WomensStuff

In my early twenties I worked in the main office for a company that staffed medical imaging personnel (e.g., x-ray techs and sonographers) to local facilities. It was an office full of ladies and only one guy, and this guy was a jerk. His job was to handle the scheduling for the techs. He had been a daytrader on Wall Street but couldn't handle the stress, so I guess he was slumming it with us for a while. He was a very intense dude with no chill, and he clearly had a pretty low opinion of women in general.

Anyway. One of our ultrasound techs was heavily pregnant and feeling unwell, so she called out sick one morning. And this douchebag went on a huge angry rant about how being pregnant isn't a sickness, it's not an excuse to miss work, his wife never took a sick day during her pregnancy, and how the tech was creating more work for him to have to scramble to find someone to replace her at the last minute. And nobody said anything - all of the other ladies in the office were just silent. And I guess my New Jersey came out, because I told him the fuck off. Told him that he has no goddamn idea what it's like to be pregnant, and no right to judge her for taking a sick day, and he's in an office full of women, so he should be respectful and keep his sexist tirade to himself because nobody wanted to hear it.

I was so sure I was going to get reprimanded for that, but a bunch of the women in the office thanked me for saying something. I was really surprised! Even my boss said something like "yeah, you probably shouldn't have done that, but I'm glad you did."