Workplace Hazard
By Erin McAllester
Introduction
This test will determine your knowledge of workplace environments and behavior. After the prompt, respond to the question to the best of your ability. The test is not timed.
Question 1
You have arrived at the venue where you perform labor in exchange for cash. It is nine p.m. and you are beginning your shift. You’ll shut down at three a.m. and clean until five a.m. You’ll then wait around until the opener arrives at six a.m. This is the policy: The door to the venue doesn’t have a working lock, so the owner insists on paying for one extra hour of human labor every day to ensure the tuna can he calls a business isn’t robbed by a petty thief—he’d much prefer the eyewitness account at gunpoint. You arrive to the sounds of Big Boi bumping on the popping, crackling speakers, the smell of patchouli wafting through the propped door. You’re relieving Janet again, patchouli-scented Janet who the owner hates, but who is actually the best employee on staff. The owner hates Janet because she’s 1) married, and 2) organized. The owner loves you because you’re 1) in a perpetual chain of fucked up fuck-based relationships and 2) you’re a mess, as evidenced by the time you showed up to an opening shift an hour and a half late still drunk from the previous night after going to a club with a gang of men, dropping your tequila pineapple (a waste) and shattering glass on the club floor, leaving with a guy who whips out his dick (which you could hardly see, by the way) in the back of your car, your response to which is to climb into the driver’s seat, drive him to the front of the club, and unceremoniously kick him out like a child on their first day of middle school. The owner likes you because you’re mean to him and will tell him to fuck off straight to his face. He pays you seven dollars an hour under the table after all, and tips aren’t more than fifty dollars a shift at this place. Why should you be nice when you can be mean? He invites you over to his house and takes you out to dinner and you cultivate a relationship that’s largely defined by the verbal abuse you impart on him and partially by the fact he doesn’t pay you enough to take yourself out to meals. But, he’ll take you out to meals if he can give you advice on the angles of the thirst traps you take for the other men you’re sleeping with while he cucks along in the background. One day, once you’ve stopped working at the venue, you meet up with the owner at an old haunt, one where you liked to take thirst traps for men in the bathroom. You pay this time.
He never speaks to you again.
Did you date the owner?
Yes
No
Question 2
You’ve just been hired for a role at a new spot in town. It seems promising—a forward thinking husband and wife couple. Motorcycle joint. You dig it. When you start working shifts you’re surprised to find the husband spends a lot of time hanging out at the establishment, watching you froth milk, cracking jokes. He hangs around so often that you begin to wonder why. His wife begins hanging out more as well, but he leaves when she arrives. You assume they are taking shifts, overseeing the business, when the wife approaches you and asks if you have a boyfriend. You respond yes, because for once, this is true. She then asks if her husband has come on to you. You, torn between the couple that signs your paychecks and your paycheck, say something to the effect of “not in a discernible way, no.” You then hope this never comes up again. The wife tells you to tell her right away if he ever does. You say “okay.” A week or so later, he asks you about your other jobs. Other things you’ve done for money. You think it’s a little late to interview you seeing as you’ve held this role for a while. He knows you used to hang out with the cuck. Your athletic figure comes up. He likes the shape of your breasts. You quit one month later after he visits you at your other job. You receive a phone call from the wife months after that, after you’ve secured a new role. She calls you not on your cell, but at work; she’s tracked you down. “Did he ever visit you at work?” She asks.
You don’t remember what you said, but you’re almost certain it was not the right thing.
Are you called as a witness during their divorce case?
Yes
No
Question 3
You receive a call for an interview. You’ve had your eye on this place for a while. You park, and are confused by the location. The address leads you to a house. You go to the front door and knock. A woman with gray hair answers and instructs you to go around back, through the fence, to the door that lets you into the basement. You open the door and see two individuals at work. They instruct you to take off your shoes. The long-haired one leads you down a hallway. She knocks on the back right door in the dimly lit corridor. “[Your name here] is here.” She waits to hear a response from inside the room. She hears a murmur, so she cracks the door. You stand behind her, and from where you are you see two men sitting in chairs facing the door, illuminated only by a banker’s lamp with a green glass shade on the desk and the overcast light streaming through small rectangular basement windows, not large enough for egress. She turns to you and whispers “they’re ready for you.” You, barefoot, proceed to sit in the single empty chair facing the two men in the room. “Hello [Your name here], thanks for coming in today.” The older man says. Your palms are sweaty because you’ve never been interviewed in a basement without shoes on before. After exchanging some more pleasantries, the younger man with an eagle's nest takes over. “We’re really excited to push this movie forward.” He begins. “We’ve heard from many people the idea has a lot of potency and that it’s fertile ground for a fruitful endeavor.” You nod vigorously. “The project we’ll have you working on is focused on found footage. The footage must evoke abundance, uberty, and embody conception and reproduction.” His eyes drop to your breasts, or where they would have been if you were not wearing a shirt that is boxy and reminiscent of scrubs.
