Captions Sunday!

I was born in Oakland, California, but you wouldn’t know that, if you saw how my family has been treated for the last three years. Being Asian and a woman I thought the “Glass Ceiling” was obstacle enough.

Now, being Asian is an Occupational Hazard, and being an Asian Woman means regressive types target you—literally target you with guns—as CARRIERS OF DISEASE!

I was also an executive in the hotel business, but you wouldn’t know that to look at me now, either.

A general who doesn’t visit the front lines never gets the real news. One of our hotels, in a city I’ve never visited, had morale problems. They sure “smelled” like morale problems: compared to our other hotels, average length of employment was less than seven months! Our other hotels average three years! I’m no general, but time for this officer to visit the battlefield! Unlike most of my colleagues I’m willing to get dirty to “dig up the dirt”! I hired on as a housecleaner—yes, to avoid detection I actually took the job—and found out quickly what the problem was.

The reason morale was down, was because—I won’t soften the blow—the manager of this branch was a racist jerk, and he thought the Asian housekeepers under him were....unclean!

For six days running I dusted off my old housecleaning skills and observed an object lesson in how NOT to manage a hotel. Some people stay employed by oozing confidence while leaving all the work to everyone else. “Back in the uniform”, I got to know my fellow housekeepers—and they were amazing! If not for this jerk, they’d be the BEST housekeeping crew in our chain, not the worst. What galled me was the man’s hypocrisy: no matter how “unclean” he labelled the maids out of earshot of the guests, he didn’t hesitate to pinch fanny and grab...somewhere else...whenever he pleased! I was so incensed, I stayed longer than I’d planned—I helped out my fellow hotel staffers with Easter Sunday. That was my mistake...When I called the hotel executive board to report my findings, the receptionist WOULD NOT LET ME THROUGH! No explanations forthcoming, I was instructed to read my email for an explanation!

Fuming, I was reminded I had a clause in my contract that stated that if I upped my performance five years running, I’d be guaranteed specified raises for the next fifteen years. But as my “position” at the end of my fifth year—which was marked by Good Friday—was officially as a housekeeper, and as my performance as a housekeeper was—by the metrics—145% of the performance of the average housekeeper at THIS hotel, I get raises for the next fifteen years—as a housekeeper!

I am contracted to be a housekeeper for FIFTEEN MORE YEARS!!

As I could no longer report, as an EXECUTIVE, to the hotel board, not only did the racist hotel manager KEEP his job, but whatever morale improvement happened while I was here HE GOT TO TAKE CREDIT FOR! That was awful enough, but he even got to take official credit for MY performance!!

Apparently my presence at the hotel gave one of my fellow housekeepers the gumption to report the manager to the hotel chain management. This started an investigation that lasted for three months. As I was a witness, I gave my own report, and I’m happy to say that we got the guy fired.

 I did NOT get my position back as an executive, though.

 * * * * *

As George Bernard Shaw wrote in his play, “Arms and the Man” one of the characters insulted another one, by saying she had “the Soul of a Servant”. Do I have that? Am I a servant now? I have to say yes. My friends in the housekeeping staff are dearer to me than any I had in my prior life. No, I don’t have those friends any longer. Not only am I beneath them, but I don’t want any of my current friends to know—or my old friends to remind me—that I used to be a hotel executive.

Trapped As A Waitress—By Restaurant Metrics!! 

I’m an executive in the restaurant business—at least I am right now—I don’t know how much longer I’ll be one! 

Honestly, I made our entire chain more profitable because I believe in measuring...everything! With Artificial Intelligence to “man” the video cameras, instead of fallible human operators, we were able to learn that a waitress smiling increased customer spending by 12.8% per minute—as long as the waitress keeps smiling continuously! Doesn’t seem like much? Well that’s why you measure! If a table spends a dollar an hour, and the customers stay to eat for an hour, that means an average $7.68 of increased orders! 

