Creating Equitable Spaces in the restaurant industry

David:

Welcome to Disarming Data. We're looking at data and privacy from the perspective of two generations.

Paige:

I'm Paige Biderman. I'm a millennial who grew up in the tech generation.

David:

I'm David Biderman, I'm the boomer. I don't know anything about tech. I usually lose my cell phone rather than use my cell phone. I'm a tech novice. And in this podcast, we'll be having conversations with cyber hackers, privacy experts, and guardians of security who can explain some of this to me.

Paige:

And dad, you forgot about whistleblowers, and other people who are interesting and influential to us.

David:

And Paige, you forgot to say thank you for listening to the show.

Paige:

Thanks for listening.

David:

So welcome to Disarming Data. This is where me and my co-host, Paige Biderman look, at the importance of data, social media, communication from two generational perspectives. I'm the older inept boomer. Oh, Lisa, I don't even know how to use Instagram, so I'll have to talk about that, but anyway.

Paige:

And I'm Paige. I'm a student. I love Instagram and TikTok, and all things social media. Today we are extremely fortunate to have our guests, Lisa Lind Dunbar, who spent 14 years working in Danish restaurants. She worked in some of the world's top rated restaurants with Michelin stars, primarily in Copenhagen. On her Instagram, earlier this year, she began posting about the darker side of these top rated restaurants. She introduced an article on the Financial Times, fine dining faces its dark truths in Copenhagen. And also an article called Bon Appétit. I'm trying to figure out what we can do better for the restaurant industry.

David:

And in terms of an introduction, I thought a great introduction was that article in the Financial Times, Lisa, which said, in fine dining restaurants, two stories are being told. The first is in the dining room, a perfectly choreographed show of luxury and excellence, a performance so fine-tuned down to the decor, the staff uniforms, the music, the crockery, that in some ways the food itself is the least important element. And then there is the story that you as a diner are never supposed to hear, the story of what happens on the other side of the kitchen wall. In Copenhagen at last, someone who's trying to make us listen. And that was the introduction to you. So, welcome, Lisa.

Lisa:

Thank you so much for having me, and also recognizing that this is an important conversation to have. So thank you for that.

Paige:

So we always start out with asking the background of our guests, where you were born, where you grew up, and why did you choose to start working in the restaurant industry?

Lisa:

I'm born in Denmark, my mom's Danish, my dad's from Scotland. So that's also why you might hear there's a twang in my accent.

David:

Oh yeah, I do hear it.

Lisa:

So I was born in one place in Denmark, and then my family moved a lot. So primarily I grew up on the West Coast of Denmark, so on the exact other side of the country than Copenhagen. And as someone who was starting out working, I started working around the age of 14, wanting to earn my own money, and there's also a culture of that. At some point, that's what your friends do. And so you become socialized in that sense that you start picking up work.

And a lot of people I've spoken to, especially in the media, journalists, have approached me in a way where they presumed that I began working in the restaurant industry because I was passionate about food and wine and dining. And while that's not entirely untrue, the fact is that at the age of 14 and also onwards, it's jobs that are very available. You start out and you might receive a bit of training, but there isn't much expectation to having had training before. It's the field, it's an industry where, yes, there are a lot of people who are well educated either by attending a type of educational institution or also that actively, but there are so many people who are working in industry who begin with little to no experience, and I was one of them. And I think that's also why so many people who might look for a student job or something on the side, or even a full-time job maybe without a too long recruitment process, are easily recruited into the restaurant industry. And so that was also the case for me.

So I began at the age of 14 as a dishwasher in quite a fine dining restaurant in the small rural area I grew up in, which was considered a travel destination for people who wanted to enjoy of a more fine dining experience. And today, they've also been recognized with two Michelin stars, but they weren't back then because Michelin only concentrated on Copenhagen on capitals of the countries. That was my steps, walking into the hospitality restaurant industry where I would then go on to stay for 14, 15, 16 years. Yeah.

