Just Got Fired From My Casual Job (interesting experience)

[Jayce]

So I just got kind of a soft-no way of getting fired by my boss. A week ago my manager told me that they were doing a different form of promotion for the clothing shop so I wouldn't have to come in to hand out flyers for just a week. On Sunday afternoon I messaged her asking about my work schedule this week seeing as she said she would inform us about the week after but she hasn't messaged me all week. She told me she has to check with our boss, and so my job there is pretty much over. When I started my job there it was fine, I worked with two other people called A and B. Everything was ok, the managers were nice, the boss at first was just a nice old man that loved his dog, I got along with other workers, I brought something unique to the table since out of us three I was the only one that can speak Chinese, both Mandarin and Cantonese to customers, and quite a fair few of them were Chinese tourists, everyone told me I was competent at my job. I did what I could to leverage my advantage there, I was always available every midday to afternoon, I didn't take breaks even though we could. There was no elevator so I was the one who helped all the parents carry their prams downstairs which was something else I brought to the table since A and B couldn't do that. I was the only guy that handed out flyers there, but all of three of us were somewhat conventionally attractive. I made up for being male by always being fashionable, I did my hair and wore my makeup every time I went to work. But then A and B left, J and K came.

Everything was good for a while, I actually had no problems at the job. J and K though were extremely conventionally attractive women. My boss noticed and he always treated J and K much better than me. I'm fine with that, I knew at that point that I was at the lower end of the totem pole now. I still had a flexible schedule, which was good for my manager since she could easily fit me in every week. I'm not making any of this up at all, because there were several times where my boss asked them if they wanted to walk the dog, do easier errands like getting coffee or food for him, a couple of times he brought a chair out the front of the store and told them that they could sit when no customers came around. And he pretty much ignored me all the time, this includes not bothering to say hi when I say hi to him or smile at him. He also verbally told them that they were beautiful and asked if they had any other friends that were as conventionally attractive and looking to work. J was the first person to even get a wage raise from him, even before he raised the wages of everyone that worked in the shop by $2.

Nothing was ever wrong with my work, and I was still the only one out of us three that could speak Chinese or help parents with prams. Except that I was male.

I think that an advertising job such as flyer distribution for a clothing shop is traditionally, considered to be a position for suited for women (that at least fits in with conventional attractiveness to a certain degree) and as a man I just wasn't as valuable. Although a large fraction of our customers were women (assuming they are heterosexual women), male bosses would probably still believe its better to have a woman for this kind of job than a man. A large part of this is because female conventional attractiveness is more easily believed to be marketable in comparison to male.

In reality it doesn't make a large significant difference actually, maybe just a small one, from what I could see when I worked with J or K, there will always be people that don't want to take your advertising, and I actually gave out more advertising than they ever did because I didn't take breaks. Of course there were men that stood there and flirted with J or K, like this one middle aged law firm owner that came every work day past the shop to ask out J. But they weren't actually customers. Maybe once or twice these men that just wanted to flirt with customer service workers would come in, stroll around and leave.

The most I would ever get is once in a blue moon- "nice shoes" once from a woman, once from a man, or passing comments like "this one's even better dressed than any of us" from older men office workers, twice I got told that I was beautiful, or that me and J could be a couple, some comments about my bow-tie once or twice. One guy told me I was cute. But still, I wasn't dragging down the image down of the shop either. Worst case scenario I'm at least neutral.

My boss is a old man in his late 40s to 50s, and from evidence it is likely that he does believe it's better to have a woman at this sort of job. He even told me once if I wanted to try to go to work in the men's section (I took up the offer and tried it out but pretty much barely anyone came down there, the pay was just $2 more per hour but with less hours, and I had customers that always wanted to haggle about the prices because everything was expensive, and there were many other duties). I couldn't care less if my boss treated my two co-workers better and ignored me because I was getting paid money anyway. The pay wasn't exceptional or anything, it was $18 Australian an hour (which is $13.62 US dollars), but getting paid to stand still and give out advertising when people walked pass, or just stand still when there was no one, and be as good looking as possible wasn't that bad for a casual job. At the end of the day from the perspective of a middle aged man, it's likely that he thinks nothing else I bring to the table really matters much in comparison to being a conventionally attractive woman in an advertising position for clothes.

Anyway I wasn't expecting to ever win, I was pitting a weakness of mine against the strength of others. I'm male and I've never been very naturally conventionally attractive for male standards, even though I work very hard. Oh well, I was hoping to continue to get more money but this is the end of the road for this workplace. I'm happy I got experience with this kind of job for three months which makes getting another similar job easier, and I got some clothing retail experience. I also understand more about what it feels like to work in a more customer service, and sales oriented position in comparison to me just tutoring students in maths and english in the past or working at KFC.

I finally realise that I would never like to seriously work in a job where my appearance would be extremely vital to just be employed, instead of it being a complement to the job that makes me seem more competent.

In conclusion I'm pretty happy that I'm pursuing an Education degree, where I can rival others with my long-time strengths of mathematics, academic study, fictional literature and there's nothing that naturally holds me back in those areas.