ammogirl

Today is an exciting day!  I am posting this from the base community center, where I am patiently waiting the arrival of my esteemed coworkers, so we can proceed to the chow hall for dinner.  And, would you like to know why I am at the community center?  WELL.  This is because the travel agency is located in this very building - as in the travel agency I just purchased my ticket from.  Yay!  Here I sit, ticket in hand, a post going up early, dinner soon to be in my belly - life is good.  Plus, it’s only 4:45 pm, which means….YES!  I got off early from work.  Okay, it was only because I had to pay for my ticket TODAY before 5pm, but still, I will not complain, EVER, about getting off work early.

So, the first day of the inspection: over.  It went well, I suppose.  The Master Sergeant inspecting my shop happens to be my technical school instructor, from 14 years ago, when I very first came in.  He looks the same - I doubt I do.  I like to think I am like wine, and improve with age, ha ha.  Anyway, I only remembered him because he has a very unique last name; he didn’t seem to recognize me, and I certainly was not going to bring it up.  I was one of hundreds of students he taught 14 years ago - he wouldn’t remember me.  Besides, he wouldn’t have deemed me high enough on the food chain to speak to anyway - he uh, hmm.  He, shall we say, is a bit chauvanistic.  Oh, sure, he only has one more stripe than I do - but please, I’m only a female, I CERTAINLY wouldn’t know anything.  Ugh.  Y’all, this is one of the things I hate, hate HATE about my career field - (disclaimer: this does not apply to EVERY GUY in AMMO, and certainly none of the ones that read this) anyway - I hate that there are still so many men out there that think that either women don’t belong in our career field, or, just in the military, period.  It’s frustrating, and I hate dealing with it.  The bad thing is most men will flat out deny that there is still discrimination occuring within our career field - it’s a losing battle.  It’s just this - to some people, quite frankly, the very fact that I don’t piss standing up, and don’t have any balls to scratch - not to mention "Man, that chick last night had really nice tits" would sound a little strange coming from me - makes me unworthy, unknowledgable, unmotivated, incompetent and sneaky, besides.  The "sneaky" part comes using my feminine wiles to get my way, win awards, make rank.  Oh, you didn’t know that’s how I won my awards and got my stripes?  It sure wasn’t by busting my ass on AND off work or studying for two months straight - silliness!  All I had to do was look through my eyelashes at just the right person, and make sure when I bent over to pick up that paper all the important eyes were on me, and VIOLA!  All my achievements - handed to me on a silver platter. 

It’s disgusting to me that after all the progress we swear to have made in this country, we have really made none.  It pisses me off that even BEFORE I GOT HERE in Korea, people were not saying about me "Yeah, I heard this Treena’s a really great troop - good stuff" but "Yeah, I heard she has a really nice rack." I hate that, as a female in my career field, that I know the VERY FIRST thing that will happen upon my arrival (and, honestly, I’m not being egotistic - this isn’t about just me, but all AMMO females in general) is the word will go out through the grapevine: Fat or thin? Ugly or hot? Bitch or nice? Married? Single? Do you think she’ll sleep with me anyway?  I hate that when a male sergeant has a problem, he can call me on the phone and tell me whatever he wants, true, valid, unfounded or not - he’s just voicing his concerns, right?  But if I get on the phone and say something, that is backed up by research, and printouts, and notes, because I have been working with these type of people for a lonnnng time, and I have learned my lesson several times over, and that lesson is CYA, EVERYTIME -  I’m just bitching.  "Calm down, Treena."  Grrrrr…..

Why am I so mad about this, if I have dealt with it so long?  Because after awhile, the men I work with, even if they are of the "little lady, you should be home wearing a bikini and cooking my dinner" genre, have gotten so used to my foot stomping and persistence that they have accepted me for what I am: a Technical Sergeant in the United States Air Force.  I hate my job, certainly, but I do it well, because I am a perfectionist, and I do not like to fail - and have gotten used to having my accomplishments speak for me, not my gender.  But when assholes like this inspector today, who is a "leader" in the Air Force, and holds in his hands the minds of impressionable 19 year old boys fresh in the military, looking for that "cool dude" to model themselves after; when this man, who should absolutely know better, either dismisses what I’m saying or simply interrupts me to get the very same information from people that do not know as much as I do - JUST BECAUSE I AM A WOMAN - it snaps me back to reality and pisses my shit right off.

Whew.  I believe the keyboard is smoking now.  Anyway, he was a jerk to my friends, too, and I don’t like that.  I’m a mother lion, when it comes to people that work for me (right, Jen?) and no, I don’t take to assholes, not one bit.

CIAO!