David:

And maybe you could tell us, our guest, a little bit about the restaurant industry in Copenhagen, because I think a lot of may not know, but I was searching the world's best restaurants and the number one rated restaurant was in Copenhagen. But apparently 20 years ago there was no restaurants. I'd just be curious as to what the history is and how that all happened.

Lisa:

It's very interesting and it's also a very important thing to have to contextualize what's actually happening in the industry in Copenhagen, in Denmark, because it has grown so massively, since 2009, it's doubled, right? It's grown to double size. Today we have about 17,000 establishments, that's hotels and wine bars, restaurants, bistros, all that in one part. And a lot of what got that kicked off, the growth, the seed that was planted, was planted a lot thanks in quotation marks, to the New Nordic Manifesto. And this is something that was created by Claus Meyer, his name is less internationally known unless you're in the industry, but he's a household name in Denmark. He was also a founding member of Noma. And then of course René Redzepi was also a very important figure in that.

And so they founded this New Nordic Manifesto that was very dogmatic about sourcing local produce and putting the produce that was local to Scandinavia, local to Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and the Nordic countries, on the menu. So moving away from what has been otherwise very dominating, it is still a French cuisine, Italian cuisine, French cuisine, is still known as the golden boy, the top of everything. But slowly and with a lot of persistence, and also a lot of recognition among others from 50 Best from Michelin, this industry and this interest in what was going on in Denmark centralizing Copenhagen grew.

And so Noma was founded in 2010/11, I forget, but around there. And that's the seed that was planted, which caused interest internationally. And so a lot of gastro tourists, is what we call it, travel to Copenhagen, but it is. Visit Denmark, which is, what would you say? Organization that works with the tourist industry. They've come out with a report that says 33% of people who travel to Copenhagen travel because of the dining industry. So they make out a third of the revenue of our tourists industry, right? So it's a very big number that's about 48 billion Danish kroner a year.

David:

That's enormous.

Lisa:

Right. So in the past 10 years plus, there's been this extreme interest. And with that, today, I think it's about, we've got 38 Michelin stars and it just keeps growing. Noma used to be number one, but now 50 Best introduced this new rule three years ago that if you've been at number one, you can't be number one again. So that's the only reason why they're not number one again. But now it's Geranium, which is also located in Copenhagen.

So the credit for this growth and this interest and this new Nordic dogmatic way of approaching foods is very much something that needs to be credited to Noma and the people behind that. Which is also why not everything that I'm talking about happens only at Noma, not at all, it happens in many restaurants, but Noma is an essential figure in this. And also the way that they've done things have created presidents for how so many other restaurants do things and not just in Copenhagen, not just in Denmark, but widely internationally, specifically in the West.

Paige:

So could you talk about what kind of events led up to you deciding to make this Instagram post that you eventually made?

Lisa:

In 2019, I took a writing course with Atlas Magazine, which would later end up publishing my essay. So that was three years prior to the actual publication date. And so during this course that I attended, I put forward different ideas that I felt the need to talk about, things that I would only rare occasions, speak to friends that I trusted to confide in. And I could see in the context of other people that were not in the restaurant industry talking about, at that writing course, my experiences and the realities of the working conditions. The shock that I encountered and was met with, and just having that mirroring, something that was so normal for me, but that I felt somewhat harmed by, it just became very obvious to me that, okay, the surrounding society, the norms of what I've worked in, is just so different. And I was gradually coming towards that, finding the vocabulary, shifting my perception, but I was still working in the industry then three years back.

And I was afraid. It came down to that. And that may sound so banal, but that was a very real fear because you have some of these big players who are so well connected to the restaurants. I also just spoke about before, and again, because it's not always about your prior education, but it's about social merit and your network. That's how you often land a job. And at that point, I didn't have much intention of not working in the industry, I still wanted that. I was still dependent on my income there and my social network there. And so I was frozen by that fear.

