Had to deal with a shitty coworkers microaggressions and I called her out on it. She immediately got defensive so I dropped it, but my non-binary coworker just walked by and said "cis people" and it completely flipped my mood around and made me laugh really hard.

  • Angel [any]M
    ·
    7 months ago

    I hope I can get this too because this has been my experience with being trans and looking for work so far:

    [CW: Interview Story; Contains Transphobia]

    I applied to a beauty product shop lately, and I wanted to work in their retail department. The owner said, based on my resume and work experience, she'd like to meet with me at this very nearby coffee shop, so when I showed up and approached her, the first thing she said was "Oh, I thought you would be female.". Not even joking.

    Mind you, before this point, we only had email contact, and my name is gender-neutral, so she had really no basis for how to envision me besides my name.

    The way she phrased her concern was so awkward that it honestly made the very short remainder of the interview extremely uncomfortable. We ended up only talking for like 3 minutes. I am a non-binary transfem who definitely looks more feminine than cis men usually do but have only been on HRT for about half a year, am still generally perceived more as male, especially when I speak and in my current form, so I felt oddly startled by her saying that.

    We talked vaguely about what I could do for the store and what experience I had, and by the time I left, I got a near damn immediate email response from one of her workers saying that they're not proceeding with me with a pretend "We'll keep your application on file, just in case!" added at the end.

    And yes, seeing as how I live in Florida, I'm certainly not convinced that this most likely wasn't the only job that rejected me on the basis of me being trans. They were probably just the most plainly obvious.