To ask about your personal “Jackie Weaver” moments

[Tier4billion]

Was speaking to dh about this last night and was reflecting on how I have definitely had moments of being spoken to like JW was in that video, or just generally being patronised.

Two which stood out where a man, who had called my company asking for help said to me “ooh you’ve got your own little business - why do you think you can help Me?” (Er firstly you called me and secondly my “little business” has a far higher turnover than yours).

Another was a work meeting years ago where a guy screamed at me as I wasn’t taking the minutes. I wasn’t there to take the minutes - that would have been the man sat next me - however as the only woman in the meeting it was assumed it was me

Aibu to ask - what’s your experience?

They're flooding back to me now.
Work experience teen from college, parked himself in our meeting area for breakfast and shouted to me, standing by the kettle, that his cup was over there. 'And that's where it will stay mate'.
Took someone to the onsite medic, an elderly guy who patted me on the bum and called me a good girl. WTF.
Physically lifted out of a doorway by a visitor, feet off the floor, and plonked aside while security guffawed away.
Was told not to be alone with the office sex pest, it's just his way, he's always touching people. Made it abundantly clear within earshot of him what carnage would ensue should that occur.
I grew up around a lot of boys. None of them behave like this but they did give me good training how to handle these types.

Back when we had the swine flu epidemic I was leading a public health team within a PCT. I was chosen to lead the response to the epidemic for the region. In the first meeting, before we introduced ourselves, one of the consultants from another PCT decided that because he had spent a term working at LSHTM on some kind of intercalated basis, he was therefore the expert and should be the one chosen to lead the meeting instead of me because I was just a district nurse.

I'm not a nurse, I'm a public health consultant with 10years more experience than that little twerp. I had recently returned from an African country where I'd managed the response to an outbreak of Ebola.

Not anywhere near as bad as some on here but relatively recent. After the first lockdown ended and the kids started going back to school they had staggered start times that were a bit later than normal. The school is very close so driving isn't really appropriate but it did mean that I had to walk briskly to get back in time for the Monday morning management meeting and so was usually a bit flushed when I joined the zoom meeting. A male colleague, whom I did not always see eye to eye with professional, made a comment about my appearance, implying that it looked like I had just woken up. We laughed and I thought nothing of it. Then a similar thing happened at the follow week's meeting and the meeting after that (I would have called him out at that meeting but I wanted to make sure it was a definite pattern, clear to others before acting. On week 4 he made another comment about my appearance to which In replied "It looks like commenting on my appearance has become a standing item, perhaps we should put it on the agenda for next week so everyone can prepare" - cue a bit of awkward silence and then the head of department moving the meeting on. Haven't had a comment made since, but probably got a bit of reputation with the other men, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

@tofuschnitzel

Try giving people more than twenty mins to reply, OP!

Ironically I read this in the voice of the ‘read the standing orders!!’ man

You can get Jackie Weaver mugs on Etsy now. 'Just call me Britney Spears' and 'You have no authority here!' 😄

I was on commission in my first Saturday job.an older man took a dislike to me and sneakily tried to get my sales because he didn't think I needed the money. One day I cornered him in the stock room and told him I knew what he was up to and if he didn't stop it I'd be taking the matter up with the manager and owner of the shop. He was like a rabbit in the headlights and sputtered as he tried to wriggle out of it. I was very proud of myself as a tiny 17 year old.

When being asked "So where is the supervisor then love?", despite me being the only person in the place of work and at a time of day when the only person there would have been the supervisor. I politely asked him to think if he wanted to turn around, go back through the door, come back in and try again.

*On week 4 he made another comment about my appearance to which In replied "It looks like commenting on my appearance has become a standing item, perhaps we should put it on the agenda for next week so everyone can prepare" - cue a bit of awkward silence and then the head of department moving the meeting on.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Eleganz

A male shop assistant in a sofa shop.
Me, my husband and my adult daughter were browsing around and the shop assistant asked me if could help with anything.
I said "no, just browsing thanks" and he turned to my husband and said "good of you to let them BOTH out to spend your money".
Both my daughter and I stood there agog, when we both said in unison "I beg your pardon, what did you say? How sexist are you!"

We carried on browsing angrily and he kept scuttling around the displays apologising profusely.
Perhaps it might make him think twice in future.

I've got so many to mention but one stands out as it happened recently.

Man - let's call him John - sends an "I hate to do this but this very unimportant project is blocked by ThinkWittyThoughts" email to two of my company's C-level people. As it happens both men. Apparently, John was extremely unhappy that I hadn't responded to his message of a week before.

I work in a different department to John but I definitely outrank him.

Baffled by the aggressive tone, I assured the C-levels that I'd investigate & sort it.

I told John that I would have a call with him that afternoon (anyone with a brain cell would realise that I was pissed off). The idiot decided to invite even more junior members of his team along. Fine by me!

Call starts, people gradually join and we chat about crappy internet signals & the weather. I'm essentially lulling them into a false sense of security. Finally John joins the call and I ask everyone to turn on their cameras.

"Right. Let me address the email of this morning. I have checked my notes from the meeting: I had no actions. The message you complain I haven't responded to: not addressed to me. You have made no attempt to contact me with your concerns in the meantime. Sending passive aggressive emails to the C-levels is a completely disproportionate escalation and totally unprofessional. I am an extremely busy woman, and it's highly unlikely my priorities will align with yours. Do you have anything to say to me?"

Stunned silence. Then John sputters "every time I tried to message you in chat you appear offline".

Me: "the funny thing is John, everyone else I know sends a message anyway, knowing that I will pick up and respond. Or they email. Or they call me using the phone number in the company directory. That's not an excuse, is it?"

