Saturdays are typically pretty boring for me at my job as an "Admitting Represenative" at a hospital Imaging Center, so I bring a book with me. Last week I had a woman co worker gawk at me for reading a book on feminism.
What REALLY ticked me off, was the male who gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and everyone talked about how SICK and DISGUSTING it was and that we will "not be seeing him in heaven, thats for sure."
Tattoos? AND Piercings?! Well then, I must be a whore.
I know it is their opinion and I respect it, but I know they would not respect mine. And its a place of work..I dont want to get involved with my private life,especially with the comments they make on things that I support. So I keep my mouth shut..but its getting much harder and I just want to scream in their faces OPEN UP YOUR MIND!!!!!!!!!
I worked for Borders before the hospital and I was just accepted for who I was. But the hospital pays me way more. I would love to quit and be able to be myself but right now, financially, that cant happen.
I know Im not the only one who goes through this crap at their work. What do you all go through and do you stand up for yourself? Its so hard not to.
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I once volunteered at a zoo in Arizona and I loved it--I was able to work with the animals, the schedule was great, I knew there wasn't a job opening so i was content with volunteering. When a job did open up, my supervisor said i would be great for it, but then told me another woman had come by the zoo that day and had the same credentials as I did, but was "forward, talkative, and pretty"--then he told me I was none of those, and that I had all that against me. For the rest of the day i was near tears as I did my volunteer tasks--I didn't even know what to say in response. I was interviewed for the job and didn't get it, and though i was able to volunteer in the same capacity of the job I didn't get, all I could think while I was, "I'm not pretty enough to do this job and be paid for it." Eventually i was hired as cashier/admissions person, and although I did the job well, it wasn't what I wanted to do, and I had to quit.
I've definitely have had my fair share of asshole co-workers. At one of my last jobs, a co-worker of mine made horrible homophobic comments at a job training session, and I was so inspired by one of my female co-workers that confronted him, privately, about how inappropriate he was--I feel sometimes like I've just been trained somehow to keep my mouth shut and "be polite" even when I'm raging inside, and I am happy when I see women I work with buck this "training" and show me how it's done. I haven't had any real issues as of late, I'm in graduate school so maybe the people I'm around keep most of their thoughts to themselves in case we need to rely on each other for future jobs or whatever...
I understand what you mean by being judged by appearances...I was turned down by a job for having pink hair my freshman year; 4 years later, I had a "normal" hair color and I was hired by the same job, and later the owners said they learned a lot from me about not judging people based on appearance.