X sat overlooking a slice of the Sunshine Coast, one of many landscapes that had set a scene where her job would be sacrificed to save those of men who had done bad things to her, the kinds of things men are supposed to get fired for, and women are supposed to receive compensation
She imagined, on a job site where she was right to be afraid to be in her own highly politicized body, the kind which were the least likely to be found on a site, what a “fair” job negotiation might look like on some alien conception of her own planet,
“What are the presentation expectations for the job?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, will I be expected to wear makeup?”
“Not too much, just enough to be presentable.”
“Alright, based on the standard presentation I see of the femme bodied employees you have on staff, you’re looking at approximately an additional $150 per month for base supplies, $87 per month for ongoing maintenance such as facial hair, plus about 45 minutes per day worked for applications and removal time. This includes hair. I’ve prepared a menu of different levels of presentation at different rates that you can review and choose from, here. Can I assume based on your other femme bodied employees that I’ll be expected to wear a bra as well?”
“Yes.”
“Full fit?”
“How do you mean?”
“Is a simple bralette acceptable or am I required to be equipped with a padded, underwire harness which conceals any impression of nipples or movement? They come with different rates based on their physical, psychological and fiscal cost to me.”
“Ah. The latter.”
“Okay. So that’ll run about $150 per quarter for equipment, plus an additional $3/hour to wear it, as well as $75 for physical therapy.”
“That seems steep.”
“I assure you, it’s not. In fact, I’m still assuming some of the cost and should adjust the structure to correct for this as well as long term health impacts, consider it a benefit.”
“I wasn’t aware.”
“Yes well, many category xx humans overlook accounting for their expenses properly. It’s hardly their fault that they’ve been reduced to under compensated standards, but I try to be equitable about these things. You’d be surprised just how many employers still expect us to pay more to work for lower wages, and work harder, and accept regular harassment and the like, it’s quite barbaric. Speaking of, what are your protocols for managing workplace harassment?”
“Oh, we have a zero tolerance policy.”
“How do you mean?”
“We simply don’t tolerate harassment.”
“Sure, but, how do you go about identifying and not tolerating it? From my experiences, there are lots of ways for companies to keep their rates down and they usually aren’t nearly as ethical as the numbers they churn out. I mean are your employees safe and informed enough to inform you of a problem? How do you protect those who come forward? How do you address those who have been accused? How do you define harassment or abuse? Who does someone report to if the problem was with you? How do you set the standard of treatment in the workplace? Who would one turn to if the authorities of workplace harassment were the perpetrators? And what of subtler forms of mistreatment, such as microaggressions which, although more difficult to detect or describe, nevertheless can torment the subject to an intolerable extent? In a world where a victim could be accused of harassing HR to do something about their being harassed at work, to simply say you have zero tolerance for harassment without following with what you mean by those words is as insufficient as the words themselves – it ought to be made known what qualifies and how you go about disqualification, lest far too much be left to interpretation, and usually to the detriment of those whom the policy suggests protection. Typically most employers do expect a certain amount of harassment of some form to be tolerated by at least some of their staff, but it is usually outside of the awareness of management, often because it is either too normal or too absurd for them to really consider. Even the process of monitoring or vetting your staff can become so invasive it breaches well beyond harassment, and you wouldn’t know if nobody could rightly tell you, nor could they be rightly heard. We can use our probation period to review the tolerance expectations, but, if tolerating harassment beyond my job, should turn out to be a part of my job, we ought to discuss adding it to my wages as well.”
“Very well, but it really won’t be necessary.”
“That’s wonderful, but, of course, you can understand the need for precaution, lest history repeat.”
“Of course. We’re confident the environment we have cultivated here will assure you more than we expect our words to.”
This interview, of course, would never happen in the here and now or any time or place before. X couldn’t make it a single line into any iteration of the scene without laughing both at the impossibility of it and the fear in discomfort of imagining if she actually tried. She’d have to take up job interviews for sport just to run experiments to prove what she already knew – that every job market and every market run by jobs was institutionally sexist, down to its foundation, fabric and core, but this ism was a mere example of its degradatory nature, that of a slave culture, trained to train each other.
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