“Wow! You lift all these boxes all day? You must be strong.”
“Of course when you come they give you all the heavy stuff. When the guys come they only have one small box.”
“You must be tough. Even most the guys don’t like this route.”
These are the small sexist comments I have to deal with almost on a daily basis. Yeah, I’m a woman and I do a “man’s job.” That’s because women are capable of doing work traditionally held for men only. Get the fuck over it and stop being condescending shit heads.
When I used to drive semis, almost on a weekly basis, someone would look at my truck and say, “That sure is a big truck.”
Do you think they would say that to a man?
“No, actually, it’s only thirty-eight feet. Most trailers are fifty-two feet. So it’s kinda small,” was what I would reply if I was in a bad mood. Mostly I would ignore them and pretend they didn’t even exist. Incredulously, I’ve had two people make that comment about the package car I was driving. Yes, women can drive. Shocking.
-----
“Are you going to carry that?” said a Hell’s Angel at the Harley shop.
“Carry what?” I replied.
“Those boxes,” he indicated a stack of boxes that I had been loading onto my handcart.
“Um, no. I’m going to roll them on my cart,” I said, in a kinda snotty tone.
“Well, I was just going to offer some help.”
“Why would I need that?”
“Geeze. Some women will slap you for opening a door for them,” he mused.
For the record, I love it when people open the door for me, especially if I’m carrying boxes. He wasn’t offering to be polite, he was implying that women shouldn’t be doing heavy lifting. He can fuck off.
----
“Hello, sir?”
That’s what I often hear when I’m in my truck and someone wants my attention. They assume I am a man because I’m in a truck.
“Yes, sir?”
That’s what I often hear when I walk into a business and I call out to get their attention. They see the brown uniform, the short hair and baseball cap, and assume I’m a man.
“Are you a man or a woman?” asked a man who I had just explained to that I will be out of his way in two-minutes.
I said nothing.
“You’re not going to tell me?”
“I don’t think I should have to help you out with this one.”
“Well, you look like a man, but you sound like a lady.”
No. No I don’t look like a man. And most people who “sir” me correct themselves the second they get a good look at my face. That’s because I have a soft jaw line. And I know my sports-bra bound b-cup is sometimes hard to distinguish in a loose fitting shirt, but they’re noticeable (not that I want people staring). Plus, I have hips, and my hips don’t lie.
But I have never been so angry to be sir-ed as when a pre-load supervisor said it to me the other morning. I was about to leave, but he knocked on my back door to get my attention. I opened the truck back up, and he was walking away.
“Hey! Did you knock on my truck?”
“Yeah, you have Easter flowers.”
He brought boxes of flowers down the line to different trucks. But, why, when we’ve been experiencing layoffs, was he doing the work of a union employee? So I went to find a pre-load steward to put an end to that. As we walked up together, I pointed to the supervisor and the boxes he was sorting. He saw me point.
“What’s your truck number?” the Supervisor asked.
I told him. He looked at the boxes and told me there was nothing for me.
“So you held me up for no reason?”
“Yes, sir.”
Oh, no he didn’t. Most people call me sir because they conform to gender norms, and I confuse them. Women look a certain way and engage in certain activities, but not others. Men look a certain way and engage in certain activities. A baseball cap—that’s men’s attire. Professional driving—that’s man’s domain. But this supervisor wasn’t confused. This was not the first day we ever saw each other. He was mad that I called him out first for handling packages when that’s forbidden by the contract, and then for his mistake in making me wait. So he fired back by using sexism, in combination with homophobia, as a weapon. He wasn’t being condescending, he was being vicious. He doesn’t need to fuck off, he needs to watch his ass.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Just a Silly Story
So, I could write about the hell my customers gave the poor driver who did my route last week. She got all the complaints I did when I started my route, and a couple even flat out yelled at her (I went back to them and told them no more yelling), but you all know about the cranky nature of my customers already.
I could write about the new $500 million investment the company has launched to help “save cost” by finding new ways to fire drivers. But I’m already in a bad mood, so harping on that might work me up to point where I’m a hazard on the road.
So, I’m gonna tell you about a funny story that happened months ago on another route. Before my name came up on the bid list for my current route, I had a temporary bid for someone else’s route. Basically, when another driver owns a route, but is absent (due to injury, alternate work assignment, or some other long term absence) they get to keep their route for when they return, but management will often allow (at the insistence of the union) a temporary bid so a floater driver has a more stable home for awhile.
I loved that other route. The driver came back to it only a few weeks before I was offered my current route. If he hadn’t come back, I would have passed up the other route to keep the temporary bid.
The route was half retail shops along the street (which provided many opportunities to double park and piss people off), and half residential (which provided many opportunities to meet interesting people who often did their best to piss me off). That route was certainly more colorful, and I miss the variety of it. But none of this is the funny part.
