Sis You Know Better

It was another regular day at work when, at the top of the hour, I needed to jump on another business as usual web call to discuss my proposal for process improvements.

I presented the problem statements and the call took off into a round-robin of questions, answers, challenges and rebuttals. It was a healthy conversation and it seemed like we’d be able to come to an agreeable solution.

With only 5-minutes left, I began summarizing. Mid-sentence, I was interrupted by the only other black woman on the caIl who, up until this point, had been relatively disengaged. I knew of her and she of me but we’d never met face-to-face. I also knew we were around the same age and ranked as peers at the company. She interjected with, “ I don’t see how any of this is possible given our current state and if people are struggling with our process, why are you the only one saying so?”

“WTF??? C’mon sis, you know better than that,” was my first thought, immediately followed by, “Thank goodness we aren’t using video cuz my face right now...”

Just as I was giving her a subliminal side-eye and filling my lungs to blow her house down with my reply, I got an IM from my boss that read, “ooooo, she broke the code lol”.

Knowing me very well, my boss, who happens to be a middle-aged white male living in a very red state, used my side-eye silence as an opportunity to jump in and advise her to review the proposal again with her colleagues given we’d approached the end of the meeting, and reply to the email thread with any new concerns.

I zoned out for last few moments of the call and decided to finish my game of Candy Crush because BITCHES BE TRIPPIN’

Author name: DP