And I wasn't pressured at all, but Atlas and the editors who were there said, "Well, we're here. We still think this is a very important conversation story to be told." But it took me three years to find a plan B for my life. I started studying, I went to university and began visualizing a different future for myself. And that independence and that privilege was eventually what gave me the courage, or at least the incentive to finally press the button, even though I was still scared, but at least my income and my livelihood wasn't dependent on working in the industry.

And my partner was also someone who was pretty high up, well connected in the industry. And so it wasn't just about jeopardizing my own position, it was also about jeopardizing the people around me, they're standing in the industry. And fast forward to do the beginning of this year, 2022, and I posted, it was spontaneous. I was sitting in my kitchen, it was quite late, not a specific evening. I was on my way to have a shower half dressed with a towel, and I was sitting reading something and I was provoked. It was two foodies, so-called foodies, who had posted something from their dining experience in a Michelin star restaurant in Copenhagen, which was, I found it very harmful and provoking and upsetting. There was a champagne that had been mounted a type of gun, and they were foaming the champagne into their mouths and saying, "Get on your knees whore." And it just woke something in me. It was just a resemblance of all of the sexism, the violence, the couldn't care less attention to the people who work there. And that loose socializing of these really harmful values, it just sparked something in me so I posted a question."I would like to take a closer look at the working conditions in the restaurant industry. Would anybody else be up for that?" That was the kickoff. And then a couple of days later I contacted Atlas Magazine again and I said, this gives me the chills. I said, "I'm ready, I want to do this." So I wrote my essay in two days, and it was published in January, 20th of January. So that was just 12 days after I posted that, and then now I'm here. Yeah.

Paige:

For me, I found your essay really inspirational and interesting, and I personally have a really good friend who worked as a chef in Los Angeles and had experienced a lot of issues and discrimination because he's Black. And so I knew already that there were definitely issues in kitchen culture essentially. And I was wondering if you were surprised by the amount of people that direct messaged you after you posted that, if it was more than you thought it would be.

Lisa:

Completely. I posed that question hoping that it might just be a couple of days, or even just 24 hours of stories or just putting a flag up or something, I don't know, sort of scratching the itch of wanting to say something back. And at that point I had about around a thousand followers, so that's still a lot, but it's not the same as where I am now, which is well close to six and a half. And so at first, not a lot happened, but then as more stories, one story came in and I posted that and two others would come in. And so it just grew exponentially, and turned into something that, I mean, was not within my hope. I had never imagined that it would grow to the size that it did and the size that it's still growing in. And so I was surprised. I was overwhelmed.

I mean, I ended up getting around, I mean I have lost count, but between 800 and 1,000 unique stories, and it's still growing. I've stopped counting because it's just outside of my capacity. Then the media interest began, and of course that also affected it more and more. And also in January, I was asked to go on national television live in well, one of the most recognized political debate programs. And that was a really big deal. I gave them the opportunity to speak to me first, and that also just escalated the whole thing. And so I ended up putting myself very much out there, something I had not imagined with that single question posed on my story a random evening in the beginning of January.

So I feel proud. Mostly proud of all the people who've had confidence in me to share what they've shared, because a lot of it is really hard even to write. It's re-traumatizing for a lot of people. But I think this sense of solidarity and knowing that other people are in the same position speaking about something that this culture of silence don't want us to speak about. We're so used to this glory story of Denmark as a tourist attraction for its dining scene. Our restaurant industry is our best business card outwards to the rest of the world. And so to learn that there is wage theft as a regular thing, and discrimination in different shapes, and exploitation at a degree that is almost unfathomable, that's due to all the people who wrote me, who took the time to write me. So I'm still overwhelmed and surprised at that.

Paige:

I had no idea. And I don't think a lot of people do know about this kind of unpaid labor that goes on in the restaurants and how it works and also how common it is.

