Summer of 1986. It’s hot and humid already at 6am as I’m on my way to start my shift at the 24-hour Burger King on the Mass Turnpike near my house. I’m walking fast and sweating in my too-big polyester uniform, desperately hoping none of the kids from school happen to see me because both the walking and the uniform are sooooo embarrassing. So why don’t I just stuff the hideous telltale brown-and-orange suit in a bag and change when I get there?

Because when I got hired, someone gave me a tour of the employee locker rooms. Down a narrow concrete staircase to the basement. Past a chainlink-enclosed area where all the supplies are locked up under a dim bulb. To the women’s room right next door. “Watch out,” my tour guide said. “They drilled holes in the supply room wall so they can watch you change.”

I never go down there again. I don’t even change in the restaurant’s ladies room upstairs because who knows, maybe that’s not safe either. My cash register certainly isn’t; I get touched all day every day by my much older male co-workers. I joke to the other girls that I’m going to come in one day wearing a white trash bag over my uniform with the words “HANDS OFF” on front and back. But I never do. After all, it’s the one place in town that hires 14-year-olds.

The only thing I do is what I’m there to do: work my summer job so I can save the money for college and never have a job like this again.

It wasn’t that upsetting at the time. Everyone treated it like it was normal, so I thought it was too. To be honest, in a way it was even exciting, because I understood that that was how women got treated and I couldn’t wait to be a woman. Looking back, that’s what upsets me most.