However, a rival executive challenged me to “stand by my own metrics” She didn’t think I could “hack it” as a test subject waitress—and I took up her challenge! Just after I officially signed on as a waitress in our San Jose restaurant (at my executive pay scale of course!) I knew I had to “measure up” to ALL the measured items and practices that our—I mean MY—research uncovered! 

It wasn’t until after the ink dried on the dotted line that I found out a piece of research that I had not yet read: customers were 17.65% more likely to order alcoholic drinks, and four times more likely to order dessert, if the waitress is HEAVY! Specifically, that meant that, at my height, I will have to gain 35 MORE POUNDS to meet the minimum target of Body Mass Index of 29!! The goal is for me to keep on gaining until my B.M.I. is 35—I’ll be 205 lbs!! 

These were goals for our waitresses I was seriously considering implementing in our restaurants—with free meals to facilitate, of course! There are inter-office memos and Zoom calls (which my rival carefully cataloged) where I speculatively, but PLAINLY, advocate for this. 

I was TRAPPED!! 

I have to hide my humiliation...lot’s of women, many of them our waitresses, make a living waiting on tables at age 48—but I never expected to be one! Even worse, I’ve only been on the job for two weeks—and I’ve already gained nearly twenty pounds! I have almost outgrown all of my executive suits, and at the rate I’m expected to gain weight—to maximize profits!—I will only be able to wear my waitress outfits by the end of the month! 

Unlike me, who believes in using all the technology one has at hand, my rival believes in actual human contact, human reports, and human instruction. Not only are the video cameras tracking my, and the rest of us waitresses, every move in the restaurant, but a steady stream of executives from the home office “drop on by” for meals to “check up” and corroborate the efficacy of the program! It’s embarrassing to have to serve junior executives, most of them far junior to me, with a smile hitched onto my face! Having to defer to them, and serve—which is what every wait-person is SUPPOSED to do—galls me, but I CAN’T let that show! I just CAN’T give my rival (and her allies!) the satisfaction—and dropping the smile is now known to CUT INTO CORPORATE PROFITS. Something that *SOB* I proved! 

The most humiliating thing though: one of the up-and-coming executives is a lesbian—and a protege of my rival! Carefully hidden from the cameras, in a “just among work colleagues” sort of way, she playfully patted me on my increasingly swelling belly!! 

If, at age 48, I can’t drop the pounds and go back to being the trim executive, will the rest of the Board of Directors be able to treat me LIKE AN EXECUTIVE AGAIN?! I don’t know—and I dread finding out...

 

“Joselyn, please pick up, you’ve GOT to pick up...”

 “Oh! Joselyn, listen, it’s Ramona...no, please, you’ve got to listen...let me talk...You know that Maid Service our rival is trying to set up? Well I posed as a “customer” to find out what she’s up to. No, not a customer wanting a maid, a customer wanting to BE a maid! I wanted to see what they did to prep someone to Housekeep and Serve! Yes, they do both...they train you for everything from cleaning hotel rooms all the way to serving as an in-house lady’s maid!”

“No, no, there’s nothing wrong with that, I know...PLEASE, listen! This place also caters to very high-priced...specialties...they have a clientele that SOCIALLY DEGRADES their help!! Somehow, I got put on that list!!! They’ve made me gain seventy pounds, and the “client” I’m being sold to wants me enslaved in their mansion and serve them hand and foot!!” They’re grooming me for my “future” using drugs and hypnosis! It took all of my remaining gumption to steal—I mean borrow—this cell phone to call you for help!! I admit it! Their methods are too strong! If you don’t come for me, my future is going to be as an extremely shy, overweight lady’s maid...”

“What?! You’ll pick me up in two weeks??!!! That’ll be TOO LATE!! That’s when the client is picking me up...What do you mean, ‘you know’?? But........Omigosh...JOSELYN....don’t do this, don’t do this to me.....”

“...I’m sorry....I’m sorry....Miss......ummmm, Miss, I only have ONE request...I just HATE being naked when I’m this fat, if you could please....”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Yes.”

 “Yes....I will learn my place, Miss...”

 

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