Lisa:

There is a term which is called [foreign language 00:20:02], it's French, so it sounds romantic and nice, [foreign language 00:20:10]. So it sounds harmless. What it entails is free labor. So the way that it's sold as something that's harmless is that it's an opportunity for someone working for free, but gaining some experience, or gaining a new entry on their resume. And this is a system that is, I'm almost going to say extremely normalized, especially in these fine dining restaurants, because they see themselves as having so much social capital and they're passing that on by giving you a time of day, and you in exchange, give your labor.

The reality though that has come in, and that's also been documented, for instance by Financial Times, but also by Danish newspapers and also by the testimonies that I've collected, is that this exchange is in fact only one sided, because so many of these so-called [foreign language 00:21:17], which I call exploited workers, will have one task that they'll do for three months, standing up 12 hours, five days a week, in an environment where you're not allowed to speak, you're not allowed to laugh, you're only allowed to go to the restroom if you're bursting almost, and you have to do the same monotone task. Basically it's a production line as we'd see in any factory. One person does one thing, the other person does the next, and so forth. So there's this little factory going on way behind the dining room that is accessible to view.

And that's also a deception trickery that's going on now in a lot of cuisines. The kitchen is visible from the dining room, right? So it's sending off a message of transparency, but the fact is so many are hidden out of sight, and it's especially these people who are just doing monotone tasks.

In 2013, it was also documented by a Danish newspaper that two thirds of Noma's workforce were not paid. And so that's a massive amount of salary that isn't paid out. And unpaid salary is also unpaid taxes to the Danish state. And so this is not just Noma, not just Copenhagen restaurants, this is something that stems from the entire industry of fine dining. We have El Bulli, which is closed today, but that's also somewhere that René Redzepi, the head chef and owner of Noma used to work. And we have so many other chefs that it's just normalized, it's like that's the way it is.

It's defended, this is also something Noma's CEO came out and said that Noma will never be a normal workplace, and if you are ambitious, this is how it is, i.e, they're putting it on people saying, "If you don't want to work for free, you're not ambitious." And it also makes it hard to negotiate any type of pay or demand to be treated in a specific way, to have wage increase, et cetera, because there's so many people within the culture that accept to not be paid. So you have very little leverage. If you don't just accept how it is, well, there's a line of people just applying to work for free because that is how the industry sadly works. So this is very normalized, and also hidden behind messages that basically are lies. And this term, [foreign language 00:24:01], that sounds very nice.

David:

And the tasks you're talking about, that's what gives you those very elegant looking dishes with everything finally crafted. I mean, you give an example of something that would be done over and over and over and over again.

Lisa:

One person I spoke to everyday for three months would make what's called fruit leather. So it's a type of fruit puree that's dry, and then cut out. So that's what they would do. So they would have that fruit puree, spread it out across a stencil that was meant to look like a beetle. That's what they would do every day, that monotone task, spreading it out over the stencil and next, and next, and next, standing up. And this person also showed me their diary. They wrote a diary from the time that they were there, and what they write is that their legs hurt, and they are limited to their use of using the restroom. And what they also write is that, and it's so touching they write, "I need to be faster. I need to be faster." That's like a recurring entry that they put in the diary.

This is also the thing in these 12 hours, it's not a fair pace, at something that is calm or comfortable, it's constantly producing this achievement ideology of you need to be fast. And that's also why you're not allowed to talk, you're not allowed to laugh, you're not allowed to be distracted. You have to do this fruit paste, fruit licorice thing.

I mean, other examples would also just be to pick one herb. That's also something that the Financial Times documented, speaking to people where it was just the same monotone task of picking the same small herbs, or somebody picking out the small pits and strawberries all day, because this is the food design that's come from above, and so that has to be done by people who they just expect to switch off their brain or opinion or creative input or anything. They're just hands and legs and workers, right? Which are being exploited. And their labor aren't reflected in the asking price of the menu that's being sold, so that also makes their labor totally invisible.

David:

I see. Oh yeah, right.

Paige:

Do you think it would be difficult for a lot of the restaurants to make a profit if it wasn't for free labor that they're getting?

