The last full-time local radio gig I had, they fired the PD and suddenly I had a shiny new 30-something who hated me on sight, and greeted me his first day with this diatribe:
"You’ve been here a loooong time, haven’t you, Robbie?” he said, leaning on the word long, and scanning me up and down with a disgusted frown that read, to me, (“You frumpy old lady, I’ll get you off my staff no matter how much passive-aggressive nastiness it takes”)he continued in a cheery, the-more-you-know tone,, “You know, some people are burned out in this business after only five years!”
I was striken silent.
I knew exactly what he was doing, but I was not armed to deal with it.
Here’s what I
would say today:
“Age discrimination is illegal, and worse than that, it’s
shitty.” (at that point I didn't KNOW it was illegal)
If he started to deny this, I would interrupt him with, “I’m
not SAYING you’re ageist, like you’re not openly saying I’m too old for the
job. But the fact that you’re
passive-aggressively creating a hostile work atmosphere that will make me feel
like shit, DURING MY RADIO SHOW, which will affect the sound of the station,
and you’re willing to do that means your ego is more important to you than the
station, which is a bad sign. You also
clearly are fine with making me feel like shit to try to make me quit, which is
also terrible. Until you are ready to
just fucking fire me, leave me the fuck alone and let me do my job. The signal matters more than both of us.
So get out of my studio and take your old-woman-hating bullshit
elsewhere. I bet HR would be interested
in hearing about it.”
I would have risked being fired on the spot and I was not
financially prepared by a long shot, but it would have been a great way to
handle him.Instead I spluttered helplessly ewhile he smiled in satisfaction, and kept the job for several more miserable weeks while I squirreled away as much as I could.
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