I (25F) in October of 2021, applied for a job to work at a box factory and started off as a temp.
At first, most of the men that worked there didn't think I was gonna make it, but I proved to them that I was more than capable to do it. I applied myself and not even a month later started operating on a machine. It wasn't a big machine or anything but I shortly became one of the best operator of that machine. I impressed the higher ups so much that they wanted me to learn to operate one of the most important machines in the plant. I worked hard and tried to learn everything to it.
During the beginning of my job there, some of those same guys that thought I wouldn't make it started to request some photos of my body or to “passionately hug.” There was even an innocent where one of the guys found my Facebook and constantly harassed me to show him my breasts when he had a girlfriend!
As a single female, I started to like one of the guys there and we started to talk. He is by far one of the greatest guys I have ever met and he never came on to me. Shortly after talking to one another, we did end up passionately hugging and continued for months. But more on that later.
Words got around and people started saying that I was easy and have done everyone that worked at the plant. No one took me seriously even though I had proven myself over and over again that I was good at what I did and how well I produced products.
As time went on, I had to almost force ideas of how things were supposed to be done and give suggestions on how to fix issues. Even then, guys never listened to what I had to say but as soon as a male coworker would say the exact same things I had said, “oh yeah we should totally to that” or “yeah that would fix the issue.” There were even times where I would go up to a coworker and they would start yelling at me and talking down on me for no reason.
There was one guy who had been there three years on the same machine and was only a helper and NOT an operator. The main operator, the guy that I had been with, was ever on vacation, both me and this coworker are supposed to set up on orders and help run the machine. This coworker would get in his head that he was the operator, when he's not, and would start demanding everyone what to do and would talk down to the others that would be there to help out. He would yell at everyone for no reason and if there was an issue going on, he would blame everyone and would be too lazy to do anything about it. I was his equal, knowing everything that on that machine if not more but was treated as if I was nothing.
I had enough of it all and got to the point where I had walked away and had gone home(I always noticed my supervisor when I did and just get a point or whatever.)
I had talked to HR many of times and she would try to fix it to the best of her ability but my dickhead of a manager(DHM) never would do anything to fix the issue.
This week, I was told to go to DHM's office to discuss about what was going on. He avoided the issues that were going on and try to be like “well we can put you here.” As soon as I said no, they fired me without me trying to say that I don't want to work in an environment that was like this and ask them how they were gonna fix the issues. But they didn't want to hear anything that I had to say.
Being sexually harassed and being undermined constantly was draining and stressful. I'm almost kinda happy that they fired me so I don't ever have to worry about that place ever again.