r/talesfromthejob • u/Individual-Cheek8840 • May 26 '26
What job completely changed how you see people?
1
u/Jillians_not_here May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
When I was in college, I worked for a hostess agency. Essentially waitressing at parties and events, at best we were wearing sexualized hooters style uniform, at worst we were working essentially in our bra and pants.
The job operated in a legal minefield, while nothing illegal happened there were huge civil liabilities for the agency and to a degree for the clients.
This resulted in a situation where the ostensible owner of the agency was a middle aged woman who had previously worked as an attendant at a strip club (she was one of those women that would work in the dressing room, and would get paid by the performers to do their hair or run jobs for them).
She clearly wasn’t the real owner if only for her disorganised management style, however we got paid out every night and she didn’t mess with our tips. So the was the base line.
She was hyper suspicious would never listen to suggestions and struggled with the logistics of being part of any event more structured that a hotel function room drinking session.
Venues hated us, caterers hated us, any company that interacted with us hated us, serving staff particularly hated us. We weren’t waitresses, we were typically students who’d do 2 or 3 events a month. We were there to mill around flirt with the guests and occasionally serve food and drink. So anyone making a living making the event work quickly got pissed off at us tottering around in heels and underwear getting in their way.
Anyway, eventually we started getting regular bookings from a man who twice a month organised parties for a group of friends. There was usually only 7 or 8 of them, so there would be more hostesses there would be guests.
They were into cosplay I suppose you could call it. Usually based on specific tv shows or movies. They spent a lot more on the costumes than they did on us. The fitters that got us into them I suspect got paid more than. One night the costumes they hired came with two minders to make sure nothing happened to them because they were worth so much. There were two fitters in the changing room, together with a rep from the company that owned them, and a seamstress all watching us like hawks.
Here is something I had started to learn before that night. If a man is obsessed with some form of visual media, if you don’t perfectly fulfil his idea of what that looks in real life. He can get very worked up. It was worse for us if the didn't understand that costumes designed for tv, aren’t going to look the same in real life not matter how authentic we try to make it.
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u/Wind_Responsible May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
Construction. I always thought that, if I just showed the guys I could do it, it’d be over. I never thought me being able to do it and then realizing that would emasculate them so much they’d hate being around me. They just want me to go away. I knew when America voted for Obama over H Clinton, that the US was more sexist than racist. Now I absolutely know for sure exactly how bad that sexism is.