Rice To Meet You

Anoushka: 

I work in hospitality and for the most part, I can say that I like my job; my boss is lovely and I love talking to the regular customers who come into the café. Of course, there are things that make my job more exhausting than it needs to be. It is always the middle-aged boomer folk who love to roll their eyes, slam their phones on the counter when I ask for their vaccine passes, and bark their orders at me. However, I am very grateful that, while people sometimes treat me quite awfully, it is never because of my race, but rather because I’m a small 19-year-old girl. 

There are a lot of old people who come in and are like, “Ooh what’s that accent, where are you from?”, but they’re so ancient that I don’t even care when they are like, “colonisation in India was so great, haha railways am I right?” The generation they grew up in normalised their viewpoints, so I’m happy to ignore the mildly-offensive things. What is important to me is that they treat me with respect and kindness. On the other hand, there are people who are not at all racist but treat me like shit because they think hospitality workers are below them and aren’t real human beings with feelings. I’m happy that I only have to deal with general bullshit instead of general + racist bullshit, which is a solid indicator of how low the standard is. It’s high time we change our attitudes towards hospitality workers—minimum wage is not enough to be on the receiving end of some sorry person’s temper tantrum. 

Laurelei: 

Working closing shifts at Aotearoa’s third-biggest fast food restaurant wasn’t what I had in mind for a first job, but beggars can’t be choosers. I spent 2019 cramming a whole lot of studying during my break thanks to my inconveniently-timed Level 2 Chemistry internals. While the job initially seemed unattractive, it was actually pretty fun. By the end of my time there I was able to walk away with what one customer said was the “nicest drive-thru voice” they had ever heard. Small wins, I guess?

Over the years I’ve also had my fair share of race-related comments. At my first job, I was referred to as “the Chinese girl” on several occasions (I am not Chinese). Just last week at my current gig, a customer asked me where my “ancestry” was from before proceeding to tell me about his own travels to the Philippines (I’ve only ever been once, and I was so young that I have no recollection of it). While I’ve luckily never had to deal with any direct racism from customers, funky interactions like that are far from enjoyable and they throw off the vibe real quick.

Hospitality has incredible highs and astronomical lows. As energy-draining as instances like that can get, most customers are super friendly and genuinely fun to talk to. Even though it’s been a couple of years since my first job, I still miss seeing the regulars. Now that I work on Cuba Street, most of the conversations I strike up consist of bonding over uni struggles or complimenting people on their dope fits. To preserve optimism, I try to remember that I am not just another cog in the capitalist machine. Instead, perhaps the real hospo journey is the friends (and money) we make along the way.