a story and conversation repository (est. 2000)

1996 ( 28 Years Old )

i once worked in a department that was a bunch of women and me. what's a bunch? like nine. i had to interview for the position twice because the first girl/lady to interview me asked if i thought i would get on ok with so many women. i replied confidently that i knew i would because i've almost exclusively worked with women already and we always got along famously. hell, some of them even baked me pies and brought me homemade lunches because they felt sorry for my bachelor lifestyle. i later learned that what she heard from my description was that i expected this whole troop of women to routinely bake me pies and bring me lunch. her interpretation cost me the job. but three months later a second position opened and this woman either forgot my earlier expectation or conceded to stay up till all hours of the night cooking me pastries. although i admittedly never received any baked goods while in their employ.

i saw and learned all sorts of things working with these women. i learned what a breast pump looked like after it fell out of one of the ladies' purses. 'what's that?' i asked. 'it's a breast pump.' when i asked what she did with it her face skewered, 'i pump milk out of my breast with it.' when she saw me staring at it (the pump) more intensely she slowly slid it back into her bag and cautiously turned away from me. another time i rounded the corner to find a woman with the hem of her dress pinned up in her armpits as she tugged, pulled and hitched her waist high pantyhose snug around everything below the under wire of her stark-white support bra. this image would not have proved an effective advertisement for hanes.

occasionally another guy would be hired. they were always given to me for acclimation because the ladies figured one tripod would be able to get a second tripod up to speed faster than one of them. much of my instruction included things like 'never use the word chic in this office' or 'audible gas is not funny here'. these lessons proved most enlightening to the majority of recruits and fortunately most of my pupils took to the imbalanced surroundings quite well. but there was one such student i just couldn't reach.

he always called girls (girls who did not work in our office) babes, chicks, dames, broads, vamps or just simple hoes. he frequently tried to regale some of the younger coworkers with his sexual exploits and conquests, many of which began at bowling alleys or neighborhood bars. and, the one thing you never, ever want to do to a collection of strong, independent and college-educated women is routinely act like there are things you can do that they can't, unless it is peeing standing up, even though i've since seen evidence contradicting this early postulate.

in the end it was his infatuation with one of our coworkers that sent him shoulder-rolling. he suffered from that all too common syndrome where grown men rely on elementary playground tactics to flirt. now it wasn't as extreme as knocking a girl's books out of her hands or even stepping on the backs of her shoes as she walked in front of you, but they were very close in nature. these antics mostly involved continually making fun of the girl, razzing her to an excessive degree. problem was, the target of his adulation was a smart, personable and quite funny girl and she was beyond such adolescent advances. for instance, this guy was late to work ... a lot. once when some rennovations were being done in our office there was a wall clock sitting on the floor. the girl, his girl, took this clock and hung it in a very obvious spot above his desk as a jab at his consistently tardy behavior. the next day when she arrived to work she found a bathroom scale hanging in the same spot of her desk. she was a little overweight, or self-conscious about her weight at least and this guy felt this was an equal and appropriate retaliation to her clock gag.

he unfortunately was not with us much beyond that moment.