Hello,
I work in the dietary dept. at a retirement home in Ohio. There is approximately 50-60 employees and of those employees only four of us are male. I am the only male out of about twelve dietary employees. I feel like I am being treated unfairly because of being male. I have been working there for a year and a half now. When I was hired in, I had several years of cooking and was starting my second year of a Physical Therapy Asst. program at my local college. My work ethic is good, I work hard, my attendance is acceptable and I truly care about the quality of care and food that i give our residents. I also try my best to get along with all of my co-workers and like to work with a team-aproach. When I first started there it didn't bother me at all that all of my co-workers and my bosses were women. However as time went on I found out that a lot of these women have bad feelings towards men.
Now, it seems that i hear derogatory comments about men on almost a daily basis.. They don't even bother to wait till I'm gone. They have no reservations saying these remarks right in front of me and then give me a half-hearted "no offense". I've also come across postings on our announcement board in my dept. with story-jokes where men are always the punchline. When a person says that all men are stupid and lazy, I can't help but to feel that those comments are directed at me.
What's worse is that I believe my pay is somehow influenced by my being a male. For example, a few months ago my female boss hired in two new girls to do the exact same job as I have done since I've been there. One was only 19 years old and had very minimal cooking experience. (she didn't even know that you have to cook creamed peas), and has recently been terminated for poor attendance. The other girl was a 29 year old girl who had experience at a college cafeteria, but now does a different job here because she was never able to handle the job she was hired for.It came as a complete shock to me to find out that they were hired in at 50 cents more an hour than I was currently being paid.
A couple of weeks later the company gave us our yearly wage. I got a whole ten cent raise, while I found out some of the other girls got more than that. Thinking that maybe they made a mistake I told the HR lady about the discrepancy. She told me that my raise was correct. So I asked her if the raises were based on performance or seniority. Her answer was that everybody got different amounts and she never told me why they were different. I always thought that a cost-of-living (y... raise was supposed to be the same for everybody, especially since they shouldn't be based on seniority or performance.
Over the summer I took a job where my dad works at, because they paid really well and I needed extra cash to help with bills and college expenses. So me and the HR agreed to let me work one day bi-weekly until the summer job ended. Towards the end of the summer I was working up to 60 hours a week beween those two jobs. At that same time my regular employer had a lot of employees quit or got fired (which is really common there). My boss kept calling me all the time trying to get me to cover those lost shifts, but I had to tell her no because of the enormous hours that i was already working. Now since the summer job ended and I came back I can feel that she has contempt towards me. I asked off for the first weekend back, because I wanted to see a concert and also because it had been two months since I had a single day off. I got it off, but since then she has scheduled me for the last eight weekends in a row. It's normally her policy to give the employees every other weekend off, unless if you agree to work. After week three, I asked her if I could have a couple of weekends off in a row to make up for the three weekends that i worked in a row. She gave me a real snappy " NO, it's your weekend to work, I gave you that one weekend off !" I looked at the schedules from the last eight weeks and I'm the only one working ANY weekends in a row, much less eight of them.
Finally, I was talking to a female co-worker (who is a really nice girl) about a non-mandatory meeting that happened a few days ago. The meeting was supposed to be between HR and the employees of dietary. They usually use these meetings to discuss any problems with our supervisor and to find ways to improve our work. The nice girl in formed me that the meeting was more about dogging me than anything else. Three of my female co-workers told HR that I had changed mentally and that I must be on drugs. They also said that they should drug test me and try to fire me. I was shocked, I felt so betrayed and really felt like crying. I've always been so nice to them and always try to help them every chance i had. I can't believe how much these women hate men.
I feel so powerless because I feel like I can't do anything about it. I can't say anything to HR because she happens to be good friends with my boss. So if I say anything, nothing will be done and I will probably be treated worse in retaliation. These particular women are very manipulative and love to get vengeance.The fact that its the women doing it to the men makes it worse. The laws meant to stop these situations are aimed more towards men harrasing women. But what they are doing to me is every bit as bad. I would like to just quit and find another job. But, jobs are hard to find, plus I don't want this to happen to any other men who just simply want a harrasment-free job. Please help me. What Can I Do?
