Page 44 of Dating and Other Theories
The urge to argue was almost overwhelming, but Esther knew arguing in your performance review wasn’t a good look. She clamped down on her tongue and nodded again.
Diane leaned back in her chair. Her lipstick was uneven, and Esther couldn’t stop staring at it. “Perhaps once you’ve amassed more capital in terms of seniority and successful projects delivered, you’ll be able to push everyone else harder, and they’ll feel bound to keep up. But for now, you need to adjust your approach.” Diane smiled at her. “Think of it as another engineering problem to solve.”
“Do people not like me?” Esther asked. Because that’s what it sounded like she was saying.
“I wouldn’t say that at all. Some of them just find you a little…aggressive.”
“Aggressive?” Esther repeated. She couldn’t believe she’d just been called “aggressive” in a performance review. By a woman, no less. Was Angelica Sauer too aggressive? Wasn’t that how she’d succeeded in business? By suffering no fools and taking no shit? Esther wondered what their CEO would do to anyone who dared to complain she was too aggressive.
“Perhaps aggressive isn’t the best word,” Diane said, backtracking. “Let’s just say you can be a little too blunt sometimes.”
“You mean honest?”
Diane’s smile tightened. “No one likes to be told they’re wrong. If you’re trying to win someone over to your point of view, it can be more helpful to take a diplomatic tack. Soften the blow a little.”
Esther stared down at her hands, which were clenched in her lap. “I see,” she said, choking back the urge to defend herself. To point out how sexist it was to criticize her for being too aggressive when she knew damn well a man would be praised and rewarded for the exact same behavior. But all that would do was prove Diane’s point, that Esther was too aggressive.
“Esther, you’re someone who has a lot to offer,” Diane said kindly, “not just the company, but also your peers, as a mentor and example of what a good engineer looks like. If you can moderate your approach to your coworkers, I think you’ll find they begin taking your advice more and coming to you for guidance, which is how you advance from baby engineer to senior engineer—maybe even an SME one day.”
Maybe she’d get to be a subject matter expert? Her last manager had acted like it was a given. He’d told her to keep doing what she was doing and she would be able to choose her own path. Now Diane was making it sound like she needed to shape up and fly right or she wouldn’t advance at all.
Esther ground her teeth, smiling and nodding her way through the rest of the conversation, trying to be pleasant and act like she was taking the feedback to heart. But she left Diane’s office fuming.
Aggressive. She’d actually had the nerve to call Esther aggressive. Would a man ever be called aggressive? No, because in men it was seen as a desirable trait. A man would be told he was assertive, that he’d displayed leadership skills. Only in a woman would it be considered a negative. Because women were expected to be meek and subservient. Passive. Agreeable.
Fuck that.
Fuck that and fuck Diane. And fuck everyone who’d told Diane that Esther was too blunt. She didn’t need to soften her approach, they needed to do their damn jobs better. She refused to adapt to incompetence because some men might get their fee-fees hurt.
Fuck all of them. And fuck this place.
“How’d it go?” Yemi asked when Esther got back to her desk.
“Piece of cake,” she told him, forcing a smile. She didn’t want to talk about it. If she talked about it, she’d get even more angry than she already was.
She sat down in front of her computer, put her headphones on, and kept them on for the rest of the day.
Esther was still in a royally crappy mood when she got into her car to drive home at five o’clock. Then she remembered she had to go the grocery store, and her mood got even worse.
She hated grocery shopping, but she hated doing it after work worst of all. Everyone else in LA was at the grocery store after work too. Which meant the parking lot was a madhouse, the aisles were crowded with tired, cranky people, and the checkout lines were interminable. There were never enough checkers, and she always ended up trapped in the self-checkout lane behind the person who had to turn every single item over four times before they found the bar code, and then had to pass it over the scanner three times before it registered.
It was almost seven o’clock by the time Esther pulled into her parking space at home, still fuming about the inefficiency of the modern grocery store. She turned off the engine, shoved open her door, and almost had a heart attack when Jonathan popped up in front of the car.
“Jesus.” She laid her hand on her chest. “Are you stalking me now?”
“No, I was in the courtyard and I heard you pull in.”
She slammed her car door and went around to the back to get her groceries. When she opened the hatchback, he leaned in and grabbed half her grocery bags for her.
“Thanks,” Esther muttered as she locked the car.
He tipped his head, smiling. “I aim to serve.”
As she followed him up the stairs, she noticed a roll of papers stuck into the back pocket of his jeans that looked suspiciously like script pages. That explained his sudden appearance. He’d been waiting in the courtyard for her to get home. The floor outside her door must have gotten uncomfortable.
He waited for her to unlock her apartment and followed her inside, setting his grocery bags on the counter next to hers.
“You know, you could just text me,” she said as she jerked open the fridge. “To find out when I’m going to be home.”
