission. And thanks for all your hard work.'
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