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This is not a personal story, but it is inspired by real people and events. It is told from the main character, Sidney’s point of view. I wrote this last year and read it at an event in Memphis titled WOMANISH – a showcase of chosen local female artists.

 

When I got fired from my summer job at Wendy’s, I already knew why. I wasn’t guilty of anything, but somehow, it seems easier to punish the victim. Whitney, the assistant manager, called me to the break room as soon as I arrived for the overnight shift. Peak hours for dinner had just ended. All of the grill cooks and window cashiers stared as we walked back. They knew. After she told me I had been let go, I asked why. I shouldn’t have, though. As Whitney explained a handful of non-truths, I turned my attention to a black beetle in the back corner of the room, squirming on its back. I was not fired because I had been coming to work late. They didn’t let me go because I mixed up three big orders in the drive through. It wasn’t because I was lazy, and it wasn’t because I had been disrespectful to the customers. They fired me because Reggie, the overnight manager, had been sexually harassing me, and I had finally told someone.

I remember being excited, and grateful at how fast I got hired there once school let out. On my first day, I was only scheduled to be there six hours, the first three to be spent watching new hire videos. The history of Wendy’s, how to use the POS cash register system, good customer service and safety in the workplace. I laughed at most of them because of the terrible acting. The last video I watched was about sexual harassment in the workplace. After watching the videos, I would sign paperwork in the back office. This took an hour and a half, because unlike most, I took the time to read it before penning my signature at the bottom. I was never given a copy of the sexual harassment policy, like the video said I would.

When I started working on the overnight shift, I loved it. Most times, through the week, there were only three of us: the cashier, the grill cook, and the shift manager. The cashier would handle both the front and back drive thru windows and present the food; the grill cook would prepare the food. Whatever cleaning duties that needed to be done were usually split between the two of us. Jeremy, Karlos, and Ebony were the grill cooks that rotated on that shift. I was super tight with Jeremy. He would always do my half of the cleaning in exchange for me not snitching when he smoked weed on the roof during his lunch break. During my first two weeks, Ms. Virginia was our shift manager. She was a neat freak, and didn’t allow us to say curse words on her shift. After that, they switched her to the morning shift and assigned Reggie Black to overnight.

Reggie was light skinned, 5’11” and somewhat husky. He had a silver cap over one of his top front teeth. I didn’t know his exact age but I figured he was in his early 30s. He was a Que dog and he never passed up an opportunity to reference his line brothers in a conversation that had nothing to do with them. “Yall heard about that cop that got shot? One of my LBs stay in the house right in front of where it happened.” – “My LBs throwing a pool party this weekend, I bought myself some Polo trunks with the matching shades. Ooooweee!” – “That’s them new jays? Yeah my LB work at Nike, he gon hook me up with a pair.” He was always bragging on something that he bought, or how many women he pulled on the weekends, what his girlfriend bought him for his birthday, or how he had 3 big houses. In reality, he didn’t have a stable living arrangement because he went back and forth from living with his mom and his sister. According to other employees, no Que in the city claimed to know who he was, he claimed to have 2 degrees but still couldn’t speak well, and nobody had seen him with the so called girlfriend that he talked about so much. Or any woman, for that matter. He kept up so many stories to tell. I think secretly, Reggie hated himself.

At first, Reggie didn’t show me any special attention. I saw the way he flirted with the high school and college girls that worked in the drive thru. Sometimes he was even bold enough to slap them on their behind, or grope them as he passed by. He was a grown man, but displayed the behavior of a mannish 17 year old. In front of everyone. Nobody ever said anything. Even the store manager, Chris, had no commentary when Reggie told Shenita, a 17 year old, that she had nice dick sucking lips. They were by the ice cream machine and she was hurriedly finishing her cone before a customer walked up to the counter. I don’t know If the customer heard it or not. But Reggie’s behavior was none of my business, so I continued to come to work and mind mine. But one night when I got to work, the AC was stuck on 60 and I went to the back office to get my jacket. When I opened the door (which was never supposed to be closed, Chris told us), I saw Reggie hovering over a girl in the corner. He had one hand on the wall and the other down the front of the girl’s pants. I couldn’t see who it was until she gasped and Reggie turned around. It was Taylor. She was a 20 year old white girl with long blonde hair. I hurried up and closed the door back and ran back to the drive thru window. David, whose shift was ending, handed me the headset and I put it on, grateful that a car had just pulled up. As I took their order, I saw Reggie burning a hole into me with his eyes as he slowly walked past. After that, everything changed.

