At the end of work today, a coworker turned around and asked me - very sincerely - if I was ready to apologize to him. Apparently he felt wronged, which he had mentioned in an email earlier in the day with the subject line reading “Yo”. Forget the fact that I sit directly behind this gentleman, as I have for going on two months now. Forget that he has a properly working voicebox and I, ears. Even forgetting all those things, I find it difficult to take into consideration a supposedly sincere sentiment when it is present in a box that is covered in bro paper and saturated in bro juice.

[As an aside, which I feel to e completely relevant to how I generally felt about the email as a whole, but it doesn’t quite fit into the flow of the story as I’m retelling it, I replied to this email with my own email asking, “Did you really just send me an email about this when I sit right behind you? Seriously?” Because I’m an asshole who disregards people’s feelings. That is going to be visited below.]

I was aghast because apparently he had been stewing all day. I knew that he was quasi-upset, but it’s difficult to gauge with people, ya know? Like, I know that people get upset about irrational things - I have a conniption if someone uses the incorrect subjunctive or types the wrong here/hear or there/their/they’re - but I also know that when you’re looking at the grand scheme of the world, something irrelevant like that can fade away, especially after 10 hours of working next to someone. I was aghast because I can’t even fathom that someone would think to ask me, of all people, for an apology, even if I were wrong. 

I work with 60 men. There are now 3 women (as of today) and about 60 men, and something that any woman who works predominantly with men in a male-oriented industry driven by money will tell you is that you cannot bend. You can never bend. You cannot say maybe, you cannot be “bitchy”, you cannot give in and all because your reputation is all that you have for a very long time, up and until the point that everyone gets that you’re a tough ass bitch who can school them all, and that only happens when you’re the CEO. And so it is. But what I’m getting at is that I was asked to apologize for something incredibly minor by someone who is a man who makes more money than I do in an email entitled “Yo”. I am so completely in awe of how ridiculous that was today that I can’t even with people anymore.