Would You Like Some Pronouns With Your Pastrami?
Does good customer service mean accepting misgendering?
I have a friend who owns a deli. Tim often complains that it’s hard to get good wait staff. A while back, he hired a server who seemed promising.
Amelia was experienced, and her references described her as hardworking. Great! Although Amelia looked like a she, and her driver’s license said that Amelia was female, she told Tim that she was a he.
His name, he told Tim, was Anthony.
This wasn’t a problem. Tim is progressive. His best friend is a lesbian. A lot of the deli staff is LGBTQ+.
But, as it turns out, there was a problem. Because, to Tim, and to the rest of the staff, Anthony looked female, so from time to time they’d slip up and use the wrong pronouns.
And when they did, Anthony would get really pissed off and call them out on it.
From Anthony’s point of view, this was a simple thing. He wasn’t a girl, He was a dude.
To call him a girl was wrong and disrespectful.
From the point of view of Tim and his staff, it was a simple thing too. Anthony looked like a girl. So sometimes they forget he was a dude and use girl pronouns. Anthony would call them on it. They’d…
