< Back to Oral History project: Waco Subminimum Wage Workers

ORAL HISTORY

Ryan Marquez

Born in Waco, Texas, Ryan Marquez began working full time as a restaurant hostess and server at Don Carlos in Waco when she was sixteen. What began as a means to earn teenage spending money became a career for Marquez after graduating high school, and she gained full-time employment at George’s, a Waco institution where she’d heard “the girls” made good tips. 

But Marquez never felt she fit the feminine ideal expected of her at George’s, where the serving  staff is almost entirely young, female, and outfitted in short-shorts and tank tops. She regularly encountered misogyny and harassment from both her clientele and her managers, which she felt diminished her tip take-home, and she struggled with the late-night party culture that is often a mainstay in restaurant work. Certain that serving tables was neither financially nor emotionally tenable long-term, Marquez worked back-to-back double shifts while earning a bachelor’s degree in general psychology at Tarleton University and a master’s in special education at Ball State University. She is now a behavioral analyst at Focus Behavioral in Austin, Texas, where she  manages a team of case workers teaching adaptive living skills to people with autism.