Thursday, June 17, 2021

My Story Part 170 – Coming Out At Work

I liver two lives, one at work I was my male persona and once the whistle blew as Diana and the two worlds never collided or so I thought.

For most of my life I was in the closet… it was my big secret.

When thought I was having a heart attack in 1999 and laying in the emergency room that night I released that life was too short. I had already found trans website on the web and I saw that the world didn’t come to an end when one came out so after the emergency visit I sought out a support group.

I started attending the meetings at at a local support group and with them I started going out in public as Diana and becoming an activist as I wrote two weeks ago in My Story Part 168 and I was starting to be concerned about someone from work seeing me. You have to understand back then I owned the first Prius II in the state, it was a bright red and my license plate is a vanity plate, so I was worried that a friend or co-worker my recognize my car and see a woman driving it.

One Friday I was in HR and we were just about the last ones in the building; we were wrapping something about the techs and the HR director asked me what I was doing for the weekend. I have known her for about 20 years and over the years I knew she was very pro-LGBTQ+, her daughter was straight but was a member of the high school GSA as in Gay Straight Alliance, her daughter is straight but befriended a gay boy whose parents were not accepting.

Anyhow, I answered her that I was going out to a semi-formal fundraiser for a non-profit, she replied, “Oh you are getting a tux?” Now there were two ways that I could answer.

I choose to answer… “Well not quite, it is actually an evening dress. Let me tell you a story.” We talked for a couple of hours and I locked up the factory that night.

Her first words after I finished were, and I will never forget them, “There is a sale at Sims for dresses!” and then she said laughing that she can add another women engineer to the EEOC report!

A little while later I was asked to be the fill-in for a local NPR show that was going to have a segment on trans rights, Jerimarie the director of CTAC then was going to do the interview and if for some reason she couldn’t make it they would call me. Since many of the people at work listened to the show I thought that it might be a good idea to tell HR to give her a heads up.

She thought it was a good time to tell the General Manager, Ed, so we march into his office. When I got finished he said, it doesn’t bother me that you are gay… Um… Um… I’m a lesbian. He had a very hard time wrapping his head around that.

As I wrote before, the international multi-conglomerate that bought us out didn’t want a manufacturing plant, they were going to farm it out to job shops, so we were going to be shutdown. We had a choice get laid off or be transferred to the engineering department.

I was reviewing my testimony on the company computer when I accidental print out my testimony on the department printer. One of my technicians, who shall remain nameless, Ken came in to my office and threw my testimony on my desk saying “What is this shit!” Quick thinking Diana said… “Oh that’s my cousins when wanted me to review her testimony.”

A couple of months later I got my pink slip, I had asked if I could be one of the early one to get laid off.
Normally I get around a hundred hits a day on my blog right after I got laid off I was getting around 500 hits a day! WTF! I can tell what internet company the visits come from, I get a record of something like Beijing, China, China Unicom Beijing or Netherlands, Leaseweb Netherlands B.v. and all the visits were coming from the domain from the company domain.

I called my friend in HR and she said my technician sent out a company wide email to over a thousand employees telling them about me. She said that he was being disciplined for misuse of the company email.

Then the emails started arriving by the dozens, over a hundred emails from the company employees and not a one of them was negative.

I even got one from my former technician, he was an elder in the Jehovah Witnesses, he said that he didn’t understand it but he knew me and he knew that it must be good.

One last memory from work…

One of my technicians passed away the following year and I attended his funeral many of my technicians were there along with many of the engineers, we talked out in the parking lot and you know what? We didn’t talk about me but rather work, it was the usual gripe session. It was just like old times.
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Next week: My Story Part 171 – Me Too

1 comment:

  1. Interesting post. In 1973 I met a man at my job that was very nice. I was surprised to hear him speak as a guest speaker at my class. I was taking a class called Human Sexuality. He explained his journey of transitioning to a man. Later at work we talked and I was glad I heard him share is story. I try to keep an open mind and not judge.

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