awkward

Sarah

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I keep telling myself this isn’t a big deal, that he’s just trying to be nice, that he’s making an effort to understand. But, I don’t know if that’s true. I have a coworker that can’t seem to have an appropriate conversation with me. It’s just little differences between how he talks to me and how he talks to our male coworkers. Instead of asking me how my day is going, he asks me how my son is doing. One day I came to work with a wrist brace. He asked me if my husband is irritated about having to “help” with chores (because of the brace). I try to explain that my husband and I are partners in everything, but I shouldn’t have to. Every casual conversation shouldn’t start with an assumption based on my gender. I get the feeling if any future promotions were up to him, I would be out of the running. Not because he doesn’t like my work, but because in his eyes my place is at home.

Beth

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In our morning meeting, and I am updating our team on an event I had been to the night before. Started my sentence “I met a guy last night…”. Before I could finish my sentence, one of the male partners pipes up “we don’t want to hear about your personal life Beth”. It wasn’t until after the meeting that anyone said to me (only): “oh that was really inappropriate”

Kim

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In order to get away from her abusive husband, my 61 yr old mother recently moved into a small studio cabin among a group of other studio cabins. At dusk a few days ago, she was having a cigarette outside and chatting with neighbors when one neighbor said out of nowhere, “so, I’ll come over at nine.” She was confused and said “Wait, do you mean nine in the morning or nine at night?” (He clearly meant that same night.) He responded, “Tell you what, leave your shades open when you want company and closed when you don’t.” Now she’s keeping her shades closed all the time because her neighbor thinks he’s welcome to dictate what her open/closed shades *mean.*