After a short, let's call it a sabbatical... I'm back out on the job market and the pickings are slim, almost as slim as the narrow-minded perspectives of some hiring employers it seems.
I showed up for an interview today and here's what happened:
After about 5 minutes into the interview, the hiring manager, with a baby face and an infectious smile looks at me and says, Tashika, you seem like you got what it takes to work here(not verbatim)"I don't want to say the "B" word" but...," he pauses and gives me a cheeky nod as if to say well
you know what I really want to say.
I look at him perplexed, confused, insulted and dumb-founded not believing that he has just indirectly or rather directly called me a "bitch."
I reply, my eyebrows still turned inward, "Oh! do you mean I seem very single-minded."
I stretch out the syllables hoping he would correct himself and catch on that I've intentionally chosen a word that does not in fact begin with the letter "B"; or give him a chance to redeem himself and use a different sort of "B" word, like: yes you seem "bright" "bulbous" "bingo" "britches" - anything but "bitches" really.
He continues, "Sass! That's it! you seem like you have a lot of sass."
I reply, "Well I guess I do..."
(What I really think to myself) Sorry! Please... you can "sass" my a**.
Now, I was completely caught off-guard by being called a "b-word" by a prospective employer albeit in his own ape like way he thought he was giving me a compliment. And honestly, I was almost willing to let it slide, not slide so far that I don't share this
ballistic anecdote, but, I probably won't have been motivated enough to pound away at my keyboard. What he said next just heaped on the layers that quickly solidified his behaviour of first class chauvinism and how insane I was to think of letting his comment waste away in a sidebar.
He continues interviewing me seemingly oblivious and enthusiastic as ever, apparently in his mind we are now best friends, trapped in the 40s or possibly gangster rappers.
He says, "You don't seem like you get very emotional."
He's beaming at this point and so pleased that he has been able to extract this inner most working of my personality.
I awkwardly reply, "well, I guess I've heard that before..." as I tilt my head the way a journalist does trying to solve a math problem.
He continues and says, you know you need a certain type of woman to be in this industry.
Huh!?? Do I have wax build-up? Am I being Punk'd? Is this a social experiment and I'm behind some really cool glass wall being observed by McMaster grad students? Am I in the matrix? Probably...all of the above.
I'm at a lost here? What would you have done? What is the right protocol in this situation? What would be considered under-reacting and over-reacting and why?
I finished my interview bewildered; I can honestly say I've only been bewildered a few times in my life and this is one of them.
I was called back for a second interview which I showed up for but then turned down. In addition to the job not being a right fit in numerous other ways, I couldn't get his words out of my head. I felt like I had been in a time warp and it makes me sick to my stomach that a young man, not much older than I am, sitting in an office in Toronto, born and raised in this wonderful country was capable of spewing such backward garbage. This is the dirty underbelly of sexist attitudes that still pervade and are being perpetuated in the workplace. We all know the stats, if you don't read it
here, and we know that women are only now within the last few years
just making significant progress on a large scale of acquiring equally in the workforce. So, please leave and let be the feminists of my generation; let them yell and blog and tweet about women's rights so as to balance the scales out, because honestly, enough isn't being done. And, to all you naysayers that women need to stop complaining, it's those attitudes of complacency that leave the ponds of change stagnant and soon smelly and festering with sores that we thought we had long gotten rid of, but, ever so often the pus oozes out.
Today, the pus oozed out.
Image courtesy
Microsoft Office.
Posts
