Recollecting a few situations I’ve experiences in the workplace.

I remember in my first job out of uni (early 90s) our team was having lunch. I don’t remember the discussion that lead up to it, but one of my fellow male colleagues said there was no such thing as rape, because a women enjoy the sex anyway. The only woman at the table just got up and walked away.

I must admit I just completely froze. I was just stunned that someone said something so insanely ignorant. Being a shy young man at the time I really just didn’t know how to react. Afterwards I did go check that my female colleague was okay and express my disbelief at what happened.

That incident pretty much made me ready to believe any terrible story about male behaviour.

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At a software vendor’s offices for two days of training on their product. Walking out of the training area, through the cubicle farm to use the washroom facilities up the back, and seeing explicit pornographic images being used as desktop wallpapers on employees’ computers.

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One office I worked in, a female colleague had a beefcake photo as her desktop wallpaper. Although I felt this was as inappropriate as say, a male employee using a swimsuit photo, nothing was said, by me or anyone else.

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At a conference, out getting coffee on a warm day and chatting with another attendee. Four young women in smart business attire, including reasonably tight skirts, walk past. This guy’s focus was completely lossed on the conversation, coffee, sunlight, or me smacking him in the back of the head, while he stared unblinkingly at these women until they went around the corner. Ugh. [1]

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Another job working in the city, the building across the alleyway from us was an apartment building, and it appears several of the residents were young, nubile, not fully clothed and forget to close their curtains.

Was not uncommon to look up from my desk and see two or three guys standing at the window staring across. They were not actually licking the glass or otherwise being a nuisance, and being a visually oriented young man myself I understood the distraction it was. Still, I’ve always seem to have had more self control then my contemporaries. Perhaps I just have enough blood in my circulatory system to be able to power both brains at the same time.

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Same job, Lotus Notes was used for email for the company. This had the feature of replication for offline access and such. Male colleague, who was sharing use of a loptop for email access with a female colleague when they were off-site at the customer’s office, turns to her and asks, “Do you want me to replicate your box?”

Absolutely innocent, but a contagious fit of uncontrolled giggles spread around those within earshot. Aside from an observation or two that the enquiry should probably have been phrased differently, nobody made any stupid follow-up comments, and everyone took it in good humour for the unintentional faux pas it was.

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Last one, and my favourite. Dropping my librarian wife off at her workplace at the start of the day. The library had just opened and about ten or so people were drifting in. One of her colleagues was clearing the overnight returns chute when she exclaims at the top of her voice, “‘Fantastic Sex,’ I was looking for that last night!”

She looks up into the sudden silence were you could hear a pin drop, then goes, “The book! The book! Someone wanted the book!” while waving the titular tome.

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[1] That conference was about the same time the “Shit people say to XXX” meme was doing the rounds of the internet. At the time I thought it would be funny to do a “Shit people say to programmers” version where every forth or fifth one was, “Can you fix my computer?”

I also thought one on “Shit programmers say to women” where it would just be five minutes of awkward guys staring at womens’ chests would be too distressingly realistic. Apropos?