Things Men Say to Me at Work

Concerns about time and writing

Every Friday, I start my waitressing shift at the country club at 4 o'clock. This is also around the time the Tass group, a group of golfers who tee off around noon, stagger into the club for their post round, afternoon beer. It’s the same crew of about 15 men, and the majority of them are rude, grumpy, and demanding. 

“Hi!” we say as they enter.

“Coors Light!” they bark back. “I’ll take a Guinness!” 

“Hello to you too!” we chirp through smiles that immediately fall from our faces when we reach the beer tabs. They wave empty bottles at us to get our attention like they are flagging down rescue helicopters (one of my biggest pet peeves) and act as though the clam chowder that is taking too long to get to them is the one thing that is going to save their lives. 

They usually only stay for an hour, just in time for me to clean off their tables, sticky from teriyaki tenders and ripped open Splenda packets for their iced tea, to reset the room with white tablecloths for dinner service. 

A few of them are nice, but the majority, not so much. 

Tom likes to talk to me. I do not like to talk to him, so it usually takes about 30 minutes of avoiding eye contact before he calls for me by name. Since I got married (two years ago), he says the same thing to me every time. 

“So, have you turned on him yet?” 

I assume he means that now that I’m a married woman, a wife, I will be turning into someone my husband does not recognize, a naggy annoyance that has come to ruin his life. 

Once, Tom took the opportunity to explain what he meant and rattled off about how when he got married, all of a sudden, his wife started making him take his shoes off when he entered the house. 

The nerve of that woman! 

She is always at him about leaving his socks out of the laundry basket, while she leaves her socks on the floor, too! 

I don’t know how Tom stands it.

He stays at the club as long as he can before rattling off a take-out order to being to her, that sits in a bag at the bar, slowly cooling and congealing until he’s ready to go home to her. What a charmer!

He is not the only man who said similar things to me when my engagement ring showed up. A whole slew of them rolled their eyes and shrugged like I was in for some impending doom. 

Married? They questioned, why on earth would you want to do a thing like that? 

But last week, Tom switched it up. He had asked me what else I do for work and I mistakenly told him, in as few words as possible, because someone who didn’t know that you shouldn’t bring dirty shoes into the house as a grown man will probably be very confused by my internet job. 

“I run a literary magazine,” I said. His eyes lit up as he asked for more details. 

“We run writing workshops, too,” I said. 

I could tell he didn’t get it, and because the kitchen was yelling, “order up,” I backed away, saying, 

“Just google Write or Die Magazine, and you will find it.” 

I didn’t really want to tell Tom anything more about my life, but I’m a terrible liar, and the truth slipped out first. 

This past Friday, Tom reported back to me what he saw online. 

But instead of something normal like, wow, cool, Kailey. Nice website you got there, he said: 

“You know, I didn’t realize that you were getting up there in age.” A weird smile was on his face. Condescending. 

“We all thought you got married young, but I guess not.” 

I’m 33. 

The man sitting beside him, mouth full of chowder, said, “I thought she was eighteen.” 

I do not look 18. Sure, maybe that part is a complaint of some kind, but I was suddenly so angry that my age was being discussed among them that this man had just basically told me that he searched me on the internet and all he found was that I was older than he thought. (And must have really searched because my age is not on Write or Die…why would it be?)

“I’m still young,” I said, heading back to the kitchen. I wished I said something else. I wished I’d said, “What is that supposed to mean?” or “What are you implying?” or, in a perfect world, “Stop talking to me unless it's about your lunch order, or “Dude, you are like ancient.”  

I avoided eye contact with him, did not ask if he needed a refill, and bitched about him to the kitchen staff. They try to get a good look at him through the little grimy kitchen door windows. We all made fun of his sweater. 

* 

That night, while trying to sleep, the energy and fatigue of my nine-hour shift made me exhausted but unable to drift off, I was still frustrated. This interaction with Tom is by no means the worst I have encountered while working in such a male-dominated environment for over ten years. 

Not even close. 

But for some reason, it bothers me more than other recent comments or suggestive remarks.  

I think it has something to my own anxiety around time. Specifically when it comes to my work as a writer. 

*

I’m worried I’m not doing enough. I’ve had three short stories out on submission for the past year while I work on my novel. Is that enough? Should I be writing more if I want to call myself a writer? Do I even have a writing career yet? 

While working on the fourth draft of my novel right now, I think of how it’s taken me three years to get to this point. Am I moving too slowly? Am I not pushing myself enough? Why is it taking me so long? 

 *

The summer I turned 30, one of my shifts was close to my birthday. Some of the men at the club asked me how old I was going to be. 

“30,” I said. 

They looked surprised and then so deeply disappointed. Like I had done something wrong, something they didn’t like. 

* 

I’m curious if these writing anxieties are also synonymous with me being a woman. A woman who has an expiration date on everything, it seems. There is a ticking clock on my fertility, on how long I can be perceived as beautiful. Perhaps that is why I’m assuming there is one in my writing career, too. 

I know careers can happen at any stage of life. Age is just a number, as the saying goes, and for the most part, I believe that. I hate the little checkboxes we are assigned as a society. 

Get married at this age, buy a house at this age, babies by the time you are x. 

I haven’t done anything of these things right. I don’t even own a home, and by the looks of things right now, it won’t be any time soon. 

I’ve been able to make peace with those kinds of “deadlines.” (sort of.)

But it’s been harder with writing. 

I still have this idea in my head that the same clock is ticking in my writing life, and I’m hastily clicking away on my keyboard beneath it, trying to outrun it. 

I’m terrified that by the time I start querying my novel, it won’t be interesting to anyone anymore. That I somehow missed my window. 

*

But then I remember the work. The real work. The work I do alone when no one can see me. When I’m just an ageless woman typing, her own world at her fingertips.  And suddenly, my writing life feels endless. Infinite. My own.

*

Now, when Tom sees me, because he has no idea how to talk to women, he just points at me and says, “Write or die!” 

I roll my eyes at him. 

As much as I can’t stand him, at least he is reminding me at work, where I don’t really want to be, what my real life purpose is. 

“Write or die!” 

Write as much as I can before I die. 

Which, at the old of age of 33, could be any day now.