Lisa:

Well, that's their excuse, that there are slim margins. I believe at some point, someone cited or Redzepi for saying, "Noma isn't about profit, it's about the dining experience." And the thing is that to me says, well, that somebody has such a grandiose understanding of their own lack of limits that they think they can just cancel capitalism on their property. You can't run a business and say that it's not about profit because well, who's then paying this price? And that's the workers who aren't being paid. And they have a choice. They need to put up the price for the menu that they're selling. And this also comes down to just general luxury consumption. Having that dinner, having so many people's hours of work for so much preparation, it has to be more expensive.

If they can't afford to pay the people who are manufacturing the product they're selling, reality check, you're already running a failed business. You see? So they will say, "Guests won't pay the asking price if we have to put the prices up." But that sounds like these restaurants think that they are serving everyone. The fact is, they're serving the upper-class elite. And so what they're saying is that the rich won't be happy with paying more, we need to keep the rich, rich in a sense. These restaurants are for the elite. They're upper-class restaurants. So them saying like, oh, but then they will be excluding a lot of people. They're already excluding a lot of people. Wake up and smell the rotting roses. Your main audience are very wealthy, very rich people. They can afford to pay for this. And if not, close your business. Who are they entitled to fucking be in business? Sorry.

David:

That's okay.

Lisa:

It makes me so angry.

Paige:

No, I understand. And I was just wondering if you could touch on, because it frustrates me having to explain to people how certain cultures allow misogyny and sexual assault to just continue and continue, and them just not getting it. They're like, "No, it's a certain person." They don't understand that it's a much bigger and broader issue. And I was wondering if you could just talk about the misogyny and also, I mean sexual assault issues that go on in the restaurant industry.

Lisa:

Well, this is also something that I've experienced on my own body, the constant sexualization from coworkers, management, but also from guests. But this is something that can be translated from wider society into different workplaces, and the restaurant industry included. A lot of care work happens in restaurants. It's very emotionally taxing. And there is a lot of care in so many different balls that you're juggling all at once.

And I think specifically for women or anyone really who are understood as carrying this caring role, there is a conflation between the professional service that is being given, and a personal care that some guests or that guests are receiving. This is my experience, just a part of it. This leads to a confusion from guests, now I'm speaking about guests specifically, who confuse my work tasks and my professionalism, as a private contact, as something that's personal.

I've had multiple experiences of men, older men, contacting me on my private social media channels, writing in a mindset of us having some sort of relationship, which is very disturbing. So that's a part of often not being given the consent, which is not just something that has to do with a situation of sexual intimacy, but also has to do with being in the workplace as a situation where this consent is taken away from you. Where people, especially who I've experienced it with, take my private person into their property in a sense.

In a more sort of unspecific way, my experience is that all of this harm, which also causes people who are not women, a lot of damage, is this iron, sick, macho culture that exists in the restaurant industry. This deeply practiced patriarchal way of going about things. We also have this hierarchy. There's a head chef, a sous chef, and then you have all these chef de partie, and it's very militant. You get an order. You say, "Yes, chef." You don't say anything. You don't say, yeah, yeah, or okay. You say "Yes chef." That's what you respond.

And this is something that goes hand in hand with the family value frame that is often again and again and again, also employed in the restaurant industry that we're a family here. It feels very mob-like. You don't speak to the outside, you're not in a union because they don't understand they're not a part of us, we solve it internally with the patriarch at the end of the table. So there's a lot of patriarchal, oppression and go going on that harms a lot of people in different ways. But my experience as a woman working in the industry was I felt that gender was a part of everything that I did, a part of my everyday life all the time. I was reminded all the time that I was a woman before I was anything else.

So many occasions of being in charge of the wine list. And guests would rather speak to my male colleagues, just look over me or look through me as if I was invisible. I think this is a problem that's not spoken enough about. I think there's a lot of people working in the industries, especially on management level, who generally won't accept any criticism of their people practices, and especially won't accept a perception of them as misogynist or as sexist, even though is so central in their way of managing staff. And they won't accept that they exist outside of their understanding of themselves.

