So I started looking for work as a woman.
I was a contractor,
so I switch jobs fairly frequently.
I was not getting interviews.
So I decided to- went back to presenting as a man.
You know I had that fear and anxiety about not being employed.
And so you do sometimes what you feel like you have to do.
And I got that job.
I had at that time already scheduled an appointment for the end of
that month to change my name and request a gender change.
Three days into the job,
I was like having a meltdown right.
I just felt like the longer I presented as a man,
the more difficult it was going to be the switch.
And so I did something really inappropriate.
I emailed my boss,
I told him that I was transgender,
that I was coming into work the next day as a woman.
And that's what I did.
So I had a male ID,
people knew me as a man.
I came in as a woman. Nobody said anything.
It was it was kind of surreal in a sense.
I got a call later that day from HR,
they wanted to know if I was going to stay as a woman.
They didn't want me switching back and forth.
They told me I should just use the women's room.
A couple of days later they came to me,
they wanted me to take a week
off while they discussed their communication plan, which was fair.
I mean, what I did was I think totally inappropriate, I should have given them that time.
My consulting agent stuck up for me and she said you're going to pay her aren't you?
And they did. So they let me work from home for a week.
After that everything went pretty smoothly actually.
It was a pretty pleasant experience because I was working with
a lot of Indian women from India,
and a lot of them were Hindu,
and they have a pretty fluid idea of what gender is anyway.
But that, from an employment standpoint,
that was pretty much my last job in IT.
I found, as a contractor,
I found one other position.
There was a fair amount of resistance to the trans identity.
They made me use a single use bathroom on the first floor,
I was working on the fourth floor.
So it was kind of awkward.
There were a couple of people there that clearly weren't comfortable with it,
management- they didn't address it.
I guess I didn't ask them to address it.
The project ended early.
So, and since then you know,
I've worked trans jobs.
I worked at Kohls as a cashier,
I've worked in a call center.
I decided to- I've decided now that I probably am never going back to IT.
I can't say specifically that that's a transgender issue.
I think it's, you know,
a woman's issue in general.
It's very difficult for a 60 year old woman to find a job in IT.
Rebecca Graetz, EdDInstructor
Annette McNamara
