Tattle Tale

I tattled today and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Several months ago, I entered a room shortly before a meeting and made myself comfortable in the nearest available chair. After introducing myself, the man conducting the meeting looked directly at me and made a blatant comment about a couple of my body parts - no not those - my eyes.

If this had occurred at a bar, I would have dismissed the comment with a thank you. This, however, came at a business meeting from a State employee who was there to provide information to us. We were speechless. The comment was ignored, but several of us did have a difficult time with his credibility after that. The others told me later they wished they had a photograph of the look on my face when he made the comment.

I am not a feminist, nor am I a prude. I have spent a great portion of my adult life working in male-dominated areas and have often been the sole woman in many business meetings. Never had I experienced a blatant pick-up line on any of those occasions. What happened to all the sexual harassment training from the 20Th century? This guy was a chip off Michael Scott from The Office. Michael Scott is very funny on TV, but not at a real live meeting with my tax dollars paying his salary.

Today his boss (a woman) met with our group on other matters. We had discussed whether or not we should bring up the incident. The consensus was yes, inappropriate behavior should be stopped or it will continue here and elsewhere.

So with reluctance and support of the group who were witnesses to the event, I tattled on the guy. Perhaps his wife will hear about his behavior and solve the problem for us.