Things that happen at work:
So, before I started working at auto zone, I was pretty typical American and very overweight from working a desk job for about ten years. After two years of walking for eight hours a day, Iām down to a healthy weight and average shape for my age. Which is nice!
But while I was heavy, I got asked pretty frequently if I was pregnant. And it honestly used to make me really mad in the moment, but then Iād get over it and laugh about it like a week later. So, big deal but also not? People usually mean well, and it was always men asking in a thoughtless way, not ever other women being passive aggressive.
And while thoughtless harm is just as damaging as intentional harm, itās (for me at least) a lot easier to forgive. Iāve caused a lot of thoughtless harm that Iāve had to apologize for over the years, so I definitely get accidentally hurting someone, and being genuinely sorry, willing to never do that thing again, and still not being forgiven. (No one owes you anything, ever, and when you forgive someone, you do it for yourself, not for themā¦just because you forgive doesnāt mean you forget, and saying sorry, genuinely, doesnāt mean you automatically get to have forgiveness)
So anyway, I lost a lot of weight (like more than 100 lbs, what with drinking water and walking 8 hours a day) and the pregnancy assumptions dropped right off.
But Iāve had this one deaf driver from another store (he picks shipments up from us) always scolding me about smoking and I finally figured out why. He thought I was pregnant or nursing (because of the shape and age of my body as a woman) and heās not wrong but also my specific medical history is very clearly out of his wheelhouse.
Itās so odd to run into such a nice man, who means wellā¦he spent about six months (seeing me three times a week) trying to lecture me about smokingā¦and again, this man is deaf, so our communication is all gestures and hand signals, and heās one of the deaf that doesnāt care about what you think of his voice or vocalizing.
He does care about whatever food we have on display (my sister brought in banana bread and cookies on two separate occasions and he made sure he got his nummy yummiesā¦Tbf my sis is a bamf when it comes to baking and she uses my employee discount as paymentā¦)plus other opportunities where baked goods and yummy stuff was available for everyone. Always asks for a second helping to get him over the road, whichā¦valid and fair.
Anyway, heās been hassling me about smoking because he thinks Iām pregnant or have any children at all whatsoever. Which, I know what I look like, thatās not an unfair assumption, itās just been two years since anyone made that assumption. So it surprised me.
All of this was figured out with very simple gestures and written notes, it was honestly bizarre to realize that he thought I was a physical mom the entire time and Iām just sitting here like āmy work kids give me joyā
Language barriers are not a joke.