A sticky situation

[Droopy]

An old friend of mine and his wife moved out to the east coast not too long ago. We are originally from Ohio. His wife is mentally ill and I never talked to her too much until she read an essay that I sent to my friend that I wrote about my struggles with mental illness. Then I started getting phone calls from her because she thought she could relate to me. And I can. I know what she is going through from her talks with me.

Anyway, she starts telling me how she is being harrassed at her job as a pharmacy tech. I thought that was bad and I told her that she should talk to management about that. So the next call I get from her is that she has quit the pharmacy job and has taken a retail job. Everything seems to be working out at the new job.

Well, tonight I get a call from her telling me that she is being harrassed by men at her new job. I asked her what exactly had happened. One man had asked her to do something that wasn't her job and another had adjusted his privates when he was talking to her- the same kind of thing that millions of women are exposed to when they watch a baseball game.

So I told her to go to management. She said she had done that, but she thought that because the HR person was a woman, that she didn't think she could handle the situation.

I think I know what is happening. There are a lot of things that go on in our personal lives that are less than pleasing. I think my friend's wife is encountering these things and she doesn't know how to handle them. So a simple case of disagreement or rudeness becomes a crime.

My mom is a working class woman and she has had to work in a lot of male dominated places. I remember one time when she told me the story of the guy who kept grabbing himself every time he talked to her. One night she simply said to him right after he had done that, "What? Are you afraid I'm going to take that thing from you?" The guy never did it again.

My point is that there are some things that are happening to my friend's wife that I think are a part of every day reality and she doesn't know how to handle it without going over the deep end. Every single job that she has had she says she had to quit due to one form of harrassment or another. I don't know how to break it to her that there are some things that she is going to have to learn to deal with. So I end up sounding like a paternalistic fool while knowing that I really need to tell her the cold, hard facts.

What would you do?

[JVS]

1. Tell her that not everything is about her. Sometimes people just need to adjust their crotches.

[Droopy]

2. LOL!

I wish I could make her laugh. Maybe you could give her a call. :)