It started the very next day I came into work. We were about three hours into the shift. Karlos was the grill cook that night, and he had his headphones in, as usual, tuning out most of what was said. I was at the back drive through window, waiting to get payment from the customer. Three cars were waiting ahead of her, to receive their food at the front. Another order had just came in over the headset, and as I was entering it into the system, Reggie stormed to my area, a vein popping out of his neck.
“SIDNEY. Why the fuck, is my line backed up?! The timer on the order at the front says a minute and 8 seconds! You know after 35 seconds the timer turns red! You fuckin up my time!” he screamed at me.
“Reggie, I’m trying to get back up there but I’m waiting on this woman to count her change,” I explained. I remember the old lady owing me at least 30 more cents and she was counting it out in pennies.
“Why is it taking you so long to pay her out?!” Reggie pointed at the window, he didn’t care that it was open and that a customer could hear him speaking that way.
“She’s counting her money! I’m not going to rush the customer.” I said, remembering that overall, our job was to honor the customer. He scoffed at me and went to the front window to pass out the orders and clear the line. He would go on to criticize every single thing I did for the rest of that night. “Don’t worry about that fool. He lame anyway,” Jeremy would say.

Sometimes, it seemed like he would come to work, mad, already. On a night where he felt extra tough, he didn’t even wait until second shift left before he would start yelling. Perhaps, like most times, he wanted to make himself seem superior in front of them. “Yall better be glad yall ain’t on my shift, because I’m about to make them clean this store from top to bottom! And if I still see some dirt, I’m gon write they ass up!” He caught on to the fact that Jeremy was doing my cleaning, and apparently he always knew that he smoked on the roof. I usually had to mop. A few times, he made me mop the whole store, twice. After a while, he stopped giving the extra work and things seemed to go back to normal. He would come to work in a good mood, and he started being nice to me. But along with his new attitude came the disrespectful comments, and eventually, the crossing of physical boundaries.

I shook off most of the things he started saying, or doing to me. He would tell me my butt was kinda big. He called me ugly. He told me I was shaped weird in my work uniform. When he was in a good mood, he would poke me in my side as he passed. I didn’t recognize any of these things to be invasive, or even sexual harassment, at first. So, even when the red flags had grown, I never told anyone. I didn’t say anything when he placed his hand on the small of my back as he apologized to a customer in my front window for the bug she found in her French fries, or when he gripped my waist slightly before letting go. I didn’t say anything when he began using my phone number for late night text message conversations, instead of calling to request me in earlier. I didn’t say anything when Karlos left out a fish filet sandwich, and Reggie said the whole store smelled like me. I didn’t even open my mouth when he asked me for a hug, and pressed himself into me when I obliged. All of these things left me feeling uncomfortable, unpretty, and afraid. But as he smiled that cap toothed grin before walking away from me, all I could do was hold my breath and half-smile back. He started to treat me the exact same way as the other young girls at Wendy’s. I felt threatened. I had allowed so much to happen, he had the notion that it was okay to do what he did next.

One night, Wednesday, Karlos was the grill cook on my shift, and shortly after he got to work, he received a phone call from his mother about his 1 year old son Karlos, Jr. There had been kind of accident at the house and Karlos told Reggie that he had to leave, in order to go to the hospital. Reggie asked Karlos to stay until 11:00, because that was when things would slow down, and Reggie could take over the grill. Karlos refused. They argued over it for a minute, and Karlos gathered his things and left.
He didn’t get fired for that.

