So I’ve been working at the National Home Show lately, it’s tiring work but its simple and can even be fun most of the times. The part I like the most is how every time you do this shows it feels like you are going back to summer camp. You see people you worked with last year, give each other the required updates and then continued by chit-chatting and not really working. LOVE IT!
Like any summer camp you have the good and the bad guys. In the home show there’s an area where 4 booths adjacent to each other are full of young, bored and desperate men (bad, bad combo!) of course their usual preys are girls like me, young, standing alone most of the time and forced to always smile for everybody coming in. One of this horny losers what surprisingly an old man (probably late 40’s early 50’s) he was very well dressed and almost seemed like a respected business man…until he opened his mouth.
My friend and I were walking around see what interesting free goodies some booths offered, Mr. Nasty here comes to us and asks us “hey why don’t you ladies dance a little! Come one show me some moves”, my friend was immediately uncomfortable I then laughed at the unusual request and said “in what way do we look like we are dancers?” and he then says (adding that nasty look guys give when they are not looking up, not even to your chest area just somewhere down there..ugh) anyways he says “well you just look like you can dance well!”
I was bemused by the fact that these comments did not come from the booths full of youthful, horny men but from the only old (dare to say semi-respectable looking) man. Well we just kept walking and forgot all about that. Fast-forward 3 days later and the old man again makes a comment about my potential “dance moves” and again looking down like a dog in heat, I could see right behind him that some costumers came in to see his booth but he was too distracted making improper advances so I take the opportunity for some good old feminist retribution
“Where the hell did you get the idea that I know how to dance? Seriously you have to STOP going to strip clubs so often, that way you’ll learn that not all women are dancers!! It’s insulting”
Of course I said it loud enough for his costumers to hear and it even when beyond a couple of booths where I head the other boys laughing hysterically, while Mr. Nasty laughed uncomfortably while he noticed that potential buyers heard my statement. Needless to say his costumers walked away as if they were never there and the woman even gave me a slight wink.
Awesome empowering retaliation? Check!
Yeah I know not the best example of incredible self-defense but believe it or not this was actually my first experience with sexual harassment at work and I think I did pretty well for myself. I didn’t cause a scene, I defended myself and I taught him a lesson by making him lose potential business out of his inappropriateness, so yeah! Is worth blogging about!
And now Mr. Nasty is back to behaving like a good boy NOT approaching me in any way and I’m back to not working and chit-chatting with my ‘pseudo-summer camp’ friends.
Happy times!
