Many people ask me what the atmosphere is like working as a woman in carpentry. The assumption is...

Many people ask me what the atmosphere is like working as a woman in carpentry. The assumption is it’s hostile. The assumption is the men condescend, discredit, disrespect. The assumption is it’s all burping and sex jokes. I’m glad to be able to tell people that’s not been the case for us. Maybe we’re lucky, maybe we work with the right guys, maybe it’s just different
than people think. With a couple exceptions, the men we encounter through work
are respectful and friendly. If they’re skeptical, they hide it well. So when
people ask I try to put to rest this idea of an unwelcoming, condescending
environment.

But last week I had an encounter that embodied all that
people suspect, and it’s lingered in my mind. An ugly exception.

At an event unrelated to the book, I fell into conversation
with a man about my age drinking a martini. He asked the standard question:
what do you do. I answered. Carpenter, writer. “I’m a restaurant owner and a
furniture maker,” he told me. And this was promising, some common ground, some
shared pursuit to talk about. He immediately brought out his phone to share pictures of some
of what he’d made and explained that he’d gone to the North Bennet Street School,
a respected, expensive school in Boston for fine craftsmanship and traditional
trades.

From the photographs, I will say, the things he built – a
hutch, a credenza –
did look well-made, impressive. He talked and talked. “If you want to actually
learn the trade,” he said, “you should be working with my buddy out of
Burlington. He’d teach you everything you need to know.”

If you want to
actually learn the trade. He had asked me nothing about how long I’d
worked, who I worked for, what sort of work I do. I started paying less
attention. He continued.

“What sort of table saw do you have? If you don’t have a
Delta you need to find a new boss.”

“Delta?” I said, because I did not know this brand.

“Ha, yeah, your boss has no idea what he’s doing.”

I did not correct him. I did not tell him that A) my boss is
a woman and B) she very much knows what she’s doing. I looked over my
shoulder for a way to exit the conversation. And I looked back at him with the
blankest most disinterested face I could summon, took all the light out of my
eyes, tried to make him know without words and with everything in me, you are boring.

Perhaps this was a failure of courage on my part. Perhaps
there was a way to make him know some things. Perhaps I should’ve said
something to set him straight. He got the message though, I think.

“This martini sucks,” he said, and he went on about
molecules and his philosophy as a bartender. “If I hadn’t already had four of
them,” he said, “I wouldn’t even be talking to you.”