Put in her place

I'm tired of being told, in ways obvious and subtle, by the men around me that I'm not doing things right.  That I'm not good enough.  Not strong enough. Not talented enough. Not knowledgeable enough.  Not enough.  Lesser.

This week was difficult at work.  I'm so tired of the dysfunction, and I was letting it get to me.  I've been working on a project which has allowed me to block out my coworkers for the most part.  It's been nice.  But it's given me a lot of time to think, which can be a dangerous thing.

I looked around the shop and examined each male there.

Jim has his own shop within the shop, essentially.  I was looking at his space and it's probably 1/4 of the whole shop.  He is a curmudgeon, and no one really wants to interact with him, which includes walking through "his" area.  Mike, the owner, thinks Jim walks on water, so he gets tons of respect, and gets away with being a dick.  Dane, the manager, hates Jim, and the feeling is mutual, so there's no control on Jim from that corner.  Jim has his situation set up to work perfectly for Jim.  He's got space and controls who interacts with him.

Mark has worked at the company for 30 years.  He's dealt with Mike's personality for so long he's obviously built up a thick skin for it.  He's good at what he does, and also has Mike's admiration.  He has a chunk of the shop as well.  Not quite as big as Jim's, but spacious nonetheless.  I like Mark.  He's cheery most of the time, and easy to approach.

Jeff is an interesting case.  He's petrified of change.  He worked for his last company for 20 years.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  But added to some of his other behaviors, it shows a pattern of calcification.  He is a nervous little critter, but he's a producer.  Give him a project and he'll get it done.  He also has a habit of taking over any flat surface within 30 feet.  His bench is right next to mine.  So most of the space around me is taken up by his work.

Marlin is a good friend of mine.  We worked together at another shop, and I dragged him into this place.  He is good at what he does - I call him the Master of Minutia.  This is a good thing in fine woodworking.  His bench is on the other side of mine.

My bench is situated at the bottle neck of the shop.  If I use any floor space, I'm blocking the main thoroughfare.  Compare this to Jim's space.

Dane, the manager, has used me as the main on-site manager for the work we've done at Nike.  Not that that gives me any authority or power or control.  It just leaves him off the hook for actually having to be on site and being responsible for the work done there.  He is still the point of contact for Nike people.  I was shown this pointedly this week.  Dane is going to be out of town this coming Monday and Tuesday.  We need to go to Nike on Tuesday to do some work.  I suggested that Dane give my phone number to the point of contact at Nike so that he could reach me directly in case plans needed to change.  Relying on Mike to pass along pertinent information is sketchy at best, so I figured that if I was the temporary contact, that would take care of things.  Dane hesitated.  He didn't want to give my number to the Nike guy.  The only reason I can think of is so that he feels like he can maintain some sort of "control" over the situation, to be sure that he was seen as being useful.  Which he isn't.  He ended up cc'ing me on an email to the Nike guy.  Lame.

Having worked in a male-dominated industry for so long, and being a tomboy since my teens, I am comfortable doing "male" things, like lifting heavy items, hauling garbage out to the dumpster, loading heavy things into our piece of shit van.  But it never fails that the guys (Jeff in particular) will walk right by me when I'm doing some task that I could easily walk away from, to ask someone else to stop what they are doing to help him lift something.  Dane does this too.  Jeff actually asked me on Friday if I needed help putting something into my car.  As if anything heavier than a purse was beyond my abilities.  It's insulting.  Mostly I let them lift the heavy things because if anyone is going to break their back doing something, I'm fine with it not being me.  But for fuck's sake.

So I have the smallest space in the shop.  I am useful to take over a certain level of responsibility, without the corresponding respect or control, in some situations.  I am obviously a weak girl who needs help on the basic parts of my job.

I don't think my boss quite knows how to interact with me.  He rarely talks to me unless I'm in the office (where our female bookkeeper sits).

It all adds up to a grumpy Laura.  Fuck this place.  I get no respect, a large reason is because I'm female.  And my attitude sucks.  But who could blame me?  I need to leave my job, and soon.