AuDN4T

As women, we often hear it – a female tries to make a change – is assertive and is called difficult. You’re told to sit and listen to men with large egos go off on you and tell you how to do work. If they get emotionally dysregulated – they’re considered charismatic. Women emotionally dysregulated? Just emotional or a b*tch.

I’ve had a male colleague get emotionally dysregulated because I told him his team needs to clean up after themselves – this was an environment requirement. He ended up taking my work cellphone. He went through it. My manager is messaging me during this time asking me if I’m safe in this situation and he’s asking who is <insert managers name here> while he reads my messages. He’s asking for legislative requirements on where we need to clean up (local city bylaws prohibits discharge of anything that may enter the sewer drain and impact quality of water; along with Ontario EPA). Other male leaders couldn’t quite step in to get this person to regulate themselves.

Later during an investigation, HR questioned – why I didn’t call 911.

1. You do not know how people react to these situations. You do not know their personal history, what traumas they’ve gone through.
2. What are the consequences following this incident? Is his manager or his 2 level up manager going to retaliate against me?

Well that is what happened. His 2 level up manager – director retaliated against me. He accused me of being the one who caused his emotionally dysregulated team member to get a written warning – impacting his promotional future. I am the problem because a man cannot control his emotions when telling him we need to follow legal requirements to protect the environment.

What did this director also do? Drag my name during his yearly meeting with his team because I brought up HSE issues at a different occasion – noting my concerns for his workers – something he should be concerned about. But that information didn’t bode well with him. My teams message “tone” was wrong. I had a female colleague (who attended this meeting) come up to me later to ask me when am I leaving my role. Wow. Nice. This is the second time I’ve ever spoken to this person. The first time she was overly loud during a call in the office and I never complained about it. Never said a mean thing to this person but here a male leader already killed my reputation because his ego was hurt and she’s written me off.

It’s also great when you try to bring safety standards to a product being developed following a request from a customer to follow local standards. You work with a fellow female (great colleague and she was thankful for bringing her into the conversation) on this topic to convince others – because safety is an after thought. When you bring this case up with a male coworker, what does he do? Yell at you to stay in your lane. Stay in my lane. Is it because I’m a female and how dare I influence safety standards on a product males use? How dare I keep people safe?

We can also talk about another male leader who was upset that we brought up a safety concern about transporting product (could have resulted in others injured outside of the organization). We set up a call with relevant stakeholders to find a solution. This director didn’t show up to the call and immediately ran to the CEO to complain about roadblocks. Never reached out to my colleague and I to talk through the issue. Never sought to understand. Rather than solve the problem, we had to navigate male emotions and people willing to break laws. Organizational values of integrity aren’t followed by leadership – what makes them think that their team members will follow them? What kind of double standard is that? How can you hold those front line individuals accountable if directors and CEOs can’t follow their own values? Or are they just one sided? If they’re willing to break laws, what else are they capable of? Lying to board members about the HSE department not a specific program in place? Because that also happened with another director. (The program was in place).

Now I don’t say all men are like this. I’ve had many male colleagues who have done what is right and I consider them great people. However, women have to work so much harder to do the right thing. A director could easily ask someone to get fired outside of their department and HR has to comply. It’s awkward being in a training session where this female colleague is explaining that it should be ok to make a mistake, scared for her job – and you have no idea what this whole thing is about but the tension in the room is heavy. Maybe it’s the neurodivergence of being able to pick up on these subtleties. Also during orientation they talked about it being ok to make mistakes. But it’s ok for directors to break laws. The double standards are wild and leave a bitter taste in my mouth… and not the good espresso kind.