Caterwauling

In honor of blogstalkers who are out there hiding in the bushes (*waves, with one finger*), I submit to you the following post. If they want to read, then fine, I’ll make it interesting!

I’m used to working with women. And I hate women, especially those in authority positions. Now, remember, I am a female with authority and always have been, but I’ve surprised my charges by being cool and not making their lives miserable — I don’t punish people for who they are, especially when they have aching ovaries every month that provide pain enough!

These days, I work with men. It was very important for me to enter a male-dominated environment this time around. I am the only chick on the immediate team, and one of three in the grander scheme of things. And, I adore it. I adore them.

You know why? Because I always bumped heads with women in charge of me. I’ve never had a pleasant experience with female supervisors or others in charge of something or other. It’s this unspoken competition — on their part and, reactively, on mine — to be Alpha Bitch. When I was fresh out of college and brand-new to this surreal place called an office, my supervisor and I used to go 10 rounds over whose ideas were better. Because hers sucked, from my view, and because I was too young to have anything constructive to contribute, from her view.

Fast-forward a few years later, and the situation is intensified — I worked with someone who just always had to be right. You could have made the exact same decision in a given situation that she would have, but she somehow managed to find fault with it because she wasn’t the one who got to make the call. She was also hard on the men on her team, but we women were the ones who really got pounded with frustration and anxiety attacks. Luckily, I ended up getting out of harm’s way and reported to the coolest guy on the team, who acted as the “dry-weave” shield between me and Psycho Bitch. I love him, and we are still buddies to this day. 🙂

Without pointing fingers (figure out WHICH finger!), I can easily say that women in the rank-and-file have a tough time in the workplace, in general. I cannot name ONE job (save for this one) where I was not harassed or ridiculed for the length of my skirts or the fit of a shirt or how much cleavage they thought was too much or, in the case of the last crown jewel, for my hairstyle. Yes, I had to change my hair to please THEM. My hair, of course, being a sore subject for me my whole life, but that’s a subject for another day. But, did any of these armchair judges ever cough up extra wages or a bonus to PAY for having to accommodate their requests? Hardly.

The thing is, when you start a job, you’re nervous because you don’t know how the system works, nor do you know who is eyeballing you in search of reasons to talk about you (or give you a talking-to). You don’t know the best driving routes or parking places or where to go for lunch. And, certainly, you don’t have any fluency in the job that you so eagerly wanted because you just haven’t had time to get into your groove yet. But when you work with women, those issues are the least of your worries.

Luckily, for me, where I am now, I am starting to get comfortable with the environment and the tasks, and I know enough about it to figure out more things when they arise. I still have a long ways to go, but when you feel good about yourself and know that others are happy to have you there, well, that’s the best feeling ever. That’s all I have to worry about, and I know that everything that seems so confounding right now won’t always be. And, I am pleased to not have the pressure anymore of having people looking down their noses at me — nobody’s scrutinizing my outfits, nobody’s commenting on whatever shade of eye shadow I wear, nobody’s said word one about my hair (hell, nobody even noticed that I dyed it! If I were dating any of these men, I might have been offended, but if they don’t notice such an obvious detail, hell, I’m happy!). And, I love it. Love it to death, I say.

What I will say, though, is that if I were working for a woman, then I’d have an extra layer of nervousness. A thick layer — one that would require constant primping to keep in check, at least on the surface. In the traditional workplace, presentation is often more important than substance. You are required to “look the part” and always be smiling and always be pleasing in case a guest should drop by. Work is secondary.

I’ve never subscribed to that theory. I bust my ass and do so quite happily. If my hair looks like hell (and I’ve given up and tied it in a knot) or if my skirt is three inches above my knees instead of one inch above it, well guess what — it doesn’t compromise my abilities one stinking bit. If I speak in a manner that is, um, creative or stand firm on my beliefs and opinions to the point of having to defend myself when called to do so, then I expect people to get over their sense of decorum of what they think is “ladylike” and treat me like the equal I am. My bullshit tolerance is at zero — maybe at two on a nice day. 🙂

From the beginning, I liked Cool Boss and therefore knew I would like Dream Job. There is a certain realness in the supervisory relationship that I haven’t experienced since the last time I was supervised by a male. And, maybe my thoughts set the feminist movement back a few steps, but until women with power choose to stop strangling their sense of humanity with their pantyhose, I will continue to keep it so that most of my colleagues as well as my friends are of the gender that can’t tell you what color the suit was that I wore yesterday. 😉

On iTunes: Sarah McLachlan, “Perfect Girl”

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2005 at 6:47 AM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.