But in the media in Denmark, a lot of people have wanted me to focus on sexism only, which has been something I've worked very hard at not isolating the issue too. And the reason for that is that the testimonies that I received, it just wouldn't be representative if that was, so to say, my only focus because this harm that's done, I think sometimes it can be good to shift the perception of instead of who it happens to, to who is it that's doing it. Of course, it's important to talk about what's what happens to the individual, especially also intersectionality, because just because you're a woman doesn't mean that you experience everything as all other women. If you're Black, that's different from being White. If you're disabled instead of being able and so forth. But it all comes down to this, for me, this is my analysis of it, it all comes down to this very, very intense natural culture where harm is normalized and where it's about a resilience aesthetic that you just need to be able to take this pain, or else you're in the wrong place.

David:

I got it. This is silly, but I got to go back to your first comment about the repetitive task. And I'm not suggesting this is anything similar, but when I was 15 in Virginia where I grew up, you had to be 16 to work. But I [inaudible 00:35:43], I said I was 15, I worked at a bakery and the bakery catered to airlines. They made these tarts. And my job was to make these tarts all day long, and it would be lining up pre-baked tart in aluminum, and squeezing custard in them and then putting stuff on top. But literally doing that so much I would go home and I would dream about that. Because you do something so constant, I couldn't stop it. I'd be lying awake at night and or even asleep at night and thinking about it. So not suggesting it's the same, but I are hearing about that resonated with that experience.

Lisa:

That's something I've experienced myself as well a lot. It took, and that's also something I've picked up a question, as a theme in the past 9, 10 months. Work stress dreams where you're not just finished working as you leave your physical workplace, but it continues, the pressure, you take that with you, you internalize it. And there's so much of this stress that is so real and so in internalized that it just doesn't leave one. I recognize myself as living with complex PTSD due to different things in my life, different [inaudible 00:37:20] episodes over real long time that I've experienced. But a lot of it also comes, a lot of it is still triggered by what I experienced in the restaurant industry.

So when I have a very busy day or too many things, my body just remembers that trauma as if it was here again, those endless days, endless weeks of working 60, 70 hours a week and just never being sufficient, years and years and years of never being sufficient. You could never, ever do enough. And that's impossible to not internalize. It's almost better to stay longer at work because then you might catch up on the things that you feel insufficient from not doing, than not working. Because when you're off work, when that rarely happens, if you're off work, for me, that would be more stressful, because I wasn't able to actually execute all of the things that I knew was wrongly expected of me. So it was painful, but it was less painful to be working to try and catch up to this thing that I would never really catch up with.

So these work stress dreams, I develop anxiety. I've only just come into a place where I've mended my relationship with my sleep. I've had very intense episodes over years of insomnia because of all of this anxiety, because I was afraid to go to sleep because I couldn't go to sleep. I empathize with that.

David:

Yeah, thought faith line is a small degree, but it brought back that memory of doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Paige:

Do you feel that the pandemic really forced restaurants to start shifting their mindset? Because I felt like, and not just in the restaurant industry and a lot of industries, a lot of workers were going, enough's enough and we're done being treated this way.

Lisa:

Definitely think, as with a lot of things in the way that our world is set up, that the pandemic was an eye opener for a lot of people. But it started with the workers, people receiving wages because this family value set, fine and well, you hadn't maybe experienced that much, your work was stable, you came in nine to one in the morning, but then when the pandemic hit suddenly everyone was brutally faced with the precarity of their employment. Suddenly they closely read those contracts that they hadn't read before they signed them. That's also an offense. If you want to read your contract before signing it in the industry, it's almost a bad start. Why would you expect anything to be wrong with this contract? And so signing it, looking at it closely, suddenly they saw that they were employed under such precarious circumstances, which meant that they were quitted without any benefits from one day to the other.

