I Hate Restaurants
"I Hate Restaurants"
I needed money. I accepted work in a hotel restaurant located in a small white village on the Catalan coast. It was a summer vacation spot for overflowing pockets of the pure tongued and white skinned, skins as white as the houses. Everything very white. In the midst of this landscape, the Caribbean darkness of the women with which I worked made them....exotic. Even more so the way they moved. Stealing a few hours, we would go out to one of the village bars and they would ask for bachata or reguetón.
Not even in it's wildest of storms has the Mediterranean known impossible hip undulations such as these.
A 15 hour workday without one day off, during the 6 month season; the excuse: food and a bed to sleep in were provided.
The pay was the going rate for a 40 hour work week.
Most of the workers had a work permit and residency that was only valid while working for this specific employer. After the contract ran out they became illegal. All of them returned to the Dominican Republic, Ecuador or Morocco. All had families and projects that directly depended on this income.
Others didn't have neither papers nor contract. They were family or friends of the other workers. Even though the owners said they accepted them as a favor, the real reason was the lack of a local work-force willing to work under these conditions. This situation made the employers immune to demands of improving conditions. When so much is at stake, the fear of being fired is chewed and swallowed with Ibuprofen.
This work was done during moments of down time, during the little vacuums between washing, ironing, mopping, cooking, serving. The camera click was activated like a dis-tonic syncopation during the productive process, the process of producing other people's rest.
