Clean Your Own Plate!
Working the Cafeteria at Stanford University
Story by Pedro Paulo Viegas De Sa // art by Wesley Vara

I have been a temp worker in the cafeteria at Stanford University for two and a half years now – and I have only gotten a dollar raise since I started. Working as temp in the Bay is a sure ticket to nowhere. The boss sees you as something as discardable, as used toilet paper. I have been there for over two years and have seen so many people come and go that is hard to remember faces and names. My sister told me about this kid that goes to school with her and worked with me, and I could not remember him at all.

It doesn't help that I am turning twenty-four, and trying to pay my way through the ever more expensive community college system. Most of the kids I work with are in high school, and you feel kinda out of place around the minors. The manager is always complaining: “Why my workers keep quitting on me?” And I think – “If y'all weren't so miser and treated the workers like people, they might think on staying a little more.” I've seen managers yell at workers for no reason, dumping on them their home problems. And the temp workers are scared of getting fired, so they take any crap. But them frustration builds up and they just quit.

The kitchen workers, like the cooks and the dishwashers, they are mostly union, and get good wages and benefits. It is like a divide-and-conquer technique, because they have a very bad idea of the front workers, like servers and cashiers, and management knows that. Kitchen workers think we in the front are lazy and sloppy in our work, and maybe we are. Then again, while they get benefits and good wages, we get the managers treating us like crap, low pay and no job security at all, it is hard to find any motivation to do your job well.

Like this one day a see a hair in the plate where I am going to put food on and I know I am supposed to change plates and get a clean one. I look at the pile of clean plates and there is only a few. The line of students is at least thirty strong. That means I would have to run all the way into the dish room, grab a bunch of plates and bring it to the front after I served this fool. Well, a little hair never killed anybody.

The attitude of the students doesn't help at all. Why people that go to Stanford feel entitled to treat the school workers like they are servants still escapes me – one student actually snapped his fingers at me. Next thing you know, one of them will call me “boy” or try to whip me if I spill something.

There is a lot of racism, outright and covert. It comes from management, co-workers and students. The difference between the racism of co-workers and the one from management is that the management can really screw your life. In my two years there, I got one raise and no promotion. A year ago, this white kid comes in and he is totally clueless. I helped train him, but he was never a good worker. Six months later, he was my supervisor. My current supervisor, I trained him too. The majority of the front workers are Latino or Black, and my story is not unique. There is always a lot of discontent about stuff like that, but we feel disempowered and we cannot do anything.

Different from my other high school co-workers in the front, I have bills to pay and a dire need for the money. That money is not an extra – I need to pay my school, food and transportation. And the money they pay me there just ain't cutting it. I am trying to get a second job. That, on top of my school and all the other stuff I need to do, is going to be a lot for me, so forget about social life. Yet, it probably still will not be enough for me take care of my self.

It's funny how people told me when I moved here from Brazil that this was going to be the land of opportunity, where if you work hard enough, you could get what you need. What a lie; the American dream ends when you become a temp worker.