Alien

A friend of mine recently opined that she (like me) was a man's woman-by which she meant that she found it much easier to work with men than women. I also often find that it is easier to work with men than with women.

What a lucky thing for me--since I work in IT in financial services (both of which tend to be heavily male.) I don't mind this most of the time--sometimes it makes things easier for me--I don't feel competitive towards my colleagues as some of the men I work with do. I can talk about XKCD comics instead of talking about royal weddings with my colleagues. But then there are moments like the one I had this afternoon, when it's not okay and I'm an alien.

This afternoon I was working with a couple of colleagues of mine in NJ. We were doing a proof of concept of me logging in remotely and setting up a new PC for someone in NJ*. I was on the phone with the guy who was getting a new PC and my colleague in NJ. It is true that they had me on speakerphone, and that they had worked together longer than I had worked with either of them, but there was something in their shared male laughter that I didn't quite take part in.

It wasn't that they had deliberately left me out of something--rather that there was a confidence and comfort to their discourse that does not, in any form, exist in my business dealings with any of my colleagues.

Upon reflection, I don't think this is a "woman who works best with men" issue--it's more of a "person who doesn't work well with others" problem.


*This was rather complicated--it involved figuring out what programs the user needed and poking around on the network in NJ looking for things that might be installation media, launching them and seeing what happened.