"Let's move on and solve this situation, shall we?" And we did. It was obvious John was a dick and he'd invited his whole team to witness it. I felt great and then, at the end of the call he asked me to stay on to talk privately.

He attempted one of those non-apologies. You know the type, the sort that sounds like a kid who realises they've gone to far and claim it was only a joke?

Me: "I've saved your arse today with those C-level managers. I've kept this away from public viewing. John if you ever pull something like this again and I will not be so generous."

Queue stunned John, who can only nod.

Later, I get an emails from both C-levels thanking me for sorting out the confusion & taking charge.

Best. Day. Ever.

*too far. Damn it. I proof read that post & everything

Too many to mention. God how depressing.

Mid 1980s. Me to the chairman right in the middle of reception - "Robert do you mind not staring at my tits? I don't stand here and stare at your balls, do I?" I was 24 and had been dealing with pervy men since being a teenager. Word spread like wildfire. I became a legend that lunchtime.

Two older male colleagues making homophobic comments just across the desks from me.

I pulled them up on it and they said it was just banter. Told them it was neither funny nor appropriate.

I have a friend who has a proper Jackie Weaver moment in just about every meeting we're in. She's ace. I can tell she really makes the men bristle - they probably think she's abrasive.
She gets things done and decided though - cuts right through the posturing and bullshit.

My neighbour pops round to ask dh to put the bins out whilst they go away. He said he would ask me to do it as I put them out and he didn't even know which days which bins went out. Neighbour looked shocked and has never asked again (and dh has put the bin schedule into his calendar!).

We were having some work done on another property. The guy who we had no choice but to have as Project Manager is notoriously adept at ignoring women and addressing men but he knows the building so we were stuck with him.

I organised what had to be done, I got the quotes and I was paying this man a small amount to supervise the job. Throughout the whole procedure he would try and email my DH. Not me. If I picked up the email to ask a question from my email address, he would then reply to my DH, not me.

I got heartily sick of it and when the job was finished he sent my DH the bill.
DH quite rightly ignored it.
He sent it again to my DH who ignored it again.

Eventually he had no choice but to email me. I told him that next time .... if he wanted any work put his way, address me personally as I am the one who organises this sort of building work and pays bills of this nature.
And that I would pay in a month's time after he had sent me a reminder and not my DH.

He did.

I'm not sure if this is quite the same thing, but in terms of workplace sexism:
When I was a teenager and in my second year of working a summer/ Saturday job in a small shop, during busy periods we sometimes often had supply chain problems and didn't know when the next stock was due. One day a bloke came in and asked when we were due to get some more of an item in. I apologised and said we didn't know, but if he would like to place an order we would let him know etc etc. He quizzed me for a bit longer and then caught sight of my new
and useless male colleague - "oh I'll ask him, he'll know". Being somewhat fed up with getting the same questions on repeat, I muttered "he won't, he's new". Didn't stop him asking and getting a shrug and a dunno in return.

The only non-sexist explanation is that I did look very young for my age, so the colleague probably looked older even though he was the same age and much less experienced. Also that he happened to be behind the counter at that point (because he couldn't be trusted to accurate stocktakes etc and all we'd managed to teach him was basic transactions). It definitely felt like a misogynistic response though.

Me to an old boy who thought he was my boss (he wasn’t
“They won’t answer you, you know”
“Who wont?”
“My knockers, Peter, you’re talking to my knockers but my face is up here”.
🤣 urgh.

Went to a meeting of half a dozen males colleagues to discuss design changes to a process area where I was the designer and the subject matter expert.

They had recently been trained to use an (actual, physical) ‘talking stick’ to ensure that everyone had their say without being interrupted. They refused to pass it to me or let me speak at all.

Not about me (although I do have tales of my own) but about Priscilla Jana, former lawyer for Nelson Mandela. When she was ambassador to The Netherlands I went to hear her give a talk at a local university. She told us that whenever she would arrive at a formal function in her official limousine, the men awaiting the ambassador's arrival (it was always men) would rush out and shake her chauffeur's hand as he got out of the car, assuming he was the honoured guest. She was a wonderful woman and, sadly, died recently. Here's her obituary: www.theguardian.com/global/2020/nov/05/priscilla-jana-obituary

I'm in a procurement job, buying parts. The number of times all male suppliers pick over my work trying to find holes in it is astonishing. I am really thorough, they just want to make a point. But I constantly have to justify in a way that you just don't when dealing with women. I think they don't like a women having some (small) power in the industry

I was looking raving a receptionist job to go travelling. I was asked to go through CVs and find my replacement. The old male CEO told me to throw all CVs from men in the new bin as “it wouldn’t be right to ask a man to make me coffee”.

• leaving

The other thing that used to drive me mad when I used to help run a tournament was the difference in how female and male coaches approached it.

I'd send out a clear e-mail, explaining what I needed from them. Every competitor had to be entered, then for any slightly odd entries (out of age group, lived in a different county to their club etc.) they needed to fill in a supplementary form with explanation/evidence of why they weren't in the expected category. I even sent a mocked-up entry form they could look at with a few examples.

There were exceptions, but in general:

Female coaches would contact me first if they were new, or didn't know if the 'evidence' they had was enough (it usually was). We'd e-mail, and I'd get pretty much perfect entry forms.

Male coaches would send everything in, and wait for me to go through them and spot the ones entered in the 'wrong' categories, then get annoyed when I e-mailed back explaining that I couldn't actually enter their C-team until they let me know why Jim, Bob and Sam were playing on that team rather than for their under-12s.

The first year I did it, one man actually contacted the Association President to say that "Polkadots seems to be the ladies' B-team secretary for X Club. I don't know what authority she has to question the eligibility of my players." Hmm. Perhaps that would be because I was the tournament secretary in charge of entries and eligibility?