I once had a delivery for an empty shop—a shop that had been empty for months with nothing but naked mannequins in the windows. When I saw the boxes for the shop, I did stop to make sure it was still closed. I looked through the glass and saw nothing new—no desk with register, no new merchandise. So sent the boxes back as “address vacant.”
Later in the week, the woman in our office who fields the customer service calls asked me, “Do you remember a delivery for forty-two eighteen ____ Blvd that you sent back as vacant?”
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Why did you think it was vacant?”
“Because there’s nothing in there.”
“Nothing?” she asked. “There weren’t naked mannequins or anything?”
“There were naked mannequins.”
“Do you know why they were naked?” She started to giggle.
“Why?”
“Because you had their clothes in the boxes you sent back.”
Oops.
I could write about the new $500 million investment the company has launched to help “save cost” by finding new ways to fire drivers. But I’m already in a bad mood, so harping on that might work me up to point where I’m a hazard on the road.
So, I’m gonna tell you about a funny story that happened months ago on another route. Before my name came up on the bid list for my current route, I had a temporary bid for someone else’s route. Basically, when another driver owns a route, but is absent (due to injury, alternate work assignment, or some other long term absence) they get to keep their route for when they return, but management will often allow (at the insistence of the union) a temporary bid so a floater driver has a more stable home for awhile.
I loved that other route. The driver came back to it only a few weeks before I was offered my current route. If he hadn’t come back, I would have passed up the other route to keep the temporary bid.
The route was half retail shops along the street (which provided many opportunities to double park and piss people off), and half residential (which provided many opportunities to meet interesting people who often did their best to piss me off). That route was certainly more colorful, and I miss the variety of it. But none of this is the funny part.
I once had a delivery for an empty shop—a shop that had been empty for months with nothing but naked mannequins in the windows. When I saw the boxes for the shop, I did stop to make sure it was still closed. I looked through the glass and saw nothing new—no desk with register, no new merchandise. So sent the boxes back as “address vacant.”
Later in the week, the woman in our office who fields the customer service calls asked me, “Do you remember a delivery for forty-two eighteen ____ Blvd that you sent back as vacant?”
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Why did you think it was vacant?”
“Because there’s nothing in there.”
“Nothing?” she asked. “There weren’t naked mannequins or anything?”
“There were naked mannequins.”
“Do you know why they were naked?” She started to giggle.
“Why?”
“Because you had their clothes in the boxes you sent back.”
Oops.
Friday, April 3, 2009
A couple of updates
Sorry I haven’t been updating my blog. The problem is that now that I know my route well, and my customers like me, and I’m not forced to work unwanted overtime in areas where I get in people’s way or meet interesting people, nothing funny happens to me anymore. Basically, I’m fairly contented with my job, and my customers are fairly contented with me. That’s a good thing, but it makes for boring blog material. Plus, I’ve been on vacation this week, so I’ve been trying not to think about work.
But I do have some updates for you. The first is about my wrist injury. It only took four days before the company caved in. My steward (updates on the steward election next) helped me by talking to the woman in charge of dealing with worker’s comp claims. He told her that I would like a second opinion, and that he had advised me to get a lawyer. Four days later, I got a call from the doctor’s office informing me of a new appointment I had with the hand specialist. When I saw the worker’s comp woman, she explained it to me.
“Basically,” she said, “Dr. _____ said that if you ask ten doctors, five would say it’s industrially related, and five would say it’s not, so since it’s easy to treat, he said let’s go ahead and treat her.”
Wait, that’s it? But I had planned to dig in my heels, line up allies, and have a good ol’ fashioned righteous fight with the company.
Fine, I won’t call a lawyer, but I still insist on seeing my own doctor. I just don’t like the idea of my employer and doctor (who my employer uses on an ongoing basis for worker’s comp claims) colluding about my care. It makes me think that the doctor tries to give favorable outcomes to the company so they continue to choose that practice.
She tried to convince me not see my own doctor:
Gentle manipulation: “Why don’t you just try this specialist first and see if you like him.”
Scare tactics: “The problem I’ve run into with outside doctors is that they don’t submit reports in a timely manner and it delays payments and such for you if you end up off work.”
Intimidation: “Well, tell me why you don’t want to see Dr._____.”
Now, I don’t have to tell her that. It shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t be asking. But I told her that I wanted someone neutral.
“He is neutral,” she tried to convince me. “He has his own practice and only comes to [this office] once a week.”
Any doctor hired by the company is a company doctor to me. I won’t ever be falling into that trap again.
Now, for the steward elections. My guy lost by one vote. The driver who won, was the other guy I considered supporting. He and I had many conversations over the weeks leading up to the election. I must have made an impression on him because as soon as the results were in, he called me and invited me to be his alternate steward. I had no idea he had planned to do that.
