Male dominated fields still exist for all sorts of reasons and so do backwards-thinking people.

See how this manager defended a female worker facing discrimination.

You will NOT speak to my tech that way.

Years ago I sort of managed escalations from a third party call center. What I mean is I worked for the company which contracted out first tier support for the call center. I was the last stop before engineering got involved.

We were open 9am-8pm with only one senior tech on duty from 6-8pm. The third-party call center was in Canada and we generally communicated over IM (Yahoo, I did say “years ago”).

Discrimination was launched this evening and he wasn’t having it.

Female techs are fairly unusual even now, at the time the call center had two, both were very good and I used to joke that I’d trade any two of the guys for another of the women.

So one night after 6pm I get a text from Tina, the more senior of the two female techs. She’s got some guy on the phone who “Wants to talk to a man.” He wouldn’t tell her the problem, wouldn’t troubleshoot, just “I want to talk to a man.”

Okay, I’ll handle it, transfer him to me, don’t start another call…

When I answer the phone he tries to launch into his issue but I cut him right off and proceed to rip him a new one. “How would you like it if somebody tried that stupid *&^% on your mother or wife or sister?” was about the nicest thing I said to him.

He made some demands and they were effective.

To his credit he stayed on the phone and took it all. Finally I laid it out:

“What we’re going to do now is transfer you back to Tina. She will take care of your issue and when your problem is solved you will apologize PROFUSELY for what you said before. You will explain that its late and you’re tired and you weren’t thinking. Then, tomorrow you will do something very nice for a random stranger.”

Thats what we did, I stayed on the line while Tina took the call, beaming with pride as she fixed his stupid simple issue in record time. He then made what sounded like a very sincere apology.

I don’t know if he actually did a random act of kindness but I like to think he did…

Here is what people are saying.

He is! Liam, we love you.

As a woman in tech, this feels good to read.

Easy to imagine!

I second this. Allies are so important.

I’m sure in some workplaces they need to out-perform their male counterparts to prove their value.

It’s sad that so many people still think like this caller.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.