Stand Up for Yourself

Last year I worked as a cable repair technician for a phone company. I was the only female technician in the vicinity, as you can well imagine. That didn't bother me at all, and truth be told, I didn't think about it all that much. In school I am one of something like six females in what started out as a class with over two-hundred guys, so being in the minority sex wasn't a huge issue at the phone company that I worked for.

That is, however, until a particular incident occurred.

It started out harmlessly enough. A unisex poster was put up on the washroom door, saying to knock before entering. Men being men, they completely vandalized the sign by making sexual references. I laughed, because some of it was pretty creative and amusing. It wasn't until one hot afternoon about halfway through the summer that something happened to make me realize that these men were bitter toward having me around.
I was talking to a customer about replacing his phone pedestal while I walked to the back of the truck to put down the mandatory pilons. I was in mid-sentence and lifted the first pilon when something fell to the ground with a clatter. Upon looking down to see what had fallen the first thing I saw was a woman's breast. The customer knelt before I could say anything and picked up the object.
"Where did this come from?" he asked, holding the case out to me. I looked at the case and it was a pornographic DVD, made worse by the fact that it was still in the wrapper, and actually show-cased "shemales" (half-man, half-woman). The message was not lost on me.
I took the DVD and told the customer that a lot of people didn't like the phone company, as is the case with any company, and continued on my way.

There is something to be said about working in a place where the male presence is dominant. They seem to form a clubhouse mentality, and when a woman enters the little gathering, the men get all their feathers ruffled.

I didn't quit my job due to this incident, nor did I make a formal complaint. I advised my manager on the events that had transpired, and he did his own investigation and called a meeting that I was not allowed to attend. Apparently he was very angry, and many guys approached me in the weeks that followed to say that they were sorry that I had had such an experience.

There's no way to know who was responsible for the disgusting joke, but be aware that such things do happen.