Have you ever been intimidated?

Anyone with parents has been intimidated before

I get very intimidated with
a. people with a degree higher than a Bachelors.
b. really good designers, or artists who I feel are successful
c. a bf’s parents
d. Caucasian people (I really hope this does not get interpreted incorrectly to anyone or offend anyone). Since spanish was my first language, I always get intimidated thinking I will not be able to hold an intellectual or interesting conversation.
Wow, I need some balls, I feel so small right now.

A time or two. A girlfriend of a guy friend was going to dental school, holding down a job and was very bright and vibrant. In contrast I was a stay-at-home mother, a high school dropout and pregnant. I felt quite outshined by her. I got over it.

When my husband and I were dating, we went to a bar with some friends and he got quite drunk. I had picked him up after work, so he didn’t have his vehicle. When we were leaving the bar, he wanted me to drive him to his truck so he could drive himself home. I said no, I’d drive him home since I was sober. He strongly disagreed with me, but I persisted. He got angry. He glared at me and in his long gone West Virginia accent said “Ya’ll better do what the fuck I said.” Now, he is a huge mountain of a man, with a look that scares grown men into obeying him. I didn’t know him that well, and had no idea if he was going to hit me or what. I took a deep breath, looked him in the eye and calmly said “I really don’t think it’s safe for you to drive right now.” He laughed and said “Well. Alrighty then.”, and proceeded to let me drive him home. To this day he is impressed that I stood up to him.

I worked in a printing plant with 150 employees with only 6 women and I was the only woman manager. We had tandem parking so getting in and out of the lot could be a hassle. After a very long day when I was leaving there was a car blocking me so I got on the intercom and asked the owner to move it. It turned out to be the sales manager who was ‘entertaining’ clients on a press check and was slightly buzzed. He called back on the intercom something like ‘Bend Over, Baby.I’ll get to it in a minute,’ The entrance to the lot was through the plant so there was a lot of whooping and hollering as I left the building.

That evening I really stewed about it. If I just let it go what would be next. But he was older, better paid and had been there longer than I. If I reported him would that make me a whiney little girl in that boy’s club? I decided to talk to him privately and tell him how disrespected I felt.

The next day I went into his office to talk to him. Now the managers had offices that had waist high walls wirh all glass above. When I went in he gave me kind of a smirk and my polite speech just vaporized. My scolding finger came up and I let him have it. When I walked out every eye on the floor was focussed on me. When I got back to my desk my phone started ringing and before the day was out my reputation as a hard ass was fixed throughout thr building. I was shaking inside for days.

No matter how intimidaed you are, don’t let them see you sweat.

Go galileo!