I had a great Thanksgiving holiday. My holiday spanned two states
plus a brief crossing into Canada. During that time, among other fun experiences,
I saw a solo concert by my favorite dancing rock pianist (not quite as
"dancing" due to recent knee surgery, but I discovered he's got a
brother who plays bass and who is now my favorite dancing bassist); I
visited my college campus for the first time since graduating and
finally got to go to THE bar hangout spot that I'd heard about for
years, which is pretty much a rite of passage for Indiana University
students (even my parents hung out there, since they both worked at the
university), but which I was never old enough to go to during my time in
college (and I even got my hand stamped after I was carded! Woohoo! So
finally I can say I'm a true Indiana University alum); I learned from
explaining the "I wasn't old enough to go to bars until the summer I
graduated when no one was left on campus, and I never had a fake ID, so I
never went to the main bar" bit to my fiancé's family at Thanksgiving
breakfast that my fiancé's mom did have a fake ID (this is on par with
learning that Mrs. Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver had a fake ID), which my
fiancé now refuses to acknowledge; I got to celebrate my mom's birthday
early so I could be home for it; and I found a cat sitter for Christmas
for my little crazy energy fluff ball of a cat so we don't have to put
him in a kennel again (this incredible cat will be getting his own blog
post in the not-too-distant future).
But I also
had a horrible experience at the airport being groped by a TSA
employee. I always opt out and get the pat-down, so I'm very familiar
with the procedure and what constitutes an appropriate pat-down. This
was not that. My fiancé saw it, and while it was happening, as his jaw
dropped, I said over the TSA agent's head to him, half-jokingly, "I
think I'm being molested," and he replied, "Hashtag metoo -- by a female
TSA employee." As she went along, she continued to focus on one
particular area very inappropriately and repeatedly, and several times
my fiancé and I communicated over her head about the inappropriateness
of what she was doing. She ignored us, and when she finished, she said,
"You guys have a good holiday" -- to which my fiancé replied, "Yeah,
looks like you just got yours early." To make things worse, she had
begun the whole thing by saying, "Oo, fun for me" when told by another
agent that she'd be doing my pat-down. My fiancé and I made fun of her
in front of her male coworkers after she'd finished and walked off, but I
was in so much shock, I didn't think to get her name so I could file a
complaint (which I know would go nowhere) until I'd already left and was
telling the story to my mom over the phone. What the agent did was bad
enough that if I did have her name, I would consider filing a police
report, especially since my fiancé backed up that what he saw was way
past any line of what was appropriate and normal and okay for her to do.
I
wish I could go back and get her name and file a harassment charge. I'm
mad that I wasn't thinking clearly enough to do what I should have
done. And that reminded me of a past instance that I wish I had handled
differently....
A
couple years ago, I posted a "from the archives" post about my first
professional job interview. It was with the high-profile former head of a
major theatre organization who was striking out on his own with a (no
longer in existence) theater/film production company. He's a Tony Award-winning producer who since then has also served as president of a major
theatre company (a position from which he was asked to resign after it
was revealed female employees were uncomfortable with his "sweeties" and
"honeys" and that he had a relationship with an employee he promoted
twice).
With all the dominoes falling in
the entertainment industry amid sexual harrassment accusations and
revelations, my curious "interview" with him has popped into my thoughts
several times recently -- particularly the ice cream part of it, which I
blew off at the time as weird and pushy on his part, but upon
reflection as a wiser and more experienced adult, comes across to me as
something far more skin-crawlingly disturbing and sinister. He wanted
to start the interview (after I got in his black SUV on the corner of
two streets just off campus) by buying me ice cream. I repeatedly said I
didn't want ice cream, but he insisted on it, saying he wanted
ice cream and it wouldn't be very nice of me not to get ice cream with
him, and assuring me he was paying for it. He gave me some line about
how he had to get along with his executive assistant, and that meant he
should be able to eat ice cream with his assistant. He asked me my
favorite flavor, informing me he WAS going to buy me ice cream. I
vaguely remember there being some weird business about the flavor I
said was my favorite (vanilla -- specifically because I didn't want to
have a conversation about it) -- he wanted to talk about why it was my
favorite, and I was already thinking this wasn't going well. I caved
and let him buy me the stupid ice cream, which I really didn't want --
because I DID want the job and wasn't sure how to handle it.
Upon
reading Lupita Nyong'o's account of her experiences with Harvey
Weinstein, it struck me that Weinstein's insistence on buying her
alcohol when she repeatedly said she didn't want it served the same
purpose as this producer's insistence on buying me ice cream -- It was an
assertion of power, a test to see how willing I was to give in to that
power, and a grooming mechanism. Though I reluctantly did give in to
the ice cream demand, it made me shift "out" for the rest of the bizarre
encounter, which could hardly be called a job interview by any
professional standards. (And when I e-mailed him a professional thank you after the
interview, eight of his fifteen words in response were "after all we
have had ice cream together." I wasn't sure then what it meant, and I'm
still not sure, but it gave me the creeps and it cemented my decision not to contact him when I got to New York as he'd suggested I do.)
Since
that interview, every time I think of it, I wish current-me could
inhabit 21-year-old-me and handle it differently. On the phone when he
told me where to meet him, I'd say, "Actually, I would prefer to meet at a
coffee shop or one of the many areas of the student union suited for
job interviews." If he said he wanted to buy me ice cream, I would say,
"I don't want any, but thank you for the offer," and wouldn't budge on
the subject. And I certainly wouldn't get in his car, and at some point
in there I would have said, "I'm sorry, I was expecting a professional
job interview, and that's clearly not what you have in mind, so let's
not waste each other's time any more."
So
I'm posting that annotated journal entry again now. Because no one
should find themselves having this experience as a "job interview."
Because no young woman should meet a stranger for an interview by
hopping into his car on a street corner, no matter now many Tonys he's
won or how powerful he is. Because no one should be forced to eat ice
cream, or drink alcohol, or do anything else completely unrelated to the
job that they don't want to do in an interview.
And never go to a cemetery on a job interview. That one should just be a given.
"The Annotated Story of My First-Ever Job Interview": http://www.behindtheseen.me/2015/04/the-annotated-story-of-my-first-ever.html
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