Today Mel Buer writes about lessons learned over the years working in the restaurant industry and how those can apply to fostering a general sense of solidarity among workers everywhere. It's a great piece and also kind of gave me PTSD. Working in restaurants for so many years was certainly a radicalizing experience for me as well. Such an eye opening thing to have people from vastly different classes all working what is ostensibly the same job in close proximity: Single mothers who could never miss a shift, back of the house undocumented people working three different jobs a day, older service industry professional lifers who took their craft seriously, fancy college kids who did not need the job and other college kids who very much did, and all kinds of other people doing it as a stopgap on the way to something else if they could get there.

Read it below or here.

Lessons in Solidarity from the Service Industry

Today Mel Buer writes about lessons learned over the years working in the restaurant industry and how those can apply to fostering a general sense of solidarity among workers everywhere. It’s a great piece and also kind of gave me PTSD. Working in restaurants for so many years was certainly

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

I know times are pretty uh... uncertain right now but they're killing my ass in the subscription department. Those of you who read Hell World regularly and can afford to do so please consider a sub. It's good for the soul to support independent writers and artists and musicians.

Down below paid subscribers can read my latest Flaming Hydra short story or jump to it here.

Believing you will receive

I was sitting on the porch in the dark with a friend who had stopped by to tell me he was getting a divorce. No no no he didn’t want to come inside and disturb the kids he said. Out here is fine he said. I brought out a

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

It's one of the good ones I believe. "This absolutely wrecked me" one guy said.

Also down below a bunch of other stuff from me about protesting Vance and the sorry state of the prestige media and some new music news that has made me very happy when there isn't much to be happy about.

First let's talk about the dangers of coming to America!

I can't imagine why anyone – even white Europeans who you would presume these motherfuckers don't want to eradicate (yet) – would ever want to come here as a tourist or to work ever again. The risk just isn't worth it. Consider the case of Jessica Brösche a German citizen who was apprehended attempting to cross into the country from Mexico legally. She has spent over a month in detention including over a week in solitary confinement all because Trump's goons suspected she might be trying to tattoo people while she was visiting. As KBPS reported Brösche had a copy of her German passport and a visa waiver to enter the country and a return ticket to Berlin on her when she was arrested. It took her friend she had been walking into the country with – again at a legal point of entry and doing it the right way – days to even find out what had happened to her. She's been held long after her already scheduled flight back to Germany – which they could have just let her leave on – had departed.

When Amelia Lofving was finally able to talk to her friend she said it has been a nightmare. An understatement indeed.

Lofving said Brösche told her about her time in custody — and a particularly difficult nine-day period in what amounted to solitary confinement in a CBP holding cell.

“She says it was like a horror movie,” Lofving said. “There were people screaming from the rooms all around. They are feeding her through a little mailbox hole. She didn’t have a blanket, she didn’t have a pillow. It’s basically a yoga mat on the ground and a toilet on the corner.” ...

“After nine days, she says she started freaking out and punching the walls,” Lofving said. “There was blood everywhere.”

Over a month in detention and nine days in solitary for intent to draw a big colorful flower on someone's shoulder.

Brösche is now being held in the infamous ICE Otay Mesa facility owned by CoreCivic a huge player in caging human beings. It is among six privately owned detention facilities in California which as the Guardian reported "have been plagued by allegations of medical negligence, abusive and retaliatory behavior against immigrants, sexual harassment, poor food and water quality and other dangerous conditions."

"The two largest companies, Geo Group and CoreCivic, dominate the immigration detention market, making $1bn and $552m respectively from ICE contracts in 2022. In October, members of Congress called on the federal government to end its contract with Geo Group."

It's a pretty good business to be in. Running these torture chambers. Even better if you drop the pretense of only trying to detain people who have "broken the law."

Obviously this case is only one of the many many thousands of instances of the U.S. inflicting pain for profit – or just for the love of the game! – on people who have done nothing wrong besides making the mistake of believing the bullshit myth of America.

