Days 135-136: Masters and servants

03-04022013

A picture of me after a theme night at work - 2010

[This writing became much more messy and long and derailed that I first predicted, and it reveals just how vast this issue is. I will continue with this subject in more detailed writings, as this here seems to be a kind of an eruptive release of a lot of underlying stuff.]

Yesterday in my DIP Lite course assignment I wrote the following:

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I have started a new part-time job as a bartender. I have done bar-tending before in addition to other restaurant work, but it has been a while and I have always been mainly a waitress. I've now had to face an interesting point of self-diminishment. The job requires me to watch how much people drink. It is my job to make sure I don't serve alcohol to someone who's too drunk or too young to drink. We also have an age limit of 20, so even if an 18-year-old (an adult according to the laws of my country) walks in, I have to ask them to leave.

Yesterday I was working and two younger-looking men came in. The older worker supervising and training me told me that we need to check their ID's because they seem young. I noted this and thought that I will do this. I was standing at the counter and waiting for them to approach, and my supervisor was a bit further away. The other kid came up to me and I was preparing myself to ask the ID (I have an assertiveness issue I've been dealing with lately) when he asked me about a certain kind of beer and I did not know the answer, and I shoved the act of asking for the ID aside and thought "I'll ask for it when I've found the product he is looking for". My supervisor then stepped in and asked for the ID, and it appeared that they were too young and they were asked to leave.

After this I sensed a kind of tenseness and irritation from my supervisor, as if I had just failed a test, even though she didn't say a word. I thought to myself: "she is angry with me for not asking the ID even though she told me to - but this is unfair because I was going to!" Here I did not see the fact that it is more practical to ask for the ID right away because that will save all of us time and effort. I felt like I had failed but didn't address the issue directly because I was afraid to. I let it slip. I feel like I am being tested for being "qualified" for the job - when in fact my insecurity is at play.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear doing my job as in supervising who is served alcohol and how much.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like I am exposing myself to judgement when and as I ask for an ID / tell a customer I will no longer serve them / otherwise refuse the customer what they're asking for.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear a customer's reaction to me carrying my responsibility over the position I am in - selling a poison and making sure no one gets an overdose within the region that is under my supervision.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see the common sense in these uncomfortable things that are included in my job.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive carrying my responsibility over my position to be an uncomfortable place to be because I expose myself to judgement, not realizing that the judgement of others has no hold of me unless I believe it myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take the emotional reactions of others personally when/as I have carried my responsibility and denied them access to alcohol.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify not carrying my responsibility as denying someone's access to alcohol with excuses such as "I'll do it later", "he doesn't seem that drunk", "what the hell, just this once", "after this one no more" and the like.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that I use all of these excuses to justify not carrying my responsibility over my position as a distributor of a dangerous substance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and believe alcohol to be "not that bad" because I have consumed it myself and haven't created a stigma towards it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all of these excuses are not actual reasons as they are not based on what's best for all life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself according to what I believe customers think of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to the judgement of others as I have not stood within and as myself but focused on what's outside of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself through the eyes of my supervisor, believing the "hints" I picked up from her indirect communication (tone, voice, movement) to mean I had failed at what she told me to do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not address the issue with her as I was afraid she'd scold me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as "less than" / "a failure" according to the scolding of another, not realizing that even though I made a mistake I am still me, I am still HERE, I am able to learn and no longer make the mistake - I am still one and equal to others - I am not less - my mistake does not define me as a "failure" because it only becomes a mistake if the responsibility thereof is not carried.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if she'd choose to exert her anger on me (which I cannot know in advance) I would still be here and be myself and would carry responsibility for my mistake.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to dub the imagined judgement of my supervisor to be "unfair" with the excuse that "I was going to ask for the ID later" - which I was, but then it would have been more inconvenient.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see the common sense in asking for the ID right away.

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After I had written this I went to work in the evening, and on my way to work I was standing at a bus stop next to three younger girls, maybe around 18 years of age. A teenage boy came to the bus stop and asked one of the girls for fire so he could light his cigarette. I went into a mind scenario where I imagined what I would have done had he approached me with the same question, and remembered I carry a box of matches. The girl then asked the boy whether he's old enough to smoke or not. This is where I realized I would have just given him the fire with no concern over his health – the kid was maybe 13 years old – because I fear teenagers as a stereotypical group, because “teens” are the ones who mock mercilessly and personally.

I then realized both this incident and the assertiveness issue I have been facing at work are parts of the same fear pattern, where I eagerly give away what is requested (in this case alcohol/fire) because I fear the other so much that I would just rather please him and forget about myself completely. Is it any wonder I've ended up doing customer service?

