Automotive Work Case Study

Automotive stores are mainly a place you would expect to see males working at. Not many times would you expect to see a woman on the job. I work at Oreilly's Auto Parts where I met a woman whose name was Melissa Nash Lawrence. Meeting her was an interesting part of my work experience learning new things about her and the job as a whole. Working with her I noticed some flaws of the job towards her being a woman working in this industry. That's when I notice that being a woman on the job seems to have its cons. Ms. Melissa Nash Lawrence is an African American woman that works in the same automotive store as I and is the assistant store, manager. Ms. Melissa is forty-two years old, who looks younger than she is. She has the skin tone of a Hershey's …show more content…
It was at a time where she needed money dearly to be able to support her soon to be born son. Starting off she knew little about the parts of a car and had no clue how to work on them. Over couple months of beginning her work, she learned about the different parts of a car, but still to this day, she has no idea of how to fix a car hands-on. Being a woman on this type of job, there were plenty of times where customers seemed to be sexist. There was a time on the job where they had a customer who approached her in need of assistance about a certain car part, and the customer asked her if there was a man on duty he could speak to instead of her. She said there were plenty of times when this has happened, but every time she didn't pay it any mind. She said to me, "Customers come in thinking that I have no knowledge about auto parts when I actually have more knowledge about them than they possibly do." That tells you that customers judged her by being a female. There was a time when on the job I witnessed a customer being sexist to her. The man entered the store approaching the counter where Ms. Lawrence was standing. He spoke to her, and then as I approached the counter he immediately approached me saying "hey you should know exactly what I need", leaving Ms. Lawrence looking in …show more content…
Lawrence had on the job was men constantly flirting with her. This its self was the most annoying part of the job to her. She claims that every day there was a new guy flirting with her. I've also experienced this happening to her while at work. A male customer was getting rung up for some parts he was buying and looked over at Ms. Melissa with a Grinch smirk on his face. He then told her how beautiful she was. She gave him a quick reply of thank you in a rather ungrateful tone. I found it funny and let out a silent laugh. I asked her how it felt with all these men flirting with her constantly, and she responded saying "sometimes I just want to curse out some of these men because it is the same men that come in here every day and try to flirt with me." There is a quite an obvious reason to why these men always flirt with her. Ms. Melissa is a rather nice looking woman. Even with the plain baggy green button down work shirt, and the black dickie work pants, she still seemed to get plenty of attention from the men that came in the