I asked people (and heard from mostly Canadians) whether or not reading about shit like this – and Trump's general spiraling belligerence – has made them reconsider a trip here of their own. A few responses I got:

• I am a Canadian and even though I haven't changed my gender markers and could pass as a butch "woman" without much more trouble than shaving my face, as a trans person I do not feel safe crossing the border.
• White Brit with a white Norwegian wife here. We have completely ruled out visiting the US for the foreseeable future. It simply isn't worth the hassle.
• I'm Canadian. We cancelled a family trip to Maine for the spring break.
• I am an American expat who left in 2023 seeing the writing on the wall. I have no interest in ever setting foot in the US again. In fact, after yesterday, I have cancelled my last business ties to the country.
• I’m mulling over whether to still visit my friend in Seattle as I did last year. But places I’d previously longed to see like Nashville or New Orleans are right out. Is it due to actual safety concerns, or some form of spite, bitterness, or distaste? Not sure. Does it matter?
• Canadian. Most of our travel plans were to the US: down to Minnesota for twins games, Arizona because the wife loves the desert. Invasion threats make you reconsider things.
• I’m a white Canadian artist/academic and there is no way I’m going to the USA as a tourist or for work stuff. I have already had tons of crap experiences with US border patrol for no reason whatsoever. Going now seems like Russian Roulette.
• I've been going to the States for work for over 20 years, to the point where one of the DOE labs feels like a second home, and now I'm genuinely reluctant to travel there. During Trump 1 I joked that they'd never let me in if they saw my social media posts. It's less of a joke now.
• White German here. Visits to the USA have been off the table since Trump's first election. But even before that it was... not a priority. US immigration is horrible. Saying this as someone who grew up in West-Berlin and had to deal with East-German border patrols who were brutal. US was worse.
• White Brit here. Absolutely no way am I visiting the US under the current regime (same was true 2017-21) despite having lots of friends in CA. US immigration procedure has always been unpleasant (especially at JFK and on the southern border) but now – no way.
• Canadian with family in the US. Will not be traveling to visit them for the foreseeable future and cancelled 2025 plans to do so. I'll add too that I (like a huge portion of our population) live in a town where cross border day trips were very common and the consensus among people I know is that no one has any interest in making those trips right now either.
• Like all the other Canadians, I won’t spend a cent in the US for at least the next four years, probably longer. It sucks, many past trips and good memories there, but the relentless annexation threats make you quickly reorient your priorities
• White British gay person here. Ruled out any US trips during Trump’s first term and sadly can’t imagine when it might seem like a safe country to visit again.
• Canadian. Wife and I had to break it to our 11 year old that a trip to either Disney park isn't happening. Parents stayed home from Florida/South Carolina for the first time in 25 years too.
• Cancelled a trip to NYC a month ago – between potential border issues, not wanting to deal with wags making annexation jokes, the very real possibility of Hydro Quebec turning off the power, plane crashes, and general instability, it seemed like the smart idea
• Not going to lie, as a trans person, the US for me is in the same category as Saudi Arabia or Russia, which is "do not go there ever." That could change if new, better policies pass of course, but right now, absolutely not.
• USA for profit prison system. Largest number of incarcerated citizens per capital in the world. Capitalism devolving into full authoritarianism. Yeah I’ll take a pass on traveling there until there is a revolution to overthrow the ruling class.
• I’m a lawyer. A number of big Canadian law firms have cancelled US retreats. Like losing $1m in deposits. It is pretty wild. Canadians are so fucking mad. Everyone talks about it. People are going out of the way to not buy American
• I’m a Canadian academic and was planning on spending a few weeks doing research in Texas. Finding a new project now and I won’t be attending any conferences in the U. S. for the foreseeable future.
• I live in Buffalo and frequently go back and forth to Canada for concerts, restaurants etc and it has NEVER been easier to cross. Last Saturday we crossed at 6pm and there was zero line at customs, unheard of. Typically you wait for 20-30 min. Canadian tourism seems to have ground to a halt here.
• Travel plans to the US have been cancelled indefinitely over here. It feels legitimately unsafe.
• Canadian, used to go to Disney and baseball games and whatnot. Travel plans shifted to local spots and Europe this year, may still have to go to USA for work. For friends of mine who are now "too queer for the States," the boycott may be a permanent thing.
• I was planning to go to Vegas in January 2025 for my birthday. I cancelled that after the election. Given what I've seen since it's no longer a free country that's safe to travel to. I don't travel to Saudi Arabia or Russia due to their human rights abuses. USA is now also on that list.
• I live in a place that relies on tourism, and many of those tourists are Canadian. There are indications a lot of them won't be coming this year.
• Kids soccer teams are cancelling tournaments. Florida snow birds are selling their ocean side condos. Most Canadians I know don't want to go right now.
• Canadian. I can hold a grudge. A summer roadtrip into Montana and Wyoming that won't happen now. Will the US economy collapse because we don't buy some gas and snacks and a few hotel rooms? No, but that's really not the point.

