“Up” To Absolutely No Good

CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Harassment

This story occurs just before upskirting was made illegal in the UK. For those not in the know, “upskirting” is the practice of taking a photo up a woman’s skirt or dress without her prior knowledge, and since its outlawing, it is legally considered a sexual offence.

I work in a restaurant for a five-star hotel in Central London, and we have a very strict dress code to adhere to: casual work suits for men, and dress suits for the ladies. Whilst ladies are allowed to wear trousers, there is an emphasis made on at least owning a dress suit.

I normally operate the morning shift with two other colleagues. A part of our duties involves going down to Room Service to collect pastries for the breakfast rush; the pastries are always made overnight and are delivered in time for the mornings.

[Room Service Attendant] normally collects these and stows them in Room Service for safekeeping. However, he has recently taken up the idea of stowing them in a completely weird place: behind a building plinth in the same room, making it a little more complicated than it needs to be to collect them. [Room Service Attendant] almost always works the overnight shift, which is fine since he requested to do so. However, many of our colleagues find him a little weird personally. He doesn’t tend to socialise a lot with anyone, and he talks to himself and generally isolates himself from his colleagues with his strange behaviour. Most of us put it down to him working all-nighters.

Anyway, normally, one of the other colleagues who arrives half an hour later than us collects the pastries on the way up. It’s an easy task that’s only required to be completed by one person; however, today we are fully booked for a family reunion, so we decide to order more pastries than usual just in case we run out early. We order twice as much, so I join [Colleague] on her way down. On the way, I receive a phone call from another colleague, so I arrive at Room Service a little while later than [Colleague].

Me: “Hey! Sorry about that. I was—”

I round the corner as I’m speaking and see [Colleague] loading the trolley with pastries, and [Room Service Attendant] is sitting behind her in such a way that her rear is almost in his face. My unexpected arrival obviously scares the daylights out of him because, as soon as I say hello, he almost jumps out of his seat — and perhaps more strangely, his hands dart both into his pockets, and his face flushes full red.

Me: “You okay, mate?”

Room Service Attendant: *Speaking quickly and breathing heavily* “Yeah, yeah fine…”

Something’s really not correct with what’s been seen. But as our guests will be arriving in less than an hour, I let it go and go back to the restaurant with our pastries. I let my manager know on the side what I saw and she says she will look into it.

About a month later, my manager approaches me as I begin work.

Manager: “I let [Room Service Attendant] go. You remember what you told me before?”

She had grown suspicious of [Room Service Attendant] as, apparently, this was not the first time behaviour like this was reported from him. She had personally asked the restaurant staff to be extra vigilant the next time they had to collect from Room Service. When [Colleague] did one time, she found [Room Service Attendant] behind her again, with his phone torch (flashlight) activated and positioned between her legs. [Room Service Attendant] was fired within the hour, but not before [Colleague] delivered a punch that caused his nose to bleed so severely he had to go to hospital for it. When the police asked how his nose came to be fractured, “nobody” blamed [Colleague].