Kimberly N. West - Blog, Blog, Blog...

Am I paranoid?

This morning I was walking into a client's office which happens to be a large transit company in a metropolitan city.  As I was about to walk through the automatic double doors a gentleman stopped me and asked if I worked for this transit company.  I replied yes.  He asked if I would take an large manila envelope inside for him and run it up to accounting.

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In milliseconds my mind went through a series of thoughts:  1. Why can't you take it upstairs? 2. What's in the envelope?  3. Why are you asking me?  4. Security should be able to take care of that.  5. Where is your employee ID?  6. Could that be a bomb?  7. Could that be anthrax?  When I finally regained my composure I let this person know that I would not be able to help with his request and that he should seek assistance from the security guard at the front desk.  He said OK as he departed.  He never tried to speak to the security guard.

I was left wondering, would I have reacted with such almost rude suspicion before 9/11?  It didn't matter what race he was, or that he had on a nice suit or that he was rather polite.  All that mattered was that envelope, the contents and why he couldn't take it in himself.

Like many, 9/11 had a profound effect on me.  I lost friends, colleagues and memories when the towers came down.  In the mid 90s I worked across the street from the NY Stock Exchange.  For a little extra exercise I would take the subway to the Towers stop, drop of shoes to be repaired or clothes to be cleaned, grab a bagel with cream cheese and a cup of coffee (official NYC breakfast) from my favorite sidewalk guy and walk to work.  From 1998 until 2001 I flew to anywhere in the world that tickled my fancy, on a whim.  That has changed drastically.  On 9/11 my favorite Mexican restaurant was destroyed and one of my favorite places to shop was obliterated.  The place where my then boyfriend proposed to me is gone, international travel has slowed to a trickle and  I still can't bring myself to go down to lower Manhattan when I visit New York.

The experiences of that day have made us all more careful in our daily dealings.  However, I was never more concious of how 9/11/2001 effected me until, on May 10, 2007, this gentleman asked me to perform the simple act of taking an envelope into a building and I refused.  The entire interaction took less than 15 seconds and I had to ask myself...

Am I paranoid?

Excuse you, did you see me standing here? Part 1

I recently had a phone conversation with a female friend and colleague who needed to vent.  She is the owner of a small technology security consulting firm and apparently had a bad day.  This bad day stemmed from the treatment she received at a trade show from some of the other attendees and vendors.  I already knew what was coming.  It seemed that, while visiting  booths at this trade show, she had been ignored by a few vendors that she wanted to engage and treated rudely by some of the attendees.  She questioned if it was a race thing.  I told her no, I don't think it was purely a race thing, I think it was a race/gender thing. 

I felt her angst, I really did.  From my own experiences I know the frustration she felt in being made to feel like she was invisible or that these vendors, for whatever reason, didn't think she looked important enough to begin a dialogue with.    "Why were they interacting with every white and asian male that came to their booths while I was told that someone would be right with me and that someone never came," she asked?  Not once, not twice but three separate occasions at the same event.  To add insult to injury, she was trying to engage these vendors to spend money with their companies.  Big guarantee that will never happen.

Now, you may think that my friend is a shrinking violet or didn't convey that she needed to speak with a channel representative or didn't step up to the plate to ask for what she needed.  Let me assure you that she is indeed the opposite of shy.  The last straw came when she asked a passing male channel/sales rep for  assistance and he said that someone would be right with her.  After watching two people who came into the booth after her get serviced, she asked yet another rep for some assistance.  Same result.  A minute later my friend cornered the first rep she spoke to and asked what was the problem with getting service around here.

In her words...

"In the back of my mind I could see the situation play out in three different ways: 1. I could silently leave asking myself why no one honored my requests for assistance, therefore allowing them to continue with the horrible customer service I encountered; 2. I could catch a major sista-girl attitude with the rep I was speaking to and turn the place out, possibly reinforcing a stereotype that black women are loud and difficult;  3. I could take the high road and calmly and diplomatically ask why my requests had been overlooked and explain that I was there to demo a specific product because I had potential customers for it.  I took the high road", my friend said.

"I asked the rep, who never quite made eye-contact or greeted me with the same handshake and wide smile as he had the others, why I was constantly passed over and ignored.  He replied that they (everyone working the booth) thought I was part of concession services, not an attendee at the trade show.  I asked why and he began to stutter and couldn't give me a straight answer.  I let him know what my purpose was but, since I had been ignored, I would have to recommend their competitor's product to my clients.  I also went so far as to say that I would write the senior channel rep and alert him/her to my experience at the booth, wrote down the name on his name tag and walked away.   I should have gone for option 2. and turned the place out", she laughed into the phone.

Sad as it may be this is not an isolated situation.  I hear similar stories from women in technology all the time.  The most glaring and egregious examples however, always come from black women or darker skinned Indian and Pakistani women.  I personally, have had a few encounters that should have been chronicled in Ripley's Believe It Or Not.  I have heard male speakers at educational events make the most thinly veiled/outward, positively insensitive doltish comments.  Then stand there with the innocent 'what did I do' look on their faces when someone confronts them about it.  Interestingly enough, these comments do not always come from white males.  So on one hand these are gender issues but on the other hand these are also race issues. 

'Excuse you, did you see me standing here? Part 2 will set your ears aflame as I get up on the soap box and let you know what I and many women in technology think about the state of race and gender relations in the industry.

She's Baaaaaack

Hello World!

After a lengthy hiatus (a little over a year) I've returned with a head full of questions, commentary on the state of enter almost any word here and general rants and raves about being a small business owner, female technologist and whatever else pops into my head....

So what shall we talk about today?