What is the interview for?
Non-profit researcher
Adult film role
Nurse position
Haunted house spook actor
Question 4
You are at the establishment where you make money. Part of your job requires occasional costume changes; you’re new, and still on a probationary period for hiring, so you’re on your best behavior. The changing room is separate from the bathroom, and everyone has a locker for their items. There is no drinking allowed, but you’ve learned already that the owner-manager has a soft spot for girls with potty mouths (your specialty) and he slips you a reposado shot when no one is looking. This is an acceptable arrangement for you until you see a red light in a vent. It’s tiny, the size of a pin, and you wouldn’t have noticed it had you not been sitting down and had leaned your head back to look up at the ceiling, irritated by the text you’d received from your boyfriend about canceling dinner plans. It stared back at you like a traffic light. The vent required a flathead. The next time you come to the establishment, you bring a flat head. Standing on the elementary school chair wearing a kimono robe in the dressing room, you unscrew the bolts with quick finesse, letting them drop one by one into your open hand, and you remove the vent to find a camera attached by a strap to a pipe dangling above the vent cover, with a clear view of all those below it. You turn the camera off, detach it from the pipe with fabric scissors, and put it in your bag. When you leave that day, you toss it in a dumpster behind the Cajun restaurant next to your friend’s apartment.
You don’t take the camera to the police station. Why not?
[open ended response]
Question 5
You arrive at the institution where you earn money. You’ve come in early to help some new people prepare for a long day, because it is a holiday. At 12:05 p.m., the manager walks up to you and asks to speak to you privately. You say you’re not comfortable being alone with him, and (while shaking) say that you would like a third-party present to witness the conversation. He laughs, looking over his broad shoulder at you through glasses like Woody Allen’s, a frame shape meant to communicate sophistication and trust, with expressionless, watery eyes, and says “Am I that scary that you don’t want to be in a room alone with me?” You say nothing as you follow his hulking figure to the dark room with a red light. You are all alone. “They’re pissed at you.” He says in a serious but mocking tone. “This is the busiest day of the year for them and you’re bothering them with menial non-issues.” You reflect on what you had texted the owners of the business and recalled that it was a request to meet briefly about your concerns about how a manager, coincidentally the one you were forced into conversation alone with now, was soliciting citations toward you that were incompatible with expectations for other workers—a citation for responding to a work related text message on shift, for example, and for sitting down on a slow day. You recall, in fact, other people taking smoke breaks on shifts that lasted upwards of ten minutes, but that you had only taken a single five-minute break. He complained about said break to the owners of the business. So, you are quite concerned at this point that the powers that be have not only ignored you and are now angry with you, but are exacerbating the issue you had reached out to them about. You begin having a panic attack, seeing as you do not think there is any hope for your concerns to be resolved and you stand scantily clad in a red-lit dark room with a threateningly large man who has, unfortunately for him, dead eyes. He tells you to cool off and walks away.
How quickly do the owners fire you because it “just wasn’t working out for them?”
Two months later
A year later
The next day without cause
Question 6
The night is coming to an end, and you’ve worked a busy shift. The place is packed, and you’re still very busy, when a patron walks up to you. You are in the middle of serving several other customers. The gentleman asks if you would like to go on a date. You politely decline. He asks why not. You tell him it’s because you have a boyfriend (a lie this time). This is usually enough to deter. He grabs a napkin, and using the pen you’ve given him to fill out his receipt, he writes down an address and a phone number. “Once you’re off work, you should swing by my place, I’m having some friends over.” You continue cleaning and smiling, because you know if you’re rude to this customer, you will get in trouble, and possibly won’t make rent. You take the piece of paper, squinting and gritting your teeth in acknowledgment. The man waits at the end of the bar for you to get off, he waits for promises he’s made to himself to come to fruition, he waits with force. Eventually the bouncer asks him to leave, as he and his friends are now the last customers in the (clearly closed) building. He stands, bewildered as to why he’s being asked to go, seeing as he’s done nothing wrong, he is simply waiting for his prey in the brush, for the proper moment to ambush, a confrontation her herd’s pack mentality is keen to avoid, because they are paid to not be rude.
If I am your bartender and we’re in the United States of America, how do I make most of my money?
Hourly pay
Tips
Handouts
Salary
Conclusion
Thank you for participating in this untimed test. If you feel confused, visit dol.gov and osha.gov. To determine your score, wait. Wait for the moment you feel ethically compromised, or better yet, when you’ll benefit from leveraging power. You will know your score when you have something to gain, which will, in that instant, seem like the least convenient moment.
About the Author
Erin McAllester lives in the wilds of Central Oregon with her partner and dog, where she gardens and hosts raucous dinner parties. She is a white-assumed woman from a mixed-race, queer family, with a background in small business operations, which has inspired her to write work critical of capital-driven spaces. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from Oregon State University-Cascades, and you can read her work in the minnesota review, Fugue, and various online business blogs.
