tolerance

Sometimes I feel like I’ve landed from another planet with a different culture. There seems to be a disconnect between myself and what most others consider appropriate and polite conversation.

I've decided to write about my workplace environment today. I haven’t blogged about it before for various reasons:
- because I’ve been too busy to blog in the first place;
- because I worry about writing about it in a semi-public forum;
- because I’ve been telling myself this job is only temporary and why should any of it matter?

But I’ve spent so much time there lately that it’s a big part of what’s new in my life, and I guess it’s worth writing about. Ironically now I don’t know where to start; so I’ll try to give you a general picture for now:

I work in a large room with about 40 other people, all of whom, except for the managers, are temporary workers like me. By some unfair twist of fate, my immediate area is populated by a group of 20-something people who boast and joke with appalling airiness about violence and overdrinking and seem to enjoy making jokes and remarks that are mildly racist and blatantly sexist. Maybe it’s considered fair game because it is a mixed group of race and gender and everyone seems to laugh along, or maybe, like the rap lyrics some of them like to repeatedly recite, they think it’s just words and it doesn’t mean anything. But some of it simply stuns me, and I am at a loss for words.

So that is what I have done at my job, hardly speak a word to anyone at all. I come and go and try to just ignore it all and do my work, day in and day out, like a ghost or a shadow. Of course, anyone who knows me well would say it’s not uncommon for me to be at a loss for words in any group larger than two; and unfortunately it’s often true. But it’s more than just biting my tongue: too often I just don’t know what to say. So I don't say anything.

You’re probably wondering if there has been anti-gay remarks at my job. Well, there was a particularly memorably comment along the lines of: “Who would want a woman for a president? I mean, what man would follow a woman president ? Except maybe for some stupid gay guys.” Everyone broke out in laughter, which, perhaps I am imagining it, seemed to have an embarrassed tone, because the woman (yes, woman, not man) who made the comment, seems particularly dense, and perhaps the others felt they knew what she didn’t: that there was a gay guy within earshot.

I’ve thought about all of this and I’ve wondered whether I should just continue to brush it off because, well, everyone is “nice” to me and I don’t know if I want to argue with these people, and how important is it when the job is only temporary and I don’t feel like starting a battle or being a hero. I’ve thought about asking to move my seat, but I wonder if even the repercussions of that are really worth it. I just keep telling myself these people are being ignorant and it’s not my job to educate them.

So today the conversation was about video games. One guy joked that he hated "Mario Brother" and he’d like to “punch him in the face.”

The man who sits next to me asked “Why because he’s Italian?”

“No,” came the response “because he’s …”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Was he going to say "gay?" Maybe he stopped because he thought of me; but it might be because the guy next to me hushed him, because without pause, the next moment that guy turned to me and asked me what the tattoo on my wrist meant. I told him it meant nothing; it was just a decoration. I’m wondering if he was trying to see if I’d say it meant I was gay.

So I feel almost like I have been transported back to high school; the one place I would never want to revisit. The big difference is no one calls me weird. antisocial, socially retarded, creepy, or stupid, and, oh yes, a faggot. Not to my face, anyway.

So here I am pushed far back into the closet again. Yet I have no interest in coming out at work. I feel like opening that door for these people there will only invite more stress and hostility not less. So I keep telling myself I don’t care and it doesn’t matter. But the truth is, I think it’s been wearing on me just a little bit each day. Where do I draw the line?

So this is the annoying and emotionally tense aspect of my otherwise dull and repetitive job. Such is life, I suppose.

As you read this, most, if probably all of you are already familiar and thinking of a similar but much worse story unfolding at my friend Sean’s workplace. And maybe that’s one final reason I’ve hesitated to write about this; I hesitate to even suggest I am going through what he is. My job has been mostly annoying; his has been pure hell.

So my apologies to you Sean, if I sound at all like I can say I know what you’re going through. I know I don’t and wouldn’t ever wish that experience on anyone.

Tomorrow’s another day. I promise next time I'll write about something more fun (and include a picture too!)