Another thought—
I guess I should add this to “rules” … but I’ve implied it:
— I reserve the right to take comments which might get lost and turn them into posts.
I can still hear her words now— forty years later. They come in over my shoulder like a small wisp of fog. They caused a twist of fear to go through my gut back then, and they still do.
She was so young then twelve or thirteen when she asked me:
“Do you think it is ok for a woman researcher to steal a man’s research and claim it as her own work– my mom says it’s ok because women have been held back for so long.”
When I look at all the cultural destruction and the waste and fraud that has been left behind for today’s president to clean up, and I remember how easily it was for the past two generations of female leadership to demand silent obedience. I hear those words again. It seems they became the guiding principle for every female seeking a position of authority ever since.
It’s not so much that the ideals of fair play and equity they espoused were wrong—it is the lack of ethics with which they tried to enforce their brave new world.
Most women I’ve known in positions of authority tend to be “sexist” (which is a word and connotation I don’t care for) … but it was against other women, not men. I never had a problem working for a (competent) woman but in much of my experience and observation, I would have disliked being a woman working for a woman.
mmm . . . good observation. I think that is accurate to what I have witnessed.
I was doing some subcontracted design work for a large limestone company that was headed by a woman that inherited the company from her father. Immediately I was, of course, suspicious but tried to keep an open mind and my eyes on the prize. She interviewed me herself and was very professional, courteous, accommodating, and dare I say gorgeous, even at her mid 40’s. Long, wavy blonde hair, etc. Keep my eye on the prize which was decent coin and the opportunity to learn a new branch in my profession.
She was very impressed with my work and asked me to design a “forever home” for her and her husband and teen son, which I did. After a few months she told me she was going to start a new company geared toward the household uses for quarried limestone. Fireplaces, planters, furniture pieces, and artwork. They had 20 old school manual stonecutters on the payroll in addition to half a dozen largescale 6 axis CNC stone fabrication machines and 6 quarries. She asked me to name this new company and come up with a list of about 100 assorted products they would offer to the public in a brand new website and onsite showroom. WoW!
I opened creative faucets to full power and got to it. Hundreds of sketches, lists of lists, watercolor washes, cost analysts, etc. A month later I overwhelmed her with new information. This was in addition to the regular construction design work I was doing for her stone company and the design work I was doing for other folks.
So she spent the money, hired the right people to assemble the new website, hired companies to create the graphic and video content on the website based on my sketches and drawings, even had product ordering processes online. Quite an endeavor. She promoted me like I was a world class designer and presented me to business associates as if I was her right hand. I was uncomfortable.
I work from my home office and her establishment was some 60 miles away on mostly 2 lane country roads. A trip there and back tore a big hole out of the middle of a day, and anymore, meetings in general tend to wear me out. The preparation, the dialog, the materials, etc., etc. I’m not a gung-ho yung-buk any more.
She had taken to calling me at all hours of the day and night to “exchange ideas” and “brainstorm” and “hash things out”. Just doing the design work wasn’t good enough for her, she had to talk about stuff. Lots of stuff, and from a variety of angles. An hour on the phone with her and I was wore out like I’d just dug a 100′ ditch in clay. It was getting old.
I went to a general meeting at her office one day and there was a charge in the air. Everyone in the office seemed nervous and were hurrying back and forth trying to get stuff done. This place usually had a relaxed attitude but today was not the case. I asked Greg, the office manager how it was going and he said something curt and spun on his toe and disappeared.
I was standing at one of the large plate glass windows along the back of the office building staring at the activity going on in the manufacturing buildings across the way. Large Hyster forklifts carrying 10 ton blocks of stone, low boy trailers hauling thousands of pounds of stone, workers walking from building to building, stuff getting done on a grand scale. Suddenly there was an explosion and the walls shook and the air was sucked out of the atmosphere.
Her office door was thrown open and she stepped out and said loudly, “Where the hell is “ghost”?”
silence, as everybody’s mouths hung open
“I said “WHERE THE HELL IS “GHOST”?”
By then I was in front of her and said I am right here.
Then, in front of everyone else, she dressed me down and said, “When I call a meeting at 1 pm I mean EXACTLY 1 pm not 1 minute later!” I told her I was there BEFORE 1 pm and had been waiting for her to make an appearance.
I just threw gasoline on the sizzling barrel of smoking hot dyn-o-mite. She latched onto the front of my shirt and yanked me toward her. I was half a second away from knocking her ass out and Greg stepped in and grabbed her arms, calmly telling her she can’t be grabbing onto me. Now he did it. She let go of me, spun, and laid a solid knuckle sando on the side of Greg’s head – his glasses went flying. She was screaming hysterically, shaking violently, and just melting down big time. I never seen anything like this.
Not wanting any further involvement I left post haste and got in my ride and hauled ass. 10 minutes down the road and I realized I was still shaking as I was trying to get my head around the insanity I just witnessed.
The aftermath of all of this continued for several more months but I never seen her in person again, our business relationship was legally dissolved and monies were transferred. In the end she was apologetic and pleading but as far as I was concerned the relationship was broken to such a degree as to be unserviceable.
A tragedy occurred and I don’t get over them so easily. I do what I do not for the money, though if I did I would be very wealthy, but rather the opportunities to “joint venture” with people in achieving their goals and knowing the end results of the efforts of my toil will continue to exist long after I am gone.
Especially so with things made of limestone. Even when you throw them away they still exist. If someone no longer likes a fireplace surround I designed and throws it in the dump a thousand years from now someone will unearth it, see my engraved logo on the back and wonder what the story is behind it. Forever work.
That woman owned limestone business taught me something but I don’t know what I learned.
Good read Ghost! Well done, but sorry you had to experience this–I wonder how many professional men who have worked under a female boss have had a similar experience.
The company I worked for performed years of work with a certain customer. As time went on, the older people we dealt with either retired, passed away, or advanced to a position that was above dealing with our work. The last dealing I had with the company was to provide a bid for some renovations of part of the facility temporarily being run by the daughter of the man that created the company. I provided the bid, and waited.
After a month of not being informed whether the bid was accepted, or rejected, I called to ask about the bid. The woman rejected my call, further future calls were unanswered, and even though I left messages about what i was calling about, she never so much as gave me a courtesy call. I told my boss I’d rather be told to go jump than be ignored. In business, it’s insulting, and I have a feeling the daughter was never taught the integrity required to be good in business.
The company sold most all of the facilities within a short period of time after the children took over running the company. I’m guessing it was due to the arrogance, and ignorance, of the new management. The daughter probably didn’t care, since she was an immediate heir to what her father created, and sold.
That paints a picture we have all witnessed!