Stop Calling Me "Sir"

“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.

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“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.

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“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.