I asked a question on a forum about why a command wasn’t working. They said I didn’t have an interpreter installed on my computer and were making fun of me. I showed them that I had one installed and that wasn’t the problem, but they continued to talk sarcastically to me without explaining anything. Only one of them suggested the cause of the problem, and he was right, so I thanked him. Then another guy said that if I couldn’t figure it out myself, I should do something else and that he was tired of people like me. After that, I deleted my question, and now I’m not sure. And I don’t think I want to ask for help ever again
The trades are the same way, unfortunately. When the first woman apprentice showed up, all these guys started acting like they’ve never seen a woman before.
The quiet guy who I thought was one of the nicest people there told the apprentice that she belonged in an office. Others wouldn’t let her do anything “dangerous” or over explained all the simple shit to her. Others would just hang around her for uncomfortable periods of time. It was truly bizarre to witness.
She ended up only coming to me for work related questions because I was one of the few people who treated her like a person and not like a little girl. That’s how I found out all the gross and fucked up things the guys were saying to her. She didn’t last long and left for another company which already had women working there. I worked until I got terminated for bringing up issues with the work culture.
During the fight about work culture with management, the vast majority of my coworkers turned their backs on me. Treated me like an idiot and isolated me. They were all so fragile and scared they would have to change their awful ways.
I ended up quitting my apprenticeship and decided to never return to the trades. I can’t stand the culture and I no longer have the energy to fight alone.
Any woman that can remain in the trades or STEM is way stronger than I’ll ever be. I couldn’t imagine myself dealing with that shit daily for an entire life.
I hear you. Yes, It’s definitely easier when there are at least already one or two women already present.
But sometimes you have to watch your back sometimes even then. Cuz there can be the ‘pickme’ ladies that lean into the misogyny. I’ve come by some real toxic ones that had rap sheets of other victims all women that had bundled together and basically had group therapy about the same woman.
That’s where I start saving every single email they (the toxic ones) send me. I’ve taken one or two out in my day just on ‘accidently’ forwarding an email they sent me they thought they had me too intimidated to send. I was just biding my time giving them false confidence.
Strength sometimes takes a lot of patience to help a person fuck up in front of the wrong line of people.
Document everything.
Though I’m hoping current days are getting better where this kind of toxicity is easier to call out. I’ve notice some of the more recent places of work that they even encourage and prefer calling it out in the moment with HR and not having it be dealt with in such a chaotic way. Though that can also be dependent on how good your HR is. (Watch out for HR using the catch phrase ‘conflicting personalities’ is a dead give away you got a dud HR)
That’s very much what I did. While causing noise with management, I made friends with someone who worked for corporate HR. My first email to her basically predicated what would happen if I raised a complaint to management. I gained her trust by focusing on changing the work culture and not looking for retribution.
I got terminated, lawyers got involved and in the end I got a my severance and banned from working with that international corporate. The HR manager of my company was forced into leaving the company before her retirement. If I didn’t play nice with corporate HR, the company HR manager would have probably worked until retirement like nothing happened.
I now have a new hate for bureaucracy that’s on a deep and personal level but at least I came out with some wins at the cost of some sanity.
Yikes yeah that place sounds rotten to the core. I’m glad you got out of it and hope you found safer ground ! Glad you kept your sanity too. That can be a challenge in such situations where you can feel the walls closing in.
Which country was that in, may I ask?
Canada