This must be "blog about work" week.

The Bouncer did it, although he does it often. Dewey did it. And so will I.

Interesting facts I learned about work yesterday:

1. The ratio of men to women, overall, is 25:1.

(And y'all thought I was just exaggerating!)

2. In management, it's almost 50:1.
3. 45% of women who work for B abuse alcohol.
4. 65% of men do.

And then there was this fascinating conversation I had with a fellow engineer yesterday. Note: this was a guy I sort of liked, until this.

I was talking to this guy, A*hole, (now known as Married Aerospace Engineer, or MAE, although I didn't know he was married at the time) who's funny, sarcastic, and blunt, and knows his shit, so I've gone down there a few times to pick his brain. I like him, and so of course I was teasing him about being a stereotypical engineer--zero tolerance for stupid people, and I mentioned "retail therapy" and he didn't know what it was, so I was teasing him about having little to no contact with women. At first I was enjoying myself, but then he began to annoy me. First, he was extremely talkative, talking on and on and not letting me get a word in edgewise, which works for awhile--I'm used to picking his brain, after all, which requires him doing most of the talking--but becomes monotonous not long after. Second, he was swearing--a LOT. Using the f-word gratuitously. Like, instead of saying "stupid people", he'd say, "f*ing stupid people". Over and over. And then he made a joke equalizing beauty and stupidity, saying that he tries to aim for beautiful and dumb women. I turned around like I was going to walk out, and he said, "Oh, I'm just kidding," and I turned back.

And then I began to complain about SWE, how women who belong to SWE usually have mustaches--really, they attract the ugliest women I've ever seen--and he took that thought and ran with it, saying that women who make it high up in Boeing are either beautiful women who do exactly what they are told, or "ugly butch women with huge f*ing biceps, who know that they'll never have a man to support them, so they have to work hard."

I was silent throughout this whole exchange, and then I said, perfectly calmly, "Wow. It's like talking to a caveman." To which he said, "You know, a lot of women say that to me, but they come down and talk to me anyway," and I said, "Hm." And just turned around and left.

Now that I think about it, I was perfectly justified, but I could have handled it better, like saying, "Well, those of us who are more evolved find it instructive to occasionally see what not to do," or, "Oh? And how's that working for you?" before leaving. Who knows. He called after me, "Bye!" but I was damned if I was going to say anything.

See how pleasant my work can be? Nothing better than working constantly with arrogant, egotistical, male engineers.

Note: I was talking to TheBoy's sister, who's in town for his going away party (sniff!) and she's pretty high up in the Air Force, so a lot of our experiences overlap or are related. I was joking around, saying that the problem with surrounding myself with men is that when I start being annoyed by a typical manly trait, I'm constantly annoyed by the same trait, and she contradicted me and said it wasn't fair to generalize like that--we're encouraging men not to generalize about us, so we shouldn't generalize about them. And she mentioned at some time other in the conversation that the ratio of men to women in the Air Force is 6:1.

Ha. Ha. Ha. If I had just six men around me, maybe I could get to know them as individuals, too. When I'm outnumbered 25:1, I'm in no danger of them generalizing me--if you only see one woman every three days, it's hard to get a large enough sample size to support a generalization--and my only defense is generalizing about them. Trying to get to know each man on a personal basis would completely drain my energy.