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The Real Workplace Test? If You’ll Stay Silent
Speak up, get labeled. Stay quiet, get promoted. Those were the rules.
At my first job after college a woman I worked with told me a story about how her husband had to fire a young man on his sales team.
Speaking in hushed tones in the coffee room at work she said, “Bill had to fire one of this new hires.”
Her husband was a high-performer type. Despite having just graduated college he was already supervising a sales team of his frat brothers and their friends.
My friend intoned, “There was one woman — ‘cause you know they have to hire a woman.” She rolled her eyes and I started to wonder why I was even talking her.
She went on, “They were at a training and drinking a lot. These guys drink a lot,” she told me emphasizing, “a lot.” After a few pitchers of beer, one of the guys pulls out his penis and waves it around at the one female there. Classy.
“The other guys were there and saw it all happen,” she added as if the guy’s one hope of getting away with this had died. One thing leads to another and pretty quickly the dick-waver is fired.
She told the story like it was the woman’s fault. Like, “Hey, boys will be boys and she should know that,” closing with the fact that…