But alas, the final decision is up to our Business Agent (BA) because alternate stewards are actually appointed by him, not the steward. He just usually appoints who the stewards want to work with. My steward told me right away that the BA was not happy with him choosing me, but that he was still going to push for me because he felt we need strong leadership and we need women in power. We have one African American official on our Local leadership board, the rest are aging white men. He thinks that’s a problem, and feels we need more diversity in leadership. I like the way he thinks.
But I can be contentious (surprise!). I bring up topics the leadership would prefer not to deal with. And quite frankly, I challenge the union bureaucracy, and the BA relies on that Bureaucracy. So elevating my leadership status is threatening to the BA. And he finally won. My steward called me a couple days ago and said he was tired of arguing over my appointment. He felt that if he continued to demand me as alternate steward he would not have the support he needed from the BA when it came to fighting grievances, etc.
“But I’m still going to train you. I still want to work with you. Eventually the contract will be up and there will be another election and opportunity for you. And I still think we need women leaders,” he assured me.
He has chosen another woman driver to be his alternate. Someone who I think will do an excellent job because she already speaks up for drivers.
I would have liked to be the alternate, but the important thing is that I’ve already established myself as a leader among some of the drivers. I’ve earned their respect, and I’ve strengthened our working relationship. As this economic crisis deepens, management will crack down on us harder and harder. It will take a cohesive and strong rank and file response to protect us. We can build that in our workplace despite our BA.
But I do have some updates for you. The first is about my wrist injury. It only took four days before the company caved in. My steward (updates on the steward election next) helped me by talking to the woman in charge of dealing with worker’s comp claims. He told her that I would like a second opinion, and that he had advised me to get a lawyer. Four days later, I got a call from the doctor’s office informing me of a new appointment I had with the hand specialist. When I saw the worker’s comp woman, she explained it to me.
“Basically,” she said, “Dr. _____ said that if you ask ten doctors, five would say it’s industrially related, and five would say it’s not, so since it’s easy to treat, he said let’s go ahead and treat her.”
Wait, that’s it? But I had planned to dig in my heels, line up allies, and have a good ol’ fashioned righteous fight with the company.
Fine, I won’t call a lawyer, but I still insist on seeing my own doctor. I just don’t like the idea of my employer and doctor (who my employer uses on an ongoing basis for worker’s comp claims) colluding about my care. It makes me think that the doctor tries to give favorable outcomes to the company so they continue to choose that practice.
She tried to convince me not see my own doctor:
Gentle manipulation: “Why don’t you just try this specialist first and see if you like him.”
Scare tactics: “The problem I’ve run into with outside doctors is that they don’t submit reports in a timely manner and it delays payments and such for you if you end up off work.”
Intimidation: “Well, tell me why you don’t want to see Dr._____.”
Now, I don’t have to tell her that. It shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t be asking. But I told her that I wanted someone neutral.
“He is neutral,” she tried to convince me. “He has his own practice and only comes to [this office] once a week.”
Any doctor hired by the company is a company doctor to me. I won’t ever be falling into that trap again.
Now, for the steward elections. My guy lost by one vote. The driver who won, was the other guy I considered supporting. He and I had many conversations over the weeks leading up to the election. I must have made an impression on him because as soon as the results were in, he called me and invited me to be his alternate steward. I had no idea he had planned to do that.
But alas, the final decision is up to our Business Agent (BA) because alternate stewards are actually appointed by him, not the steward. He just usually appoints who the stewards want to work with. My steward told me right away that the BA was not happy with him choosing me, but that he was still going to push for me because he felt we need strong leadership and we need women in power. We have one African American official on our Local leadership board, the rest are aging white men. He thinks that’s a problem, and feels we need more diversity in leadership. I like the way he thinks.
But I can be contentious (surprise!). I bring up topics the leadership would prefer not to deal with. And quite frankly, I challenge the union bureaucracy, and the BA relies on that Bureaucracy. So elevating my leadership status is threatening to the BA. And he finally won. My steward called me a couple days ago and said he was tired of arguing over my appointment. He felt that if he continued to demand me as alternate steward he would not have the support he needed from the BA when it came to fighting grievances, etc.
“But I’m still going to train you. I still want to work with you. Eventually the contract will be up and there will be another election and opportunity for you. And I still think we need women leaders,” he assured me.
He has chosen another woman driver to be his alternate. Someone who I think will do an excellent job because she already speaks up for drivers.
I would have liked to be the alternate, but the important thing is that I’ve already established myself as a leader among some of the drivers. I’ve earned their respect, and I’ve strengthened our working relationship. As this economic crisis deepens, management will crack down on us harder and harder. It will take a cohesive and strong rank and file response to protect us. We can build that in our workplace despite our BA.
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