Here's what I was told during my freshman orientation at Harvardford College.

Ask for help when you need it. Speak up when you feel uncomfortable. Place your own

well-being above all other concerns. In short, the school was ready to protect me from any

personal slights or hurt feelings I might suffer. What counted as a personal slight or similar

offense was up to me to define. This surprised me. It surprised me because I micked Donalds where

I worked before I started school, acting in this way would have probably cost me my job,

a job I needed in order to go to college. The most important thing I micked Donalds was not how I felt,

but how my customers felt. It was my job and the job of everyone working there to make others,

namely the customers, happy. I worked at the front counter. That meant that if there was a problem

with an order, I had to deal with it. The issues weren't complicated. It was usually something like

a missing piece of cheese from a mick double or whipped cream on a milkshake when they hadn't wanted

any. Whatever it was, I had to listen patiently and mentally take notes so that I could report the

relevant details to someone who could actually correct the problem. Oddly enough, customers were not

interested in carefully crafting their complaints in such a way as to spare my feelings. They were in

a rush to get back to work or they were dealing with their screaming kids or they had calculated the

cost of their meal down to the scent out of necessity and could not afford a mistake.

And they had a right to have their meal served the way they ordered it. If a mistake was made,

we fixed it as quickly as possible and didn't talk back. Even if I believe the customer had misunderstood

some aspect of their order and was actually the one that fought, I was instructed to give the

person the benefit of the doubt. Their feelings mattered more than mine. At McDonalds, there was no

trigger warning for when a customer was about to start yelling. No safe spaces to go to when the

restaurant would get so busy that I barely had time to breathe between orders. When a group of

...