Lessons in Solidarity from the Service Industry

by Mel Buer

Wage work is simultaneously dull and dangerous, boring and tragic. Long before I ended up working in journalism, I was a put-upon counter girl standing for hours and hours on my feet, taking orders for takeout at an ancient Mom & Pop in Omaha, Nebraska. I stood behind that counter every night after school and on the weekends, rushing my way through the shift without so much as a thought about a meal, or a break. The back kitchen was full of undocumented immigrants grinding away their days for cash that they sent home to family or put away in a shoebox under the bed to pay for the absurdly expensive and humiliating path to citizenship that this country offers. 

At least twice a week, the waitress on shift would count her tips at the end of the night and find herself in a standoff with the manager, reminding him aggressively that he needed to pay her minimum wage (the tips never added up to a decent take-home, it wasn't that kind of place) or he'd be breaking the law. He would hem and haw until he reduced her to tears, and then with a small smile of satisfaction at her smeared makeup, acquiesce. Roll the tape back, play again, week after week.

After high school, I made the jump out of fast food and into the bar industry. It was in those successive gauntlets that I learned to keep your cash in your jeans under the apron lest someone with sticky fingers pass by, and a swift kick to the back of the knee can drop a handsy, drunk man faster than calling for security. I learned how to wash the puke of some poor, drunken 20-something out of the upholstery of the booth, to navigate 30-pound trays through throngs of inebriates without sloshing pint glasses, to demurely accept compliments from grotesquely drunk men without angering them and still get them to come back to spend more of their money on the watered-down shots I carried from table to table every Friday night. After the night was over and the cash counted, the tables cleared and the popcorn swept up (why, why do dive bars always feel the need to have a popcorn machine in the corner?), I would walk with the biggest door guy the place had to offer out to my car and head home in the wintry darkness, a wad of tips shoved haphazardly in my back pocket. 

I scraped by like this for years and became increasingly convinced that by and large, managers and owners at small businesses are the worst bosses in the hierarchy of horrible bosses. They put their employees through hell for the sheer fun of it; a sadistic, Machiavellian exercise in who amongst their cult of owners can make their employees cry, or quit, the fastest. They preach up and down about how those chosen few who are allowed to enter the hallowed gates of their shitty establishment to work are a family, we take care of each other around here. As if working the line at a Surf-&-Skate-Style burrito shop was the pinnacle of a young cook's career. They elevate certain sycophants to assistant manager positions and sit back as coworkers turn against each other. When you're too busy squabbling with a former-friend-turned-boss about trading shifts, you're not paying attention to the way Mr. Owner steals your wages.

Not everyone is like this, but those establishments feel more like the exception than the rule. You can always tell when you meet someone whether they’ve spent any number of years in the food and beverage industry–the look of knowing when you casually mention the bar you used to work at, the extra tip percentage they add to the bill at the end of the night, the wellspring of patience when interacting with the harried waitress, the war stories of ‘clopens,’ skeleton crews, dangerously drunk patrons, and days-long rushes during city celebrations and events. If you’ve never trauma-bonded with your coworkers after a particular horrible weekend working doubles, did you even work at the local dive? All the while, these owners are raking in the cash and stealing your tips.