And with a lot of international people working in this space of Copenhagen, because it attracts so much international attention, restaurants who had for ages referred to their staff as family, just discarded them, just threw them out, just fired them without any type of security net. And so many people were stuck. They had rented apartments rooted down in Copenhagen, suddenly they had no pay. And they couldn't go back. They couldn't really travel. And so people were stuck. And that was really something, I think, that sparked an overdue conversation about, "Hey, did you know that this was something that could happen? What does your..." Just of essential things like that, talking about our work life, because that has been something that we've been discouraged to do.

An example was when I was working in a specific restaurant, we were told by the restaurateur, the boss of the place that employees among them were not allowed to talk about their wages. So that's a way of salary secrecy. And you could also extend that to what had happened before the pandemic hit of work condition secrecy. Nobody really were encouraged to talk about it. So in the context of the pandemic, a lot of anger and that's sometimes such a great driving factor of things. Anger of coming together, have had enough, and not longer be being employed somewhere and feeling the independence of speaking up. So that was definitely just, in my closest of range in Copenhagen, that was something that fundamentally changed a lot of workers understanding of the reality they were working in.

Paige:

I find it really interesting, what the pandemic did to certain environments. Do you think that restaurants are now starting to make changes or no, not as much as you would like to see?

Lisa:

I think they're working harder to try to make it seem as if they're making changes like social washing almost. Using social media to post different things about their values. And not that I'm directly in opposition to that, it's more, I don't want that if it's not paired with actual actions. And so much of it isn't.

Just as very present examples. Couple days before the Financial Times article came out, which of course Noma had been notified because they had the right to, what's it called? Retribution. They had the right to comment on the allegations put forward. So that was a couple of days before the article came out. They said, suddenly on social media, from next year we're going to pay the [foreign language 00:43:56]. And so a couple days later the article came out saying they hadn't, And so it's trying to divert the attention, so that they could say, "Well, we've already changed it."

And then a couple days before another critical article came out in Denmark, which was documenting how Noma affiliated restaurants were systematically deducting large amounts of pay from non-EU workers pays. They came out and said, We're no longer doing this. In my opinion, there isn't an internal conversation going on about how do we prioritize the wellbeing of our workers? How do we prioritize not exploiting our workers? This is my take, more driven by public appearance and avoiding criticism when they're caught out. And so I don't find that genuine. And that just doesn't deserve my trust in that.

So things we've already spoken about, restaurateur are so stuck on the financial of structure of the industry, that slim margins are being said so often and that diners won't pay if they put the prices up, and that's just keeping them at bay. But in a sense, it's contractual because they haven't tried it, they haven't done it. They're just saying this is something that we expect would happen, but if the restaurant aren't paying, and the diners aren't paying, who's paying? And that's the workers. So there's so far to go. I see so little accountability, so much attention has been given, and so much conversation has been attempted. My experience, and this is fact as well as my experience. So many of these restaurants that are being called out and trying to be held to accountability, they're just silencing it away. They're saying barely nothing.

So that shows me very little willingness to cooperate and to take accountability and say, we are learning something new. We're working on this, or we will change this, or actually say that we shouldn't have done this. Accountability is just very, very difficult for these very proud restaurants who are considered pioneers and untouchable. These are geniuses. Artists will be artists like boys will be boys. Don't touch their recipe because as a culture, we're benefiting from them. Redzepi and Claus Meyer have even been knighted in Denmark. They have knighthood. Yeah. So I have hope, but I think there's far to go still. There is far to go there. It's not just something I think, it's not an opinion. There is far to go.

David:

I saw on your LinkedIn still a Sommelier, and are you still working in the industry or?

