Women, Work, and the Ways of the World

Women, Work, and the Ways of the World

If you read some of my friend’s blogs (Lady of Light, A Ton of Something, and more tonnagge) you’d know that yesterday was International Women's Day. I guess I’m out of touch with the holiday calendar, because the only special holiday that I remember (aside from the nifty ones for which we get of work) is March first. This just happens to be, and I’m not making this up, both my ex’s birthday and National Pig Day. But anyway, International Women’s Day was spent discussing topics of interest to women… for example pay scales and sex discrimination. Well, I want to weigh in on this subject. I’m not going to debate stuff here. It makes me too angry to debate it. I’m just going to share a couple of true stories. These stories are mine. They are not things that happened to a friend of a friend or even a friend. These are things that have happened to me. They’ve all occurred in the last 15 years – since before that I wasn’t working.

I do want to pause here and put out two little disclaimers. (1) None of these events have occurred at my current place of business. Given that I work for a place controlled by the “Menopause Mafia”, they have other work place issues besides sex discrimination. However, since I’m drawing a regular pay check and I want to continue to do so… I think it’s best to not air their dirty laundry in public, regardless of the topic. (2) I feel very passionate and sometimes even still hurting about some of the stories I’m about to relay. I hope my language isn’t offensive to anyone. Frankly, this is the toned down version. It’s just that we’ve hit on a sore spot here…

So the first story I will share with you occurred when I applied for a job at Bear Sterns. I was dating my ex and he worked there. He got wind of an opening in a department next to his. He took in my resume and hooked me up with an interview. I went in for the interview. I took the written c programming test – which I passed in much less time than was allotted and they were all convinced I had failed it because of how quickly I passed it. Then I went in for an interview with my would-be boss’s boss. That went well so, I went in for the lie detector test and the drug screen. Things were looking good. I had to go in for a final interview with the boss of the department who was the internal customer of the programming services I would be providing if I got the job. The interview seemed to go very well. I answered all of the guys questions and he seemed well pleased with my technical abilities and personality.

The next day I got a call from HR. I was told that I didn’t get the job. They said they didn’t know why or some other lame thing. The ex started to poke around to find out the real deal. Now remember, at this point we were not married. We weren’t even engaged. I’m not sure if the folks at Bear Sterns even knew we were dating. So, they were pretty honest with the ex. They told him that I didn’t get the job because the boss of the internal customers didn’t like the look of me. He said I was lady-like enough. At the time, I was pretty bitter because this would have been at least a 20K jump in my salary… and with the bonuses that Bear Sterns gave out at the time… it could have been even more. I’ve long since gotten over it, because I never would have meet the woman who was to be my business partner and I wouldn’t be in VA now if I’d taken that job. But still, this jack ass made a hiring decision because of the way I looked! Pretty disgusting if you ask me.

The reason I was looking for a new job in the first place was that I really needed to get away from a huge pig. This guy was the manager of a department for which he knew nothing about. He was the second most clueless person I’ve ever worked for (and the first was a coke addict.) He had gotten the job because of his “good ol’ boy” network of Viet Nam Vets. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not putting down Viet Nam vets. Heck, I’m not putting down vets from any era. I am unhappy when an unqualified person gets a job simply because they are friends with someone… regardless of the origin of the friendship.

So this guy had surrounded himself with a bunch of brown-nosing, kiss-ass, yes-men (and women.) Needless to say, this very important project was going down the tubes very fast. They were in trouble. The software was full of bugs, behind schedule, getting worse every day, and mission critical. I had a rep as being a good tester and being able to turn around bad projects so I was lucky enough to be assigned to this loser. As I said, the boss had surrounded himself with yes-people. When I tried to point out problems or issues on the project I was always met with sarcasm and anger. When ever I disagreed with the big-guy (and I think my friends recognize that I’m pretty diplomatic in these situations) he would just turn around and tell me that I was being disagreeable because it was my time of the month. If you believed this guy, I was bleeding for six months straight. The sad part was that this guy wasn’t just being defensive about my new ideas. This guy really believed that women belonged at home bear-foot and pregnant. Sick. Sick. Sick!

