Am I being dramatic?
34y/o Pipefitter apprentice here. I recently worked with a guy who said what I personally think is some off the wall shit. All of the guys I work with agreed it was messed up when I told them but for some reason I keep thinking about it and am wondering if I was blowing things of of proportion and they were agreeing with me to pacify me. I also just need to vent to people who aren’t men lol
Said man was a traveler at my local and has since dragged so not too worried about having to work with him again.
These are the things he said to me within the span of approximately 4 working days. Nothing in particular that he said had me clutching my pearls, it was just the sheer volume of it that shocked me. Not everything he said was sexist, but it was all passively confrontational. To my knowledge he didn’t talk to anyone else on our small crew this way and every time he said one of these things, it was a conversation that HE initiated. Sometimes it was 1on1 and sometimes there were a few of us standing around. I’ve been in the trade for a year and this was the first time I’ve encountered someone like this. He was a newcomer to the crew and I was short with him when he said these things but obviously got along great with everyone else and I think he realized he was an outsider and started just leaving me alone.
1 Asked me about my process getting into the apprenticeship and then told me that I got into the apprenticeship relatively quickly because I’m a woman and “if you were a brown woman they really would have let you in right away”
2 Asked me if I knew why women make better welders. Not the first time I’d heard this so I told him that most guys have told me it’s because we have steadier hands and better attention to detail. He said no, it’s because you put makeup on backwards in the mirror every day.
3 “Watch out everyone!! There’s a woman driving the lift and she has red hair!!” (My hair isn’t red, it’s brown)
4 Made a comment about “fucking fat bitches” then looked at me and immediately goes “OH SORRY no offense” then made some weird comment about pussy and fish
5 Asked what I had for dinner before work (we worked the night shift), hears what I had, with shocked look on his face “oh wow that’s very healthy of you”
6 commented on my clothes and hairstyle if I did anything different than what he had seen me in prior
“Oh trying out a beanie under the hard hat today, huh?” “Wow jeans and a tshirt, no bibs today!” “That ring is going to deglove you if you’re not careful”(my silicone wedding ring) “I see you’re wearing a braid today instead of the space buns”
7 Sees me reading on break and asks about it. Making conversation I told him my goal is to read 35 books this year and this one is number 9. “Ok but how many of those do you actually read because if you listen to them it doesn’t count”
8 Made some comment about the apprentices, referring to us as kids, he had already pissed me off so I snapped at him that I’m not a kid I’m a grown ass woman. He said well you’re a kid in the trade and I said yeah I’m really new, practically a baby in the trade. He goes “well at least you’re not a baby dancer (stripper)”