How much have you encountered discrimination or poor treatment in work places?
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How much have you encountered discrimination or poor treatment in work places? I had a very short internship in a store a while back, and my experience was awful. The work itself wasn’t bad, basic stuff you’d do in retail. But some of the coworkers really made me feel like shit every day. Only couple of them were nice. And i’m not saying that all of them were blatantly mean, but I very much sensed that they viewed me like I was mentally disabled or something. Like many of them would not even greet me when I came in, or when I asked something they would exchange these looks with each other. One of my managers used to talk to me like I was an idiot, or she would brush off what i had just said and ignore me, or answer to me like I was a child. She rarely actually listened. Couple of times she would cut me off when I was trying to ask something. Like one time I tried to ask where I was supposed to put certain products, and before I was even able to properly start she just snapped and said ”I don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing next, ask someone else”. I basically bursted out crying because at that point all the belittling treatment had just build up for me. She did apologize and made an explanation but I very much knew what was going on. They even decided to not put me on the cash register, because ”i was only gonna be there for a short time”, but they did have the intention when I first got there, before they had heard me speak, so I think the reason was obvious. And btw my speech wasn’t even ”bad”, not in a way that would really make it difficult for me to interact with customers. Like sure I talk weirdly, especially to people who don’t understand stuttering, but my speech was constantly flowing. I never got badly stuck on words. And we wore masks so they couldn’t even see what was going on with my face. My family members would say things like ”i’m sure it had nothing to do with your stuttering and they were just busy and stressed” which is probably partially true, but when you know you know. I can definitely tell when it’s about my stuttering. I don’t have much work experience because I’m afraid of people treating me differently. And this experience definitely made those concerns even more real.