Working for a living is not easy, I’m sure most people would agree. Some think that being a “working stiff”, in
fact, really sucks; and, indeed, very few really do love their jobs. This is my own story of how my job, which I
had intended to be my lifelong career, started out just being a way to make a
living in a high-tech modern environment and turned out to be something quite
different - all because I was a working woman trying to make her way in a man’s
world.
My name is Lyndy Sutherland. It
all began when I was hired to work for a very large international company named
Renault-Bruner Corporation (Canada) Ltd.
This happened several years ago in the mid-90s when I worked as a
systems analyst in one of the largest computer installations in Canada. I liked my job, but, like most people, I
wasn’t crazy about it. I knew that in a
few years, I would be ready to move on.
In the meantime, I wanted to accumulate as much knowledge and experience
as I could at this huge company. Just
because I had a Bachelor of Science degree in computers didn’t mean I couldn’t
learn more – and teach others as well.
Only, some people learn well and others don’t, as I was about to find
out.
It really wasn’t my fault that my new boss (the new Project Leader) was
one of those people who no longer wanted to learn anything new in his career. In his mind, he already had all the knowledge
and skills that he needed to do his new job, and a relatively junior person
like me on the totem pole was not going to be allowed to interfere with his
daily routine. So, I knew that I was in
for a real struggle as a woman in this still male-dominated computer industry,
within this huge company. My daily
experiences would include male chauvinism to such an extreme point that it
almost cost me my job and, ultimately, my career.
Nobody likes to be put down constantly, especially for things for which
they are not to blame. It eats away at
you day after day after day, when your superior professes to know technical
things about a particular computer system, which you know for a fact he doesn’t. My boss, Malcolm, was a man who “knew it all”
and didn’t bother trying to hide that fact.
He had worked for the company for at least ten years. In ten years, a person could have learned
many things within the same job or done different jobs or even started a new
career, if he or she was so inclined.
But, Malcolm was a man who felt he knew everything there was to know
about large computer systems, and this one was no exception. That was the case when he came to work in a
brand new job as the chief coordinator of the large project team of which I was
a team member. There was a small core
group of programmers and analysts in this group and I was one of them. Malcolm was the person who would now be in
charge of any large-scale implementations by this group. In addition, our group project interfaced
with other group projects within the company, so that all implementations done
by us affected them too, and vice-versa.
It was understood right from the beginning (via our Project Manager), when
Malcolm first started with us, that the system was going to be new to him,
relatively speaking, and that he would have to do a lot of listening and
observing of the team members in order to understand what had to be done and to
make sure things got done on time and on, or under, budget. He assured his bosses that the job would get
done and done right. They had a lot of
faith in him; after all, they were the ones who had hired him.
Not one month to the day that he arrived, I knew that real trouble was
brewing between him and me. He was my
new boss now, yet we had a real knack for getting on each other’s nerves,
without even trying. One day, I had to
go to the Project Manager (Don), to lodge a complaint about the treatment I was
getting from Malcolm. I said to Don that
if Malcolm didn’t leave the project eventually, I felt that I would have
to. He asked me why I felt that way. I said that Malcolm was determined to
undermine all of my efforts to get my job done correctly and completely. When Don asked me for examples of his
behaviour, I told him that Malcolm would literally pick apart my work which
had, to date, been above-board, and then he would make me re-do it. He did this on such a consistent basis that I
was having to re-do almost everything, even if there was only a minor revision
required. Needless to say, it was very
time-consuming and exhausting to keep doing this kind of thing on a daily
basis.
But, I just couldn’t afford to quit my job at this time. I had so many debts and bills to pay off,
plus, I was a conscientious parent with a daughter. I knew that no one in a position of authority
over me was going to understand or support my decision to quit a “perfectly
good” job. Little did anyone know how
much I was suffering! And, I didn’t know
who I could trust anymore. I was
literally caught between a rock and a hard place, with nowhere to go and no one
to talk to about what was happening to me.
Unfortunately, I did not feel that Don had a true grasp of the nature of
the problem between Malcolm and me. Not
that I could blame him. He was a man,
after all, and could only be expected to see things from a man’s
perspective. I did know that he wanted
to understand the situation though – I’ll give him that much credit. As my boss’s boss, I thought he was great
because he was such a caring and empathetic listener. But, he was a male. I don’t think that he understood just how
difficult it was, from a woman’s perspective, for me to work for such a man as
Malcolm. It was getting increasingly
difficult for me to continue working for Malcolm. Eventually, I had to take a few days off and
get some tranquilizers from my doctor because I was such a nervous wreck. Don tried to remain encouraging, telling me
to hang in there for at least three more months and try to work things
out. But if, after that time, I still
wanted to leave the company or work somewhere else in the company, he would
release me without repercussions and with a good reference, no matter where I
wanted to go. In the meantime, he told
me that he really valued my contributions to the project and that he required
me to stay on for now. I, for my part,
said that I would try a little harder, but that I could give no guarantees as
to how much longer I could stay on.
