This is a question for my female readers: Do you ever feel like when you tell a man you’re concerned about something, he pats your head and says, “There, there! Nothing to worry your pretty little head about?”
Over the last few days I have tried asking for help with various things at work, and the men all seem to say, “That’s not necessary. Don’t worry about it.” So then I dig in and start doing it myself and Todd sees me and says, “Why don’t you ask one of the guys to do that?”
I had a similar situation this morning where I was concerned about an area on the machine that has a chain and the area was filling up with beets and mud. I pointed it out to all three men (including my dear, sweet husband) and they all told me not to worry about it. When I saw Todd I pointed it out to him and he got one of the guys to go in and work on it. I find it exhausting to keep having this battle, as though I’m just a woman and don’t know what I’m talking about. Having Todd back me up put a spring back into my step.
Todd is a good boss. I should explain about him a bit. Todd is the boss of an area that I think covers about a one hundred square mile range, so it’s not like he’s at our site all the time. He was also our boss in Savage but since that was a bigger operation I didn’t get to know him as well. He said that his wife calls herself an October widow. He’s on the road so much in October that this year the company arranged hotel rooms for him. I can’t complain about our twelve hour days because he’s been known to put in thirty hour days making repairs to pilers.
Today he told us there were “tacos in a bag” in the scale house for us. Tacos in a bag turns out to be a personal-sized bag of Doritos nacho chips to which you add meat, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and sour cream and then you eat it out of the bag. Also, the scale house ladies made three different desserts for us to choose from. It was probably the heartiest lunch we’ve had since we started this job!
This evening Todd also told us he had a gift for each and every one of us waiting in the scale house. We all got really nice lap blankets that say “Sidney Sugar” on them. Todd said he appreciates everything we’ve been doing.
Personally, an exciting thing happened for me today. I finally got my second wind. I’ve heard about runner’s high, but this may be the first time I’ve experienced it. I was digging and hoeing and pitch forking sugar beets a good part of the day. The night crew had a hole break open in the hopper and it was dropping beets all over the ground, making it difficult to walk. Between my digging and Mark’s skid steering and Todd patching the hole, we finally worked our way out of the mess.
I must say here that a few days ago I was getting dressed and I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Where did these shoulders come from?” Tonight I’m feeling strong and healthy and I didn’t hobble out of the car when we went to the grocery store after work. Who needs to pay for a gym membership when you can get paid to build your muscles and get the workout of your life? 😉