I’m 26F and I work as a warehouse assistant. We have a new warehouse guy (I usually say warehouse person to be gender neutral, but in this case it’s imperative that you know he’s a man) and he started a few weeks ago. I am in no way, shape, or form his manager nor am I supposed to be training him. However, I’ve been with the company for a while and know the ins and outs of the warehouse. Occasionally, I will give him pointers about things he might be confused about.
Well, today we had a customer pick some material up and this particular order was going to go back to the manufacturer, but the customer wanted to add it to their order so we let them pick it up. This material was in a section marked “returns”, so to avoid confusion, I went out there myself to help locate the material and give to the warehouse guy so he can load out the customer.
I found the boxes of material and picked them up, with ease I might add. They were not heavy by any means. I was walking over to the front of the warehouse with one of the boxes when the warehouse guy saw me. He made a point to squint at me and yell “what the hell are you doing?!”
“I’m helping you find this material,” I said back, kind of confused. “You shouldn’t be doing that, you’re a woman!” He says. I’m dumbfounded. I’m sure my face visibly twisted, as I replied “what is that supposed to mean?!” He said something about men having to do the heavy lifting so women didn’t have to. That’s not how I took it, it definitely sounded like I can’t lift things because I was a woman.
So with a straight face, I dropped the box at the front of the warehouse, went back for the second one and did the same thing. Promptly went to the manager and made a complaint. Was I right to do this? I feel like I let my anger take control instead of thinking it out first.