I did try harder after my meeting with Don, mostly because Don had
displayed his own faith in my abilities.
I just didn’t want to let him down.
He was counting on me to complete my part of the project. Although he didn’t dwell on it, he must have
known that losing any experienced team member now would have made Malcolm’s job
almost impossible to perform. Not that I
ever would have felt sorry for Malcolm though.
He would have deserved whatever happened. I decided that I was now staying only for
Don’s sake because he insisted that he needed me there.
From that day forth, it was still very hard to get up each morning and
get ready to come to work. Almost the
first thought that came into my head upon waking was how very distasteful
working for Malcolm was rapidly becoming.
I really had to force myself to get ready and get out the door to catch
the commuter train so that I could arrive at work at a decent time (before 10
am!). Most of the time, I was at work by
9:30, which I thought was very good.
However, no matter what time I arrived (if I did actually arrive that
day) I tried my best to stay out of Malcolm’s way. It was horrible what he was doing to me. I just couldn’t please him no matter what he
asked me to do for him. But, the worst
was yet to come.
One day, about three weeks later, Malcolm was doing performance reviews
on all of the team’s members (including me).
He was such a novice at this activity (surprise!). As a matter of protocol in the computer
industry, performance reviews were done four times a year, mostly because
people’s skill sets can change dramatically in a matter of a few months,
depending on the person being reviewed.
I wanted him to do mine because it would give us both a chance to clear
the air about our differences and perhaps allow us to start off on a fresh
footing. I knew I could do the job, so I
thought that my review would be okay. I
had done everything he had asked me to, and completed it on time and on, or
under, budget. And, I had done it
correctly and completely. So, I felt
that he had very little to seriously criticize me for. I just wanted to discuss things openly and
honestly with him so that he knew where I stood. I also hoped that he, being a mature adult (I
assumed), would want the same thing I did.
Little did I know at the time but, he never had any intention of
“hearing me out”. He did not want me to
say what I thought, but he was definitely going to have his say, no matter what
I thought about that.
My performance review was extremely disappointing, to say the
least. He criticized me for all the things
that he’d asked me to do that had nothing whatsoever to do with my assigned
duties as a systems analyst. In fact, he
had been assigning work to me that other people would not, or could not,
do. And, he did it because he wanted me
to fail. In other words, if he had given
me something I couldn’t complete satisfactorily, it would have given him the
excuse he needed to have me fired, once and for all! He failed to acknowledge my earned level of
expertise regarding this particular project, upon which I had worked so hard to
succeed. He ignored my detailed
knowledge of the databases and applications upon which the entire project was
built. And, I felt sure that he wanted
me to fail because that would make him look good to his bosses. I suppose that, in his mind, my failure meant
his success. That just didn’t make any
sense to me at all, but there it was, for all to see.
I told him that he was wrong about me.
I detailed for him what this project was all about and how it
worked. I told him that database had been my specialty at university,
and that application programming involving databases was second nature to
me. And, I had the education and
experience to back up my words. None of
that meant anything to him. I may as
well have been talking to a dead person.
He was consciously shutting out all of those facts about me because he
wanted to (or, couldn’t help himself).
He didn’t want to admit that I actually had the requisite knowledge and
skills to do my job and do it well. That
was the last thing he wanted to do.
His review of my performance after knowing me less than two months was
so unfair that, from that point on, I no longer trusted any of my superiors,
and I resolved to protect my own interests.
I continued with the tranquilizers from my doctor just so that I could
cope with the incredible stress. I
continued doing what he asked me to do, but I also started recording all of our
conversations on tape and backing up our email messages in disk files, plus, I
made hard copies of everything for my own set of files. I felt that he just might succeed in his
quest to get me fired and I knew that if that happened, I would need proof of
his attitude and behaviour toward me (preceding the firing) when I sued the
company for wrongful dismissal. I had
heard of such cases being brought before the courts before and I wanted to have
every chance of success in mine. I did
not trust Don any longer because he now had to defend his own decision to hire
Malcolm as the new Project Leader in this project in the first place. If Malcolm didn’t work out for some reason,
it would make Don look bad to his own boss, Jack (the Group Manager), and he
would have to explain what had gone wrong.
So far, Jack had not yet become directly involved in the controversy,
but that day would be coming soon.
