My Alba
Work Story: At the checkout counter
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By Hong Sun-yeong
Published July 7, 2017
Translated by Marilyn
Hook
※
Editor’s note: Ilda is recording the real experiences of young women doing alba [part-time, temporary, or side]
work. The “My Alba Work Story” series
receives funding from the Korea Press Foundation’s Press Promotion Fund.
My narrow, inescapable
space: the checkout counter
On December 14th of last year, at 3:30 am, an alba worker in a convenience store in
the Jillyang Eup district of Gyeongsan, Gyeongbuk was murdered. This was very
upsetting to me, as someone who was also an alba
worker in a convenience store at the time. They said that a customer who was
angry at being asked to pay 20 won (2 cents USD) for a plastic bag brought a
weapon from home and stabbed the alba
worker. After reading the article about the incident, I kept imagining it happening
in my workplace. I wondered whether I’d be able to avoid someone who came there
to murder me, if I’d be able to escape.
 |
| “We want to work safely”. After the death of a convenience store alba worker, the convenience store workers section of the Arbeit Workers Union held the “Convenience Store Alba Human Rights Declaration” press conference on December 15, 2016. ⓒ Arbeit Workers Union |
Once I was working at the convenience store when a drunk middle-aged
customer came in. I had seen him three times before. He was always disheveled
and would buy five-or-six bottles of makgeolli [rice liquor] at a time. Like
usual, he brought five bottles of makgeolli to the counter and asked for
cigarettes. But when I was scanning the bar codes, I saw out of the corner of
my eye that his pants were undone. And he wasn’t wearing underwear, and his
genitals were coming out of his pants.
Shocked, I recoiled. But he didn’t move, even after he finished paying and
I put the items in a plastic bag. Keeping my eyes on the cash register, I said,
“Have a nice day” – but he just kept staring at me. A thousand thoughts ran
through my head. ‘What should I do? Does our store have a panic button? If I
scream, could someone outside hear it? How could I get outside...” I’m not sure
how long he actually stood there staring at me, but it felt like a very long
time to me, and my whole body was paralyzed.
Luckily, he left without doing anything else. I immediately went to open
the front and back doors of the store so that someone could hear me if I
screamed. My legs felt weak, and I was offended and depressed. I thought about
what to do next time he came in. If he (or someone else) came behind the
counter where I stood... I imagined myself being victimized without being able
to move from that narrow space. There would be no way to escape.
Middle-aged male customers were really rude
I’ve mainly worked in service positions, and I find dealing with
middle-aged male customers to be the most difficult. When I worked at the
convenience store, there was one such man who would always buy me snack foods
or chocolate when he came in. He was about my father’s age. At first, I was
pleased and accepted the food he bought for me, but from a certain point he
started to say weird things. “Don’t worry, I’m not doing this because I like
you. I know I’m handsome, but don’t get a crush on me.” “Want to KakaoTalk with
me?” In my everyday life I would have cursed him out, but standing behind the
counter of the convenience store, I found myself just smiling awkwardly.
Middle-aged men in front of the counter were quite rude. When I first
started working at the convenience store, countless numbers of them snapped at
me for not being able to find their cigarettes fast enough. There were also many
who used the kind of rude language that you usually only hear in movies and
threw their money on the counter.
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| When I worked in the convenience store, my lunch was always expired lunchboxes. |
When I worked at a fast-food franchise, as well, I encountered a terrible
middle-aged male customer. Customers usually chose the ingredients they wanted
on their customizable “signature burger” from a kiosk, but this guy came to the
counter and had me enter each ingredient into the cash register. I wasn’t that
good at the cash register yet so it took me a while, and he shouted at me and
hit the cash register several times. When he threw the receipt at me, saying
“Learn how to do your job!”, I almost burst into tears, even though I should
have spit at him.
After that, when I had to take large middle-aged men’s orders, my
shoulders would stiffen and I’d find myself holding my breath. The fact that I
turned to ice during my brief encounters with those (asshole) men made me want
to pat myself and say kind things. Like that I hadn’t done anything wrong
enough to deserve their reactions, anything to earn such disrespect, and that
they weren’t people that I should fear and cower in front of.
