Behave Yourself

Four men have told me to behave myself. This has all happened very recently, within the last month. While those two words and four syllables - be-have-your-self - say more about the men than they do about me, I would like to explore in words for you, dear reader, just what circumstances compelled these men to attempt to put sideboards on how I live my life.

Exhibit A: I'm sitting in a meeting, in Grand Junction, surrounded by handlebar moustaches. I am cogently explaining the programs I manage and a new project in the works. Another male manager leans across the table to me and asks with a smirk, "How much is that gonna cost us? Thirty two million?"Referring of course to our recent thirty two million dollar accounting error in Denver. I lean across the table to him and say, "About three dollars a person, but thanks for asking. Your question was extremely helpful to all of us." Dead silence in the room for a beat. Then twenty people start laughing and handlebar moustache man is red in the face. Special note: This is not the only instance in which I give him the what what. There is another one, but you get the point.

Exhibit B: I have several meetings with the Director over the course of five months, about a merger we are going through and about a very political project I've been working on. At one point I think I get exasperated and throw my hands up and say, "Dude!" After our last meeting he says, "Behave yourself, but not too much." Special note: I'm still analyzing that one.

Exhibit C: I'm sitting in a meeting in Denver, with a guy with a handlebar moustache from Grand Junction, not related to the special man from Exhibit A. We are discussing meeting options for our budget meeting. This older man, who was most likely hot shit in the 1970s, says, "There's a new gentleman's club. We could go there for the meeting." To which somebody replies, "But would the women be invited?" To which he says, "As long as they dance." I have three options here, as a high-ranking female manager who has the responsibility to stop sexual harassment in the workplace. I can ignore it. I can use sarcasm. Or I can very intelligently and firmly explain that the comments are inappropriate and unappreciated in the workplace. Of course I use sarcasm. I told him that his comment, coupled with the fact that he asked me to get him coffee at the beginning of the meeting, made me want to take him behind the building and beat him in a fight, which I was sure I'd win. I think I also told him, "Dude!"

Exhibit D: My father-in-law, a man I love dearly and use sarcasm with whenever possible, has been slightly befuddled at my insistence that my husband take some turns hosting holidays, as in cooking the entire Thanksgiving dinner, including organizing it and doing grocery shopping while I drank vodka from a plastic cup. At Easter dinner, I filled my plate ahead of my father-in-law, and he started blathering about the men always getting to eat first in the family and so on and so forth, to which I replied that if he needed somewhere to cry he could go in the back bedroom and I'd go the extra mile and get him some tissue.

Behave yourself. From each one of them. Independently. Without holding some sort of inner circle meeting to coordinate their strategy. I take it as a sign that I make them slightly uncomfortable, or maybe that I lack the tact, or maybe that I need to zip it more often.

I find it highly amusing.