A Simple Recipe Against Harassment
Plus offices turning into shelters at night
Dear Solution-aries,
To finance my journalism studies in my early twenties, I worked as a server in a café in Munich. I lasted exactly two weeks.
The job itself was fine. But the customers weren’t. Every shift seemed to come with a side order of creepy comments, lingering stares, and the constant calculation of how to smile politely while avoiding another uncomfortable interaction with a male customer.
I know that experience is far from unique. The restaurant industry has long struggled with harassment from customers, co-workers and managers alike. Given that roughly two-thirds of Americans have worked in restaurants at some point, this isn’t a niche workplace problem—it’s something millions of people have experienced. And while many businesses now offer harassment or bystander training, the evidence suggests those programs often fade without deeper organizational changes.
So I was genuinely surprised to come across a solution that’s remarkably simple.
At her Oakland restaurant, Homeroom, chef and owner Erin Wade worked with her female staff to create a three-color system for responding to customer harassment. Yellow means a creepy vibe or lingering looks. Orange covers inappropriate comments or sexual undertones. Red refers to explicit sexual remarks, unwanted touching, or repeated behavior after someone has been told to stop.
If a server says, “I have a yellow at table three,” management responds immediately, no questions asked. A yellow might mean switching tables. An orange means another staff member immediately takes over. A red gets the customer shown the door.
The result? Since introducing the system more than a decade ago, Homeroom has virtually eliminated the most serious forms of customer harassment. Wade believes the system works because it shifts the power dynamic instantly. Employees don’t have to debate whether something was “bad enough.” Managers don’t interrogate them. Everyone knows exactly what happens next.
Maybe her approach has to do with the fact that Wade isn’t your typical restaurant owner: She’s a lawyer by training and a feminist at heart. I first interviewed Wade years ago, and I was delighted to learn that her idea has since spread to restaurants across the U.S. and beyond.
👉 Read how it works and why other customer-oriented businesses can adopt it:
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/yellow-means-creepy-the-color-coded-anti-harassment-system-used-by-restaurant-workers/
One more story about how businesses can make a huge difference: What if empty office buildings could help solve another urgent problem: homelessness?
For several years, when Pierre-Yves Loaëc left his office in Nantes in the evenings, he passed a woman sleeping rough in the parking lot near the marketing agency he runs. The contrast nagged at him. Outside, she huddled near a parking garage vent for warmth during the winter. “My office had heat, a kitchen, sofas, a shower, toilets, but was sitting empty all night,” he recalls.
Loaëc became interested in a broader question: Why were so many offices sitting empty every night while thousands of people lacked a safe place to sleep? The answer became Bureaux du Coeur (“Offices of the Heart”), a nonprofit that turns unused office space into temporary overnight accommodation for people experiencing homelessness.
Today, the initiative works with 400 companies in 40 cities across France, and beyond, in Lisbon, Barcelona and Brussels. Since its founding in 2019, Bureaux du Coeur has helped more than 1,000 people and provided roughly 160,000 nights of shelter. Its ambition is even larger: to expand across Europe as cities grapple with two parallel crises — a persistent rise in homelessness and a glut of underused office space following the shift to remote and hybrid work.
Bureaux de Coeur’s solution remains remarkably simple: When employees go home, offices become homes.
👉 Could this be a solution in your city? Read the full story here:
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/offices-homeless-accommodation/
Do you have a story or an experience you want to share about a business owner who made a huge difference?
Let me know in the comments or send me a note.
Cheerfully,
Michaela