This is simply unacceptable. I go around abdicating my responsibility over the situations I'm in justified with “friendliness”, when actually what's really underlying all this is my fear of others as possible abusers. A friend just told me about someone she has been working with – a project manager in a youth project – who seems to want to please the kids to such an extreme that the project itself doesn't fulfill its purpose. I recognize this in myself. It's all a part of the same pattern, where the best of all is not considered and actions are committed in self-interest (wanting to cover one's own ass).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that my customers will react to my behavior, choices and self-expression negatively because I would then take this reaction personally and feel hurt, diminished and abused.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create the aforementioned fear based on some negative situations I have had with customers. *

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that teenagers will react to my behavior, choices and self-expression with ridicule because when I was a teenager and my social surroundings mostly consisted of other teenagers I experienced teenagers to generally be demeaning, abusive and hateful.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question this stereotype of teenagers that I have created in the past with my limited understanding of causality (why these teenagers act in a demeaning, abusive and hateful way).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that teenagers are demeaning, abusive and hateful by “nature” because they are going through a demanding period in their life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to excuse teenagers to act in a demeaning, abusive and hateful way because I have believed it is their “nature” because of the demanding period they are living through.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify abusive behavior with demanding circumstances, not realizing that abusive behavior is never justified.

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(Walls of text ahead, readers may skip to the following SF.)

* A key memory from a restaurant I was working in. I had begun waitressing not too long ago and faced the responsibility of being careful who one serves alcohol to. A group of customers was really loud, explosive and all over the place, and also according to my assessment quite drunk. I discussed this with another waitress, and I decided that after these beers I would serve them no more. I was quite scared to tell them this because they were so loud and big and expressive – not to mention big, muscled men which was quite intimidating even in a restaurant full of people. I went to their table, they asked me for another round of beers, and I told them that I will no longer serve them alcohol, that to me it seems like they have had enough for today. They got really angry at me and demanded to see a manager. I went to a restaurant manager and he discussed the matter with the customers, who by then had gotten really pissed off and insulted. My manager came to me and told me that they seemed sober enough and that we should still serve them, and that they were now expecting me to come to their table and apologize. I was very resistant to do this because of their attitude; that they “demanded” an apologize for being “greatly offended”, and based on what I had gathered from their personalities during the time I had served them food and drinks I had a hunch that they would abuse the situation as much as they could. I went to the table to bring their bills, apologized and didn't mean a word of it, and they used the opportunity to bring me down in all verbal ways possible. After this I could no longer face them or anyone and went to the kitchen and had a break-down and cried while another waitress took care of the rest of my customers. I felt humiliated, abused and completely degraded – especially because the restaurant manager had asked me to do this. I thought he is supposed to take care of his workers, not expose them to such bullshit circus fuckery where one is allowed to present demands and act according to whims of the mind, and the other is supposed to bow down to this. I swore to myself that I would never again refuse to sell alcohol to anyone and “make the same mistake” [of exposing myself to judgement].

Now as I am writing this memory out I see that there's a lot of anger and spite I haven't walked through, but I'm also realizing how I gave the customers the chance to attack me – how I made myself into a walking “weak spot”. My insecurity was an open target – had I not been such a fuck-up, I would not have taken anything they say personally but taken it as it is: the emotional vomit of someone riding the energy roller-coaster.

