My retail days are behind me, thank god, but every time I go to a coffee shop I'm reminded of why I spent my wage-labour years as a secretary rather than a store clerk.

Every woman I know who's worked as a clerk or waitress has told me about sexual harassment, though I think that happens in all workplaces. However, there's a different type of harassment that clerks - mainly female clerks - face: verbal attacks from marginalized people.

As a student, I spend a lot of time doing work in cafes during the day. The only other people who come in are the retired, mothers with children, and the marginalized: people who don't have jobs and most likely can't get them.

For example, I was in a cafe when a middle-aged woman came in. She was obese, walked with a cane, dressed in stretchy polyester and NHS glasses - all markers of poverty and exclusion. She ordered a sandwich from the clerk (in this case, a teenaged boy), who told her what was on the board behind. She asked for a beef sandwich instead of the chicken, and he agreed to make one. She replied,

"So now I have to waste my time trying to figure out what you have on the menu."

He apologized, and went to make the sandwich. The manager - a young woman - came over, and the customer continued. "I'm a busy person, I can't wait around to guess what your menu options are." The manager said she was sorry, and the woman replied, "I'm sorry too. I'm wasting my time here."

The exchange escalated, as the manager suggested it wasn't the clerk's fault for not guessing what she wanted. soon the customer was calling the manager an asshole. "Maybe you should take some medication," the manager said.

"Fucking asshole!" the woman screamed at the top of her lungs. "Bitch! I'll tell all my friends about this place!"

Soon she stalked out. If she was in such a hurry, she certainly spent more time yelling at the staff than choosing a sandwich. But of course, that wasn't the point. She was looking for a pretext to set her off.

Minimum wage counsellors

I've seen this kind of encounter many times. It drives home another reality of being poor: rich people can afford private therapists; working people sometimes have health coverage for medication and state-funded counselling. The marginalized have retail clerks. I'm pretty sure that's never taken into consideration by the right-wing pundits who decry health care 'wastage' and don't fund adequate mental health programs. People who are emotionally disturbed, don't stop being disturbed just because there's no doctor to see them. They take out their pent-up rage at being marginalized on the only people who have to listen to them: young, usually female, workers.


"I'd like a latte..."

It's one of the best freebies capitalism can come up with: fuck people up through poverty, exclusion and oppression; create a health care system for those empowered enough to access it; and offload the collateral damage on those least equipped to deal with it: other workers.

That's not surprising: women's labour often includes 'caring'. But while there's some recognition that the 'caring' industries - for example, day care and nannying - are exploitive, I've never seen anyone acknowledge that just working at Coffee Time should qualify you for a social work degree.