Covering up my emotions, menstrual pain, and eczema
The manager of the fast food restaurant always told me to smile
cheerfully. They said that when I took an order, handed customers their food,
or made a mistake, the most important thing was the angle of my eyes and mouth.
I felt alienated from myself as I forced my mouth to smile and spoke in a voice
I had never used before.
When employees answer customers, they use “cushion language”, which means
they speak as mildly and indirectly as possible. For example, even when a
customer makes a rude request, employees have to respond with, “I’m sorry,
but…”, “It’s our fault that that’s not possible,” and “You’re right, but…”
One of the women I did alba with
had such bad menstrual pain that she would sink behind the counter, and then
pop up with a smile when customers came. At that time I felt sorry for her, but
before I knew it, I realized that I was doing the same at the convenience store
job. Saying something different than what I was thinking and subduing my facial
expressions was harder than I would have thought. But I still found myself
naturally putting on this mask when I came into the store.
 |
| My desk. My actual self and the cowed person I present at work are different. |
It wasn’t just my face and voice I tried to control. When I was doing alba, I suffered from bad eczema, which
was visible on my arms. When they saw my arms, customers would freely say
things like, “How can a girl have [scratching] scars like that on her arms?”
or, “Gross.” Even though eczema is not
contagious, I felt I had to wear a long-sleeved cardigan even in the warm restaurant
in case the customers felt repulsed when I passed them their food.
I remember closing my eyes and saying, “Let’s get through another day”
when it was time to go to work. I wanted to escape from the hot fried potato
grease, customers’ appalling behavior, the cold convenience store, and my own
fake smile. But if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to support myself. Really, I
couldn’t even support myself while I was putting up with those things. It didn’t
matter how many hours I worked, they would just give me the minimum monthly wage.
There are even many alba workers who
are paid less than the monthly minimum wage and do not receive the protections
guaranteed them by the Labor Standards Act.
Sometimes I had two shifts of different alba jobs on the same day. On
those days, it was hardest when I got home. I’d wonder, “Why can’t I earn
enough money?”, “Why am I poor?”, “Why do I have bad eczema that I have to pay
to have treated?” I kept comparing my life to those of others, pushing myself
to the edge of a cliff. Even though I knew that it was making things worse, I
kept measuring my situation and living conditions against others’ and
absolutely hated my existence.
Hoping for a day when discussing my work doesn’t mean sharing my suffering
The self that I presented after doing alba
for a while was unfamiliar to me. I wasn’t originally that kind of person. I’m
naturally an awesome person who likes spending time with others, speaks up about
things that bother me, and helps other people get the money their boss tries to
cheat them out of. I’m endlessly facing my inner contradictions. The subservient
self from my workplace and my (non-subservient) authentic selves are
continually competing and negotiating with each other inside me.
 |
| Myself (left) and Labor Party candidate Ha Yun-jeong. |
I’ve told my story to the world before. It was during the last general
election, when I was helping to campaign for Labor Party candidate Ha
Yun-jeong, who advocated feminism. I shared my painful alba experiences with passers-by on the street. I said that policies
like a 10,000-won-per-hour minimum hourly wage, universal provision of
menstrual leave, or guaranteed basic income could change my daily life so that
I no longer hated my existence.
These politics that powerless people like me speak up for might seem
absurd, but they are actually ideas that can change people’s lives. If the
minimum wage became 10,000 won, I wouldn’t have to work two alba jobs. In my
new free time, I would be able to spend time with others and do things that I
like to do. I wouldn’t have to endure physical pain. If a scary middle-aged man
verbally abused me, I could confidently exercise my rights, which are currently
being denied me. Or if I found myself in an unbearable working situation, I
could quit without regret. I could use menstrual leave without worry.
The rights to stand up to customers who humiliate me, work in a space
structured to allow me to escape the threat of sexual violence, and act like
myself in the workplace instead of forcibly hiding my true nature, are matters
of dignity that would empower me to no longer hate myself. I hope that a day
comes when talking about my work doesn’t mean discussing experiences of bowing
and scraping and other painful things.
*Original article: http://ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=7930
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