Life as an HVAC lady
As a professional young person, I get more mansplaining than you can possibly imagine! Not only am I young & current to the industry, but it is a male dominated industry, then many of my coworkers are close to retirement, & are fond of telling me I am the same age as their little ones, or grandchildren.
They are trying to be nice, but they are minimizing me & my job here; I do my best to grin & bear it, after all I am the future of this supplier & they are on the way out the door.
The whole reason I ended up getting into the Heating & A/C business was because they were desperate for female employees, however heating & A/C has been a male dominated business since. With that being said, since forever, actually, & the corporate bosses realized that some diversity was needed, so I knew coming in that the ancient guard air conditioning techs would genuinely view me as “cute” & be dismissive of my mind! So I was correct on that, they are! Little do they suppose I was headhunted, & the supplier not only paid for my Heating & A/C courses, but brought me in a much higher starting rate then others were. I bet some of these older air conditioning techs worked for ten years just to make what I started off with! This helps take the edge off when they talk down to me, & mansplain the most basic heating & cooling concepts appreciate I am an idiot. That’s ok, I suppose that the future of Heating & A/C job is female, the future is me, & these guys are stuck in the past.