Lisa:

No, I haven't updated in my LinkedIn for a while. I'm afraid of LinkedIn because I can see people who check out my profile, I don't know. No, I've considered it a couple of times, but most sadly, because I'm not very popular in different crowds in the industry, my experiences that those people who don't like what I'm doing are, maybe this is irrational and a bit paranoid, but I actually don't think so. They confuse my private life and the necessity of me earning money to having to pay for my just living. And so I've made a decision to keep myself safe, also just from anxiety and paranoia to not work in the industry at all. People confuse my political occupation and advocacy for what I do in my private life

David:

As an experience, in terms of your ability to enjoy a dining out or a good wine or something like that, has that changed then?

Lisa:

Totally. I have a regular place that I go to where I've had so much support from staff. It's a place that I also used to work in, and so I feel safe there that. That's a safe space, but that's also the only safe space where I feel like I'm not going out in a limb risking something, but where I could actually also go on my own.

But since January, I've only been out for dinner a couple of times. And I went to a wine bar at some point in March or April, and someone came up to me, I was on my own, I was off duty, so to say, and someone came up to me and said that they'd read what I posted, and first they complimented me. But then the conversation, on their terms, went into saying that that hadn't been their experience and they thought that I was too negative. And without me actually again, consenting to that conversation. All I could say was, "Well, I'm glad that didn't happen to you, but then maybe this isn't about you. Just because that wasn't something that happened to you, why is it you think that this conversation isn't worthy of a time of day?" And they just wouldn't accept this. And they wouldn't say where they worked. But I had a feeling it was one of the big places. And so that was uncomfortable. I felt targeted, and I felt uncomfortable, and I felt again that my private life was confused for always being on duty, or it being about my opinion only. So maybe in time it'll change, but as it is now, I'm okay with it.

I also think that there is a big dining problem in general, that it's maybe something that's over consumed. I think a lot about the way that we consume food, how food has been commodified and how... Not to sound annoyingly positive, but I'm also happy to have dinners with friends at home more and enjoy that type of intimate cooking in a different sense that isn't what I've been a part of for so many years.

David:

What do you see in the future? If someone was to say, "Lisa, what are you going to be doing in five years, 10 years?" Where do you see yourself?

Lisa:

My friends would say that even before I began this public advocacy for restaurant workers and sort of criticizing the work culture that I've always been, or at least throughout a lot of my life, been paying attention to injustices. And because I've experienced most of my own in my work life, it's been an interest of mine even before this. Not as outspoken because I feared it, but between friends. And so what I see for myself, at least that's what I also feel committed to now, is I want to continue with this. I'm in it for the long run. I'm pacing myself. This isn't going to happen overnight. I'm still learning. I'm devoted to continue understanding all of these systems and structures and how they work and how we can do better. My hope is to get it to a parliamentary level. That's also why I'm trying to speak to [inaudible 00:52:15], which is the Danish party in government about the Danish labor market model and its inadequacies.

So I hope to be able to continue as a work culture critic. I'm trying to take breaks because it's impossible to go at a hundred every day. And that would also be against my agenda. So I'm pacing myself and have so many ideas and there's so many things that still need to happen. That would also be great if I could have some type of group meetings of people giving answers to workers who have questions or who are kept in not knowing, because that's also an anti-union strategy that a lot of employers employ. So yes, I see this is something that on pristine future will be a big continuous part of my life. This is so important and I think this conversation, even though we're having it now and I've had it with different people over the past nine month, this conversation needs so much more attention. And so there's a long way to go.

Paige:

Well, I mean, I just want to say, I really appreciate you coming on, and it's very difficult to make some of these decisions and it takes a lot of courage, and I just really appreciate what you've been doing, honestly.

Lisa:

Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate that recognition. Not just personally, but also the cause that I'm committed to and all the people that it affects.

David:

Thank you so much, Lisa. It's really great that you could spend an hour with us and well, we thank you for taking the time and it's been a great conversation.

Paige:

Yeah, thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to Disarming Data, and thank you to Eric Montgomery for producing this podcast. To support the podcast, please rate, review and follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you'd like to learn more about the current state of data security, head on over to our website, disarmingdata.com.