Putting up with It — IE Storyteller
My second job in insurance was at a brokerage/MGA and I wanted to do well, of course. Our office was taken over by another about 8–12 months into my time there, and the new manager interviewed each of us privately.
This new manager was on his laptop the entire time he talked to me, saying “If I don’t look at you or I’m typing, I’m still listening.” It was overall fine, but then he asked me if I planned to have kids with my then-boyfriend. I was thrown by this, but said no. Then he looked at me and straight-up asked me if my boyfriend was OK with me going to events and drinking, would he get jealous or allow me to do that? I was definitely flustered at this point and answered as best I could, that he didn’t mind and it was fine. I didn’t mention that I wasn’t drinking at the time for personal reasons because I was afraid that would be unacceptable.
While at that same brokerage, I went to a local insurance conference.
I was told that, if I didn’t want to give the indication that I wanted to have sex with people, I should make sure to stay on the main floor.
That the upper floors of the hotel were essentially hookup spots for people at the conference.
Also there, I informed my boss of my recent anxiety and depression diagnosis. In that conversation, he was very understanding and said how his wife has similar issues and I should just let him know if I have a problem, that I’m salaried and if I need to go home one day that’s ok. So a few weeks later, I have a really bad anxiety attack, bad enough that I feel like I’m having a heart attack and I can’t breathe. I made sure to get my work done and then two hours before when I’d normally leave, I asked him if I could go home early and said I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
He immediately started going off on me about how this job is stressful, that if I can’t handle it this is going to be a problem, that this is just how it is and I need to deal with it.
Would we have said that to a man? I’m guessing not.
That’s what I remember at the moment, and while none of it is very extreme, it’s definitely a huge turnoff for me in the industry. I can’t tell you how many “honeys”, “sweeties”, and similar I got while working there.
