This is how a woman can handle the sadly tricky world of gaining respect in an all-male environment! It reminds me of many of the situations in Confessions of a Female Safety Engineer.
After college, Haley moved to Charlotte and took a job as accounting supervisor at a recycling company. Once again she was different, but this time it was because she was the only female executive. At the first board meeting, the president was running late.
“When he came in,” says Haley, “everyone was getting ready, and the CFO at the time said, ‘Nikki, why don’t you get Paul a cup of coffee?’“And I remember not knowing how I was going to handle that, but I knew that however I handled that would impact how they dealt with me going forward,” she says. “So instead of making a scene or embarrassing them, I said, ‘I’d be happy to.’ And so I reached over to my phone and called my assistant, and said, ‘Pam would you please bring Paul a cup of coffee?’“They never did that again.
“If someone says something inappropriate, fix it, change it, don’t ever let it go,” she says. “I think that’s the worst thing you can ever do. But you don’t have to embarrass someone in the process.”
(Source: Clemson World magazine.)