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Author: Marcia Venema
Date
Submitted: 11/25/00
City, State: San
Francisco, CA
Email: Cigarqeen@aol.com
I enjoy a non-traditional job and
thrive on it. It is male dominated field and on a
pretty regular basis run into vendors and
contractors that think I am a 'token woman' on the
job. It doesn't usually take but a few minutes to
change their opinions though and accept me at face
value.
One of these vendors though, was
not taking me serious and kept speaking to me as
though I was 12. Not anything I hadn't come up
against before, but a little irritating to say the
least.
We had concluded our business and
I took off to the roof for a cigar break and enjoy
the sunny day that doesn't come often enough to
San Francisco. It was a welcome respite to the
condescending attitude I had just been the
recipient of for the past half hour.
Anyway...I was about 1/2" into a
beautiful HDM Excaliber III Maduro about 2 years
old (yes, I have a humidor at work) when one of
the other engineers came around the corner
escorting the vendor. He stopped in his tracks at
the sight of me and my cigar...
I never did find out what it was
he needed in the way of information about his
product...but we had a great 45 minute
conversation on the subject of cigars and the
effects of aging...the 'boom' and found a great
common denominator in the love of the leaf...!
He finally recognized me as a
person with information rather than just a body
with breasts.
I haven't seen him since, as we
didn't use his service/product...but it was great
to have an intelligent conversation with a person
that had just minutes before cast me as 'token'.
The love of the leaf had brought
many people together before, but not so
dramatically for me as this....
Cigar Woman Comment:
That's an empowering story. Many people think
women do not know the ins and outs of cigars. I
get the same reaction all the time. Thank you for
the story.
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