When was the last time you got up from a table in a restaurant before you’d even ordered your food? How many times have you felt like you’re being ignored, but your desire to be seen as a nice person prevents you from speaking up? How often have you sat through an experience quietly, only to complain once you’ve left?
I was recently out to dinner with my husband at a restaurant in a foreign country. The restaurant was the “place to go” - recommended by the hotel and many others, filled with waiters and staff in ever more elaborate uniforms. We ordered our drinks and then waited and waited and waited to order our food, signaling to the waitress several times that we were ready to order. For all the staff and all the hype, it became clear this dinner was not going to be worth the finite time we had on vacation. I finally turned to my husband and said, “Let’s pay the check and get out of here. We’ll go somewhere else.” He, surprised but not displeased, said, “Really? Do we know where we’ll go instead?” And I told him “No, but we will figure it out.”
Getting up from the table is so not me. Over the last 41 years, I have been conditioned to be polite in every circumstance. You don’t walk out of restaurants. You don’t overtly show your displeasure. You suck it up, be ignored by your waitress and wait patiently until it’s your turn. And you don’t EVER leave a place before you know where you’re going next.
To be clear, of all the problems in life to have, being badly served in a fancy restaurant is for the fortunate. I’m sure the uncomfortable experience we had deservingly engenders no true sympathy and it’s not meant to. The purpose of sharing my story is this: choosing to get up from the table when I felt disrespected is a metaphor for the experience of girls and women in many walks of life, in many contexts. We are conditioned to be quiet and endure uncomfortable situations rather than to speak up and get out. We are more comfortable taking our frustrations out afterwards with a one star ranking on Yelp rather than expressing our disappointment in the moment. While my example is superficial - a restaurant - think of how this example applies to situations far more critical: a denigrating teacher or coach, an abusive relationship, sexual harassment in the workplace. Taken in these contexts, the edict to “get up from the table,” to speak up and get out, becomes crucial to the physical and emotional well-being of girls and women.
What are the insights that helped me become, at 41 years old, the kind of woman who gets up from a table at a restaurant when I feel disrespected? What had changed since I was 16 or 25 or even 38?
The most profound influence has been the responsibility to teach Dynamo Girls to speak up when they don’t like what is going on. As we explain in our classes during moments of conflict, frustration and disappointment, there are many right ways to speak up, but they all require regular practice. We offer our girls a safe place to use their voices so that when the stakes are higher, they have had that regular practice. How would I have felt if the restaurant had been filled with my Dynamo Girls and they watched me be ignored and disrespected? I would have felt ashamed that I was telling them one thing in our classes and doing another thing in my life. So in my mind, when I got up from the table, I was surrounded by the hundreds of Dynamo Girls I have coached.
Beyond the responsibility of practicing what I preach, I’ve learned to ask myself before I act, how will I feel if I don’t get up from the table? What is the opportunity cost of just staying put? Most often, the answer is this: I will play and replay the situation in my mind, wishing I had stepped forward rather than sat back. I will use my time looking back rather than looking ahead. In this case, I would have kicked myself wondering what wonderful restaurant I could have eaten at if I hadn’t been so embarrassed to get up and leave. And in a deeper sense, what emotional energy will I spend wishing I had ventured out into new territory?
Let us teach our girls that it is OK to get up from the table when we feel disrespected. Let us remind ourselves that we can speak up and get out even if we don’t know where we are going next. Doing this requires practice and discomfort and sometimes impoliteness, but if we are accustomed to getting up from the table when the stakes are low, then we are ready to speak up and get out when the stakes are much higher.