I love men (or why I like working with men) May 12, 2006
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , trackbackI love working with men. This has nothing to do with sexual attraction, more of a Mars versus Venus thing. I have almost always enjoyed working with men.
My first paying job was at the Buffalo Museum of Science. This was the cool job of running the solar observatory and presenting "sun shows". We would talk about the sun, show people the sun on the wall (using a special solar telescope called a heliostat ) and then take them upstairs to look at the sun with our telescope with an H-alpha filter.
I did work with women here. Funny that. I was close with the museum director, whose main loves were stars and mushrooms. A funny mix, but given that he lived in the hills of Austria during WWII to hide, it is not surprising.
My next job introduced me to the world of catty women. I worked at an amusement park! I got a job at the commissary which was wonderful. We didn’t have to work with guests, no money and lots of fun. But I discovered that women were very, very catty. They fought over men, they bitched about each other. If someone dressed "out of line" they were called on it behind their back. UGH.
I lost that job (fired/quit over the demand to sell beer while we left two 14 year olds in charge which was illegal). I quickly joined one of my favorite jobs, a night stocker at the local Ames. I was the only woman on the crew. The guys on the crew were great. They would sometimes be crude and forget that I was there and then realize what they said. I would laugh with them. I liked the crude. It was…fun I guess to not be watching what I was saying all of the time. When things were slow, we would do races around the store with the carts. I always got to ride since I was small. I have to say, it was incredibly enjoyable to just be. I didn’t worry about what they thought of me. Men have a way of saying what they mean. They can be blunt, but at least it is out there. Then they offer to buy you a beer (or race around the store in a cart). No behind the back bull.
Since I had always loved astronomy, I went to school majoring in that (and physics). Guess what? Astronomy and Physics are male dominated fields. It worked perfectly with me. I have had a few jobs here working with women, but since my last job (working with the demon anti-woman female boss), I have found the best place. I am on a team with 7 men, 2 women (the other woman I barely know). My sub-team is 4 men, and me. There is no backstabbing. There are no "oh my gahd, did you see what she did?" There are no weird sweater chicks.
(Although I do have to point out that I had a female scientist tell me when I was first on the job "I hear you are sleeping with Dr. Jay. Is that why you got this job?" After my jaw hit the floor, I told her "Actually, we are engaged and I got this job before he started".)
The guys I work with are refreshing. Last week, my boss and I had an issue. I submitted my paper and he thought I hadn’t. He read an old version and basically wasted his time on comments. He was pissed and told me so. My female side kicked in "does this mean he is going to hold this against me?" "How angry is he?" "Well, he should have asked first! (defensive)"
I bit my tongue and got the paper version to him, corrected and revised. He wrote another email.
"I read the … paper on the way in this morning. It reads very well and it flows nicely. You have a done a nice job pulling this together and any ACIS-knowledgeable person should be able to read this and understand it."
That is what I am talking about. Men say what they mean. He was pissed that he wasted his time, but not angry about the paper and then gave me a nice complement.
I love working with men.
Comments»
I have found it hard to say whether I like working with men or women (across the board). I have good and bad experiences with both sexes, and I think it has depended more on the field and the environment of the job than the gender of those I’ve worked with.