Most of the food drawers were stocked, so Reggie told me to man the windows and make the sandwiches while he went to the back to see if he could call someone in. I sucked my teeth and went to it. After about 15 minutes, he called me back into the office.
“How many cars have you done?” he asked. He stared at me, not my face as he spoke. I was standing in the doorway.
“About 10, 15.”
“That’s a lot of cars for one person. You got my line backed up?” his voice firmed a little.
“No. There’s no one in line right now.”
“Good. I called Taylor. She said she’s on her way. You know, she live up the street. I’ll work the grill til she get here.”
“Ok,” I said.
He stood up and walked over to me. “Where my hug at?” I took a small step towards him. Let him wrap his arms around me. “You smell good, what’s the name of that?” he asked. He pressed his nose into my neck and inhaled. One of his hands wandered down to my butt and rested there. I wiggled out of his grip and snatched away. I laughed nervously. Nothing was funny.
“Move! I… I saw another car coming around.” I turned to walk out of the office but he jumped in front of me and closed it.
“We gotta address the elephant in the room. You been running your mouth?”
I backed away, the other way. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. You walked in on me and Taylor.”
“Look, I’m not gonna tell anybody anything,” I assured him, walking past him to open the door. He stood against it. “Say please and I’ll let you out.”
“Please,” I said through gritted teeth. My voice was cracking. He opened the door and I rushed towards it, but he pulled me back into him by my right arm and wrapped his arm around my waist, so tightly that it hurt, and pulled me into him. He closed the door again. My heart fluttered.
“You like what you saw?” he asked me with a menacing smirk.
“What are you talking about? Let me go Reggie, you’re hurting me,” I protested, trying to casually pull away from him. He only held me tighter.
“Me and Taylor. I could do you like that if you wanted to,” he began. The more I tried to wiggle out of his grip, the tighter he squeezed me. I quickly grew tired of trying and just stood there. I told myself that if I acted casual, perhaps he would think I was no longer afraid and panicked, even though I was.
“No thanks, I have a boyfriend.”
“Aw but I guarantee that motherfucker cheating on you. You told us you were a virgin, right? Niggas ain’t waiting that long for you out here,” he laughed and loosened his grip a bit. My heart was still racing, but I laughed off the joke. Still, nothing was funny.  And at that moment, I deeply regretted sharing that bit of my personal life with Reggie and Karlos during what I thought to be one of the most laid back work nights, a few months earlier. “Ya so called boyfriend got something on the side, so you might as well get something, too,” he said, re-tightening his grip on my waist.
This time he didn’t wait for me to react, and buried his face into the right side of my neck, kissing it roughly. A tear from my left eye slowly fell and practically stung my cheek as it flowed down my face. I held my breath and could only mumble a weak “Stop”. If I had spoken any louder my voice would crack and I would burst into tears. The insides of me were screaming but I knew no one would hear if they became vocal. Reggie roughly kissed me on my lips and I turned my face. His grip loosened all the way, and my heart dropped to the point where I still couldn’t run. But I felt his hands grab at my belt and I snapped back into the moment, instantly grabbing at his hands to try and pry them away. He used one hand to hold both of my wrists down by my leg and unfasted my belt and then my zipper. I exhaled all of the breath I had been holding in from exhaustion, fear, and frustration. It seemed like the more strength I used to try and push him away and move his hands, the weaker I became. Right as he touched the top of my underwear, a loud, squeaking horn blew five times outside of the window. Wendy had arrived, and blew her horn for Reggie to unlock the door. The horns jostled him as much as they did me, and I was able to break free and rush out of the room, but not before he grabbed my behind and winked at me.
I stormed back up to the front, nervously knocking over an empty mop bucket and nearly tripping over it.
Wendy was walking in as I stomped out to my car, holding back tears. I drove straight home and didn’t go back.

The next day I called Chris, the store manager and left a message, telling him everything that happened. I told him about the incident at the office, plus everything he had said and done prior to that point. He listened. He told me not to worry and to take my next day off. He told me that they would take care of everything. He asked me if I wanted to be moved to another shift. With everything he said, there was pity in his voice. I know that I wasn’t the only girl he had done this to, but something told me I was the only one who spoke up about it. When I came in after my off day, they fired me. It turns out that Reggie flipped the whole story and blamed me. He said I wore tight pants to work and switched throughout the building. I sent him pictures late at night. I threw myself at him. He was the victim. And they believed him.

Since I never got a copy of the sexual harassment policy, I didn’t know how to plead my case properly. And now that I am no longer an employee, it wouldn’t matter what happened, because it happened in the past. There was nobody I could tell. It didn’t matter anymore. It’s funny, women love to refer to themselves as lovers. Peacekeepers. I hate anything that leaves people hurt. I always say that if I ever see a fight, I’d do my best to break it up. If I was around when a man called a woman out of her name, I would stand up for her. If someone touched me inappropriately, I would say NO. STOP. It’s easy to reassure yourself that you’d do the right thing, but once you get into that situation, you freeze. You’re overcome with terror. I’ve always been silent. But I don’t want to be anymore. Silence cripples you. And when you’re crippled, you can’t fight.

I wrote a letter to Wendy’s corporate, telling them my story. I’ve yet to receive a response. Reggie Black still works there. Still harassing. Still silencing.