Interviewing, working and Pigs

Yes, I spoke to a friend yesterday and her world is very busy with home improvements and a travel job. She talked about a roadblock in her plans to get closer to home and travel less. Arguably, her job is great considering she deals with angry internal and external customers on a daily basis. It is amazing what a trusting and flexible boss can do for intelligient employees. The major draw back is travel, so when a job in her area of expertise came up, she took a try at it. During the dreaded all day, say the same thing to 20 people interview, she asked if there were any questions and one manager said, that being a woman is the drawback. After much smoothing over by HR, she went for the second interview. During the interview, an international manager decided to tell her US rules don't matter and delved into personal including how he trained his wife to clean house. He said women don't know anything. She tropped on, even though she should have demanded to see the head of this group and HR then confront the guy. She turned down the job and yet another guy had the guts to say that she must not really want to be closer to home that badly. In the end, she said that it is better to deal with the pigs in the sty that you know. It turns out that in her current work, like so many women, she is a go to person for getting things done. Some of the guys around her have not compunction about calling her, expecting her to make things work for them and not even asking if she is available first. Not the best way to treat a bright and talented director. She fights back in that difficult to fight professional way taught by many an executive coach. However, here we are again, back on the crassy knoll. If you are periodically a perpetrater of this stuff, cut it out. If you are a recipient, push back respectfully. Don't ever expect that you need to take crap from anyone whether it is during a job interview or your day to day work. However, please take actual action. Whining to your coworkers won't get it done.