Got balls anot?
I found a pair transplanted onto me. Yes, it sounds strange now, walking around with 2 pairs of the family jewels (destiny? the call to spread the seed?). Ridiculous, really, but I found the testicular fortitude to stand up to several people this morning. Ironic, too, since I was late for this morning’s meeting.
He got the ball rolling first, this short, squat irritant, by asking the one question on everyone’s mind: wherefore production and benchmarks? The fact that my big boss wasn’t around must have given him the courage to speak up, what with the meeting being a ‘proper forum’. And I, eyes still sandy and swollen from a late night, just blabbed on and on. I felt the tension in the room suddenly released as other colleagues starting speaking up. For weeks, now, everyone was wound up and ready to fly apart and this morning, all of a sudden, the dam seemed to burst.
Not that anyone cared that our big boss was just a room away, and definitely in hearing distance.
Everything from reimbursements to benchmarks to bonuses and increments just came flooding out, and for once, he appeared to be flustered. And strangely happy, I think. I think everybody was, as things were now out in the open, things that we would only talk about in private, and bitterly.
It’s a very male-dominated profession, mine. My then-boss made his point eloquently one overcast Thursday, my 3rd day on the job. We had trekked through a small swamp to reach a river where an excavator had submerged about 8′ into the muddy, “squelchy” banks of Sungei Kong Kong in JB. We were looking at the accumulated mud and silt before us, knowing we had to get past the ‘rescue excavator’ (which had promptly sunk as well) to our goal.
He was in his berms, and I was decked out in my short shorts; I was to learn later that he dragged me there to show me how hard things would get on the job. He looked at me and grinned, “We’ve got to get across to that excavator. It’s mud, and it’s soft, so step where I step,” he said. I could only nod, as he turned around and took his first step.
And promptly sunk right up to his waist.
He flailed about for a while, and being the polite sort that I was/am, I asked him if he needed help — the very soul of solicity, me. Macho man that he was/is, he refused, then proceeded to give me advise on how to dislodge oneself from mudsucked boots.
It was hilarious.
“Which woman in skirts would want to do this?” he asked, later.
After having been here for almost 2.5 years now, and seeing three ladies join and promptly quit, I can’t think of any woman (let alone, man) who would want to do this kinda shit. If I sound like a chauvanist (and I admit after the above, I do), well that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
My point, anyway, is that my company’s full of domineering men, a veritable cave of neanderthals, myself among them. The only ladies we have are our support staff, all exclusively ladies. Cute Malay ladies and one really cute punjabi lady *ahem*. That’s how bad it is. The problem with an all-male office is, you tend to be led by men with strong personalities, and juniors have a strange relationship with their seniors, not unlike one’s relationship with one’s officers in an army, I’d imagine.
I won’t go into codes of brotherhood and such, but we are bound by a peculiar sense of honour (except, of course, for those who choose to backbite: we have only one such asshole). Because we’re under constant pressure most of the time, all of us tend to feel like stragglers just pushing along through sheer willpower and hanging on to each other — in a very masculine way, of course.
Which explains our reticience when confronted with policies we don’t like. We are fiercely loyal to our big boss, this no one questions, and so when he speaks, we not only listen but we follow through, and follow through with steely determination (like we have a choice?). As far as we’re concerned, he runs the office like he’s our father, grandfather, godfather, godbrother and elder brother; in other words, very patriachal. Which, incidently, is what makes our branch the best in Malaysia (and it’s not a boast, to be very honest).
Which, if my colleagues would think about it, makes today so damn significant. Big boss wasn’t there, of course, but none of us were under the illusion that he didn’t hear anything (to make sure he knew what we were thinking, I made sure the meeting minutes reflected it).
After 2.5 years, it’s a victory of sorts.
