how to listen

I like my mechanic. I really do. I feel like he's honest and fair. I think he likes me, too. I still like him, but today I listened to a story and I believed we did not agree about something. Well. A younger, tall blond woman came into the shop with a female bulldog. She was nice to me. I thought, oh, she must be a mechanic...she's wearing that kind of shirt. She took the dog into the restroom. The mechanic came back into the shop to do some paperwork. I noticed while she and the dog were in there and he was doing the paperwork I began to feel a bit ill, even though I'd been feeling fine before. Anyways, then she left (smiled nicely at me again). He called me up to finish the paperwork and started talking about her. She took over a business, even though it was the same business that she'd been fired from. He tolerates it but he doesn't like it so much when she takes her dog with her in the bathroom. The man that had fired her from the business actually ended up selling the business to her. He was going to sell it to another guy, but then she got it. She keeps the dog with her all the time. Poor dog. I said "Maybe she likes a dog for protection?" He said, no, it's because it's her mother's dog and the mother is crazy, so she has to take care of it. He said, she used to go out with the boss's son, but then she got fired. And all the rest of the guys on the lot (it's an area with multiple auto industry type businesses) speculate maybe something was going on between her and the boss, but they don't know, all they know is when he sold the business, he sold it to her for a reduced price. And now, says my mechanic, she walks around as if she's all high and mighty, but at one point she was living out of her car. So my mechanic says, you can act all you want, but I know who you are and what you came from.  The other guys on the lot, they all worked hard for what they have. And she got a loan and money from her father and her boyfriend and she got the business at a reduced price. And she has the nerve to complain to him the other day "for a little bit of money now I have to deal with him for the rest of my life?" He thought, "Be thankful..." "She's a spoiled brat," he concludes.

Well.

Of course, I have no idea what's going on from day to day around there...I did want to say, "Well maybe she has her side of the story, too," but I did not. So it's perhaps not the most feminist moment. However, I did not agree with him. I was quiet. I did not say "Oh, clearly she's a spoiled brat, just as you say." I did not agree, but I did not actively object either.  Who knows, perhaps she could be more grateful? He definitely seemed to think so. Is it not nice of him to let her use the facility and bring her dog in with her even though he doesn't like it?

In conclusion...if you want people to talk about you, be a woman entering a male-dominated field....especially be a woman with a not entirely spotless history...be aware that you might seem high and mighty...be aware...

I have never, to my knowledge, paid a female mechanic to work on my car.

http://jalopnik.com/5907784/the-seven-kinds-of-female-mechanics-according-to-stock-photos/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/05/the-auto-industry-discriminates-against-women-so-i-quit-my-engineering-job-to-become-a-mechanic/