Every time I left one of those horrendous, soul-sucking positions, where every day was a chore for every one of us, where we all sucked it up to hang onto the benefits, or the meager paycheck, or the tips, or whatever, I felt this implacable guilt--like I was at fault somehow. I felt shame when I chose to walk away from a position that objectively brought me nothing but misery. I felt I was abandoning my coworkers to fend for themselves against the ruinous scheduling, wage theft, coldhearted bosses, and all the rest. It took me a while to realize that the affinity I was feeling for my fellow workers wasn’t just a trauma bond, but a real sense of shared purpose with the people I worked with as we were forced to navigate the chaos engendered by the petty tyrants who ran our establishments.  

I say this often, but working in these places is a masterclass in solidarity, whether you’re aware of it or not. You know that feeling when you really click with the folks you’re scheduled with, when you can glide through a busy shift without many bottlenecks–when the rush doesn’t feel like a rush because everyone’s where they need to be and the GM is staying out of your way? There’s an unspoken sense of–I’m here for you, and you’re here for me, and we’ll get through this together–that, to me, is what solidarity feels like. Even if you’ve never organized before, you know that feeling, and the satisfaction that comes with it. Imagine, for a moment, if you could feel that all the time.

We live in a society ruled by ‘rugged individualism’ and an ass-backwards bootstraps ethos, trapped in a churning capitalist system that loves nothing more than to reduce the vitality of our human experience to nil; we become numbers on a spreadsheet that mercurial bosses and corporate peons can slash and cut through the moment they want to line their already deep pockets with even more of the profits that we generated. The brutality of such a system has been starkly illustrated in the daily firings of the federal workforce for the last few months, but we’ve seen this borne out over and over again in every industry for our entire working lives. The failure to stay employed somehow becomes our fault; we didn’t work hard enough, didn’t make ourselves irreplaceable fast enough. The lesson here is that no matter what we do, the company doesn’t give a fuck about us. We are always replaceable to the ones signing our checks, and they can and will find ways to pull the rug out from under us the second they want to stuff a bit more cash into their already bulging pockets.

The impulse to pull away from your fellow workers, to step on their heads as you climb haltingly to the top, becomes all the more alluring when you're trying to dig yourself out of a hole that you've been shoved into by the same people who made you dig it, when your bills pile up and your kids need to be fed, when your husband is in the hospital, when your parents need to be cared for. People made desperate by their circumstances will do some surprising things in order to try to escape those circumstances. Perhaps that's an explanation, but I would hope that folks don't make it their excuse. I certainly don't. 

Engaging in actions of solidarity with one another in the workplace need not be the bogeyman that the boss makes it out to be. By and large we’re already doing it: picking up shifts for the mom of two who wants a night off to see her eldest’s choir recital, washing that sink of dishes when the back of house is too slammed to clean up, protecting the hostess from the creep who comes in every Thursday to get shitfaced and flirt aggressively with her. We share in each others’ lives in a separate group chat from the one that the morning managers like to complain in; we attend each others’ industry nights and commiserate over a whiskey about last week’s bullshit. 

All of these actions and more are the building blocks for an ironclad solidarity, and if you’re brave enough, collectively organizing. These businesses can’t run without their workers, and the lies they’ve shoved down your throats that we’re all family here is just a slick way to tell you that they’re gonna keep throwing you under the bus the second they turn a profit. Imagine a world where whole entertainment districts across the country collectively organized and joined unions like Restaurant Workers United, and finally had a say in the running of their workplaces? It’s possible. It’s worth it. What have you got to lose? 

Mel Buer is a multimedia journalist who covers movements, labor and community for The Real News Network. She currently lives in Chicago.

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