But I’ve saved the best for last… When I moved into FDA regulated industries, I was tasked with setting up a department to do software validation. I did a pretty good job of it. The work had been divided in two. I was responsible for all the software in three business units. There was another department that was responsible for the software in one other business unit. This guy got hired in to company after I had done all the heavy lifting. He was a mechanical engineers, so everyone he hired was also a mechanical engineer. Some how, they got assigned to software validation for the one business unit I wasn’t responsible for.

These guys were clueless. They didn’t even know where to begin. My area was running pretty smoothly and I’m a kind soul, so I spent a lot of hours tutoring them and helping them learn what they had to do. But they didn’t always follow my advice or if they did they didn’t do it right or something. It seems they were always in some kind of pickle. Meanwhile my department just kept on keeping on with no problems or issues.

So FDA comes in for an inspection. First they look at the other business unit. Usually, an FDA inspection lasts 2 – 3 days for the entire firm. A week if things are bad. They spent 13 weeks looking at the one business unit. It was a long and difficult period. Then, they got to my stuff. I spent a day and a half – maybe two days with the inspectors. At the end they told the director of Regulatory Affairs that everyone in the company should follow MY lead.

As a result of that inspection the firm received a very long and very serious Form 483 (that’s what the inspector uses to write down all the issues they find during the inspection.) FDA followed up with a very serious and very nasty warning letter telling the company that if they didn’t clean up their mess in the software development arena they were going to shut down the entire firm. It’s important to note here that my area did not have one single Form 483 observation and my work was never mentioned in the warning letter.

As you can imagine all hell broke loose at work. People in the other business unit were running around like idiots trying to fix their problems so the place didn’t get shut down. During this time, one of the jerks who made the mess in the first place let his salary slip. Turns out he was making MORE THAN TWICE my salary. I did some snooping and I discovered that ALL of the CLUELESS MECHANICAL ENGINEERS were making six figures. I was outraged. These guys had taken a well defined and smooth running operation and were about to get the entire place shut down and they were making a boat load of money doing it. I confronted the guy who hired them. He did some song and dance about how they were older than me and all of their mechanical engineering knowledge was transferable so they deserved to make more. BULL CRAP!!! All of it!!!

Then just to add insult to injury when raise time came around – these jackasses got huge raises and got a measly 2%. I was so outraged I confronted my boss right then and there. Do you know what they had the balls to say to me? I was told that the other guys got higher raises because they had to work so hard to correct all the observations on the warning letter. If they hadn’t busted their butts, the place could have been shut down and they needed to be rewarded for their efforts. HA! I said, “But wouldn’t it have been better if they did their job right the first time so we didn’t get a warning letter?”

“Well, yes.” The boss said.

“So, shouldn’t I have been rewarded for doing my job right the first time as proven by the fact that I didn’t have ONE SINGLE OBSERVATION on the warning letter?”

“Well, you do make a good point.” The jackass said. “But frankly, the raises have been finalized and communicated to staff so there really isn’t anything I can do now.”

You know, they say that living well is the best reverence… within three months I had a new job with a big fat pay raise! HA! HA!

But the fact is, there is still discrimination out there. People do judge you based on your gender. Frankly, if Elizabeth decides to use her looks to get the salary and the positions she deserves because she earns them by working hard… then I’d be damned proud of her. I would never want her to use her looks or her gender to get something she didn’t deserve… but what the heck, people are using every advantage they can to get ahead. If she’s going to be a pretty, smart blond… then more power to her if she shakes her thing to get that promotion that she really deserves for her brains and ability.

Oh, and there are a whole bunch of other stories from when I owned my business. Let’s suffice it the say that Elizabeth's middle name is Franklin. This way, if she ever needs to hide her gender, she can always sign documents “E. Franklin”. It was very, very important to me that she have a male middle name so she could have every advantage in the business world.

I feel like I’m rambling now… and there is so much more I want to say… but I guess you’ll just have to ask me about it some time.