Finally, “the day of reckoning” came, about a month later, when Jack
finally summoned all of us - Don, Malcolm and I - into a private meeting in his office. I was really afraid that this meant the end
for me at the company, so I was, quite naturally, dreading the meeting. But, I knew that if I didn’t face them now
head on, I would always be afraid. So,
before I arrived at the meeting, I gathered together all of my “documentation”
– the hard copies of my proof of what had been happening, as my backup. It was quite a pile of paper to behold! When I was asked quietly by Jack to describe the
events that had unfolded, I, just as quietly, pointed to the big pile of paper
and asked him where I should start. Both
Jack and Don looked amazed at this stack of paper and asked if I really needed
to go through it all? Oh yes, I said,
most definitely. So, they murmured that
I could skip that part and just cover the essentials. From that point on, I hit the highlights
only.
By the time I was through, an hour later, I had managed to convince them
that most of Malcolm’s story about me was purely bogus. But, now they both had their own reputations
on the line. Firing Malcolm would make
them both look bad to their superiors.
So, they kindly gave me the option of looking for another position somewhere
else and remaining on the payroll while I did so. They had acknowledged that there was indeed a
personality conflict between Malcolm and me and that it would be virtually
impossible for me to continue in the project with him. But, they were NOT going to fire me! On the contrary, they were going to release
me with no repercussions of any kind AND with a good reference! I could take my time looking for alternative
employment, either inside or outside of the company and, whenever I got an offer;
I could then be released from my present employment contract. I said “fine”, counted my blessings silently,
told them I would let them know when I found something else, and then left the
meeting, relieved that it was over.
About two months after that pivotal meeting, I did find another position
with similar responsibilities and pay.
It was a technical systems analyst position within the same company in
another project, thus preserving my seniority and increasing my pay
somewhat. I had gone on several
interviews both inside and outside of the company, and fortunately found a
suitable position without having to change companies and losing my accumulated
seniority. I was also fortunate enough
to preserve my employee pension and benefits, as if nothing had changed at all. So, I felt I had won a significant round in
my battle for my career in the computer industry.
Shortly after I finally left the project behind for good, about another
two months later, I heard via the grapevine that Malcolm was a total
“screw-up”, and had finally proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt! One weekend, a major system revision was to
be implemented. That is, the planned
revision was to go into live production, coast to coast in Canada. It was his sole responsibility to ensure that
the implementation would go smoothly. That
meant, NO problems! Unfortunately, he
had no idea of how to make that happen because he had never really gotten heavily
involved in the project and its applications to start with. My other team members had had more active
roles, but his role was relatively passive.
I had been involved in the beginning stages, but my part was completed
already. The part that wasn’t done was
his responsibility. When the online
system revision failed because of his patent neglect, there was hell to pay
from the company’s executives! Customers
from coast to coast were affected and thus, it was a very serious matter from a
company perspective.
As it turned out, Malcolm could not “weasel” his way out of this
disaster. I also learned that he had
even tried to blame me for his problems with the implementation, but it was too
late for that. I had not been a
responsible team member in that project for at least two months! Malcolm had had those two months, after I was
gone, to do a test-run of the system implementation in a pseudo-production
environment before doing a real-time production run. But, he had not done it! So, there was absolutely no excuse for what
happened that fateful weekend and he was the sole cause of it! Boo hoo!! All I could do when I heard about
this was to laugh, shake my head, and say to my former co-workers “I told you
so!”. It was great having the last
laugh. I wonder how many other women
could say that they were able to have the last laugh in a world of working with
men.
After that disaster, Malcolm had to step down permanently from his
leadership role, or be forced to resign from the company. According the grapevine, he had thought about
it and decided to step down into a more junior position, since he didn’t want
to have to resign (that would have been too embarrassing!). When that happened, I felt that justice had
finally conquered all and that the Malcolms-of-the-world would no longer be
blindly trusted to take charge of such an important implementation. I felt it was the very least I deserved for
being forced to go to hell and back while working for him.
In the meantime, my own career was now flourishing and I was both
learning new things and teaching others.
I had become the sole senior technical systems analyst in my new
project. So, I got the best of all
possible worlds in terms of work and my career.
I resolved that I would never again allow myself to be “raked over the
coals” by some male boss whose attitude to me was purely chauvinistic –
especially someone whose skill set had not yet been proven to be superior to
(or at least the same as) my own. A
woman is forced to prove herself constantly in this highly competitive,
“high-tech” modern world we live in, and no one can do it for her! If she is strong enough, however, she can
succeed. Unfortunately, in the world of
work, there are no shortcuts to success.
published by Authorhouse, copyright 2011, Anne Shier. All rights reserved.
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