Alright, re-writing the memory: I was waitressing for a group of people who I was intimidated by because of their loud and expressive behavior. I chose to view them as “too drunk” - whether they actually were is not relevant – because I was intimidated by their aggressiveness and thought that the alcohol must be causing it, not considering the fact that maybe this is who these people are at the moment with or without alcohol and that I might be intimidated by personality traits. I had the power to deny them the fun they were having / to cut off the loudness that was intimidating me and thought I would do this because I can. I justified this with the fact that other customers were also disturbed. I was not acting through the understanding that refusing to sell these people more alcohol is best for all – I was acting through fear and a desire to control. I was insecure to do this because I had never done this before and had no idea what the response would be. As I spoke the words “I will no longer sell you alcohol” I fenced myself. I was not standing within and as myself but within and as anticipation and fear. My defenses were up and I was speaking through some personality mask. I remember them being surprised, like they couldn't believe what they were hearing. The loudest person demanded to see the manager. I don't remember what I replied or how, but I went to get my manager and explained my point of view to him. He then went to the table and I returned to tend to my other customers. I was scared and agitated, but also very defensive – from my point of view I had done nothing wrong – yet I feared that my assessment was not accurate enough based on the response that I had gotten and that I was now causing trouble because I didn't have enough experience on the field. I remember one of the men was somehow really a mess, like almost sleeping on the table, not being able to speak at all – him I was actually worried about. My manager came back to me and told me that according to his assessment I could've served them one more round of beers. [If they're one round of beers from being asked to leave, why should I serve them even that one round? Reason: money.] They had asked me for an apology. I was reluctant to do this because I would have to back down from my previous actions – which I was unwilling to do because I was scared to admit to making a mistake. I saw that mistakes made one vulnerable. Thus when I approached them through this belief that “now that I say these words I am vulnerable” I actually lived as that belief and lived as vulnerability and insecurity. I then already accepted and allowed myself to be abused while I was walking towards their table to make an apology. I took everything they said personally and felt myself to be judged and ridiculed (especially with every one of them pretending to be absolutely sober, which, now that I look at it, was really hilarious). I then felt diminished because of this and blamed the customers for my experience of diminishment – when in fact I had accepted and allowed myself to already be diminished when entering the situation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to interact with customers through fear and then blame them for my self-accepted and -allowed consequences of this interaction.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear customers because the position of the waiter is “open to judgement”, meaning it is generally accepted for customers to evaluate the way their waiter “performs” in their task of serving others and their whims, wants, needs and desires, and because from what I have gathered as a customer from others is that the evaluation of a waiter is often mostly negative, harsh and expressed “behind the back”.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have a mind-image of the job of the waiter as a person who is seen, evaluated and either rewarded or punished.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being seen by customers as that would lead to evaluation and judgement.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being a waiter because that would lead to being seen, evaluated and judged.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to approach the position of the waiter from the starting point of fear, pushing myself to do the work even though I was afraid to, never dealing with the fear and suppressing it as I instead created personalities to cope with the situation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that customers will look down on me because I don't “perform” according to their expectations, not realizing that as I do this I validate the expectation that shouldn't exist in the first place.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live myself into a being that always faces customers from the starting point of fear and the belief that I am vulnerable in front of them, not realizing I here separate myself from the customers, not realizing we are all just human beings and thus of equal value and that this role play of “servants and masters” is absolutely arbitrary and imaginary and nothing but a social agreement that ceases to exist within me and as me when I stop participating in it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to enjoy serving others when it has been rewarded with kindness (also money, as I count tips as “kindness”).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent serving others when it has been responded to with unkindness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create two separate self-images based on customer service: the one who “likes” customer service (positive experiences accentuated) and the one who “dislikes” customer service (negative experiences accentuated).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I am the kind of person who “likes” customer service by thinking only of the good customer experiences, utilizing this self-image when convenient (when wanting to create a certain kind of a “positive” image of myself to myself/others – energeticness, happiness, joyfulness).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I am the kind of person who “dislikes” customer service by thinking only of the bad customer experiences, utilizing this self-image when convenient (when wanting to create a certain kind of a “negative” image of myself to myself/others – toughness, bitterness, martyrdom).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to limit myself from doing my job and carrying my responsibility by following a decision I made in the past within emotional turmoil.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to reinforce my fear of others (which I created as a child) when/as I have had negative customer experiences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I made a mistake when I told the group of customers that I will no longer serve them alcohol – not realizing it was not a mistake but a miscalculation and that it was my following actions as well as the actions of others that made the situation “unsolvable”.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I alone was responsible for the situation, judging myself to have made a “mistake” and having “failed” as the situation turned into conflict.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize there were several other people involved in the situation and that we all as equal participants were responsible for the outcome – whether this responsibility was carried or not is a different matter.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I made a mistake by refusing to sell customers alcohol, not realizing my initial “mistake” that has followed me ever since was to go into restaurant business unprepared – like a cripple walking into a lion's den.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize this one situation was only one of many that I have faced during my career in this business, and that they are all a consequence of who I am within the culture of “servants and masters”. [Note to self: who am I / who have I been within the culture of “servants and masters”?]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that who I was when I started working in the restaurant business was unable to face anyone (myself included) through self-honesty and thus was unable to deal constructively with the situations that came across. [I did work my way through them and learned a lot, but it could've been done with so much less damage.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that this one situation was a consequence of who I accepted and allowed myself to be in that point of time/space.

To clarify for myself: when I began working in the restaurant business I was young, messed up, fearful, panicky, and completely new to such violent kind of a working environment. I mostly secluded myself from human contact, and to have been in an engaging social contact plus in a noisy environment for hours at a time was really straining to me (although according to my supervisors I did very well with people). I stressed a lot, I was depressed, I was stuck, I was anxious, I felt lonely, and I judged myself very easily. I was at the brink of a break-up and all of my being seemed to be falling apart. I had no idea who I was.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself at such a point in my life to take my work personally by defining myself through the acceptance/rejection I received from customers.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to reflect and magnify my own insecurities back to myself through the negative responses of customers.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a fear and a commitment of not standing up to customers/people based on these years of violent interaction with customers.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the interaction with my customers to have been honest communication – not realizing that within the restaurant culture and especially within the master-servant positioning there is no such thing as honesty or self-honesty as all they are is role play and social agreements that do not take into consideration that which is best for all but only the self-interest of those who are “winning” (those who happen to sit at a table and not stand next to it).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that most of what happens within the restaurant culture as a social role playing scenario is simply not valid as most of it is not true in any way whatsoever as it is based on emotions, feelings, images, expectations, interpretations, patterns, statuses – a whole cluster-fuck of accepted and allowed bullshit.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create the restaurant environment into a symbol of how I perceived and believed the world to be – a place where everyone around you gets to judge you – thus supporting and feeding my fear of other people as possible abusers (a fear created in childhood due to bullying).