I’m a metrologist (fixes chemical instruments) for a pharmaceutical company. I do most general repairs needed across my site but if a rare part breaks, I end up calling a vendor to come out and fix the repair. My problem with my job is the vendors. Most of the vendors are older males that will treat me different from my male coworker. If I walk in and politely ask them to put on the proper PPE required to be in my labs, they always talk back or give me a really stupid excuse to why they can’t wear lab glasses. If I send in my male coworker, they will immediately listen to him and not push back. There has been multiple times where I get “never see a woman in this position.” Another thing that routinely happens is having push back on a repair I know is needed or they don’t believe the troubleshooting I performed? If it’s an advance piece of equipment, they normally throw a specific error and there is a checklist I go down to isolate what part needs to be replaced. I’m so sick of having them ignoring my requests or just steam roll me in front of my analysts.
I was told that I needed to take charge of the vendor because we are the paying customer, but that’s not how I work. I should be able to calmly communicate what I want done without all the bs. I should be respected because I have put some much time into learning these niche systems. I don’t know what I need to do to make them treat me like my male coworker.
I mostly love what I do, but these vendors are just wearing me down and I dread coming to work on days that they visit. I don’t know if the decision is to report all of them or what. I reported one guy couple of years ago that made a extremely rude comment about me while I was pregnant. The feedback I got was to be patient because “he is old and just doesn’t understand women. You know how they are.”
Do any of you have advice for dealing with people like this?