Stereotyping

Mary Alice did a recent post on stereotyping. I love Mary Alice and I really loved her post. It reminded me of years ago when I was in the automotive business; I'd been with Pennzoil for years, working part-time, and when I wanted to go full time with them, it just didn't work out. (In order to work for them full time, I had to start driving an oil delivery truck. You can understand my problem with that.) I then worked for a rare-coin dealer as the office manager for a year, before going back to the car business, which I loved.

I worked for a manufacturer. I started as the secretary, that meant I was the whole clerical staff, secretary, receptionist, bookkeeper and cashier. The longer I stayed with them, the more responsibility I took on, and soon I was on the service drive dealing with customers, and diagnosing problems, and I was going in the field making sales calls at car dealerships. In other words, I was doing a girl job, and a boy job, at the same time.


All the guys I worked with knew I was married. They knew Bob was a police detective with LAPD; but I didn't go to Bob's work, and he didn't come to mine. Part of that was hours and distance; he worked in Watts, and I worked in Orange County, about 40 miles apart, we lived in the middle, and we both worked about the same schedule.

Finally, one day Bob came to my shop. The guys at work really liked Bob, of course, but they all said they would have never picked him out as my husband. He didn't look tough enough; he looked like a minister or insurance salesman. They were wrong, of course; Bob is tough enough to be married to me, and his mild appearance helped him all thru his police career.