15 weeks

I've been dealing with a difficult co-worker at work: a middle-aged white, male engineer who is on two of the projects I am leading.  He has caused a significant amount of stress to my well-being, and I have spent an inordinate amount of time considering his thoughts and feelings on certain matters.  I have lost sleep because of him.  I have wasted hours from my projects' budgets taking into consideration his difficult and resistant opinions.

The conflict is finally culminating into a show-down with management presence.  And I look forward to it, because finally the root cause of his negative attitude and resistance is becoming obvious to everyone.  It seems he has difficulty cooperating with a group of intelligent, female decision-makers on the team, three of which are women of color, including the junior engineer who he is supposed to be mentoring. The junior engineer noticed the overtly sexist comments he made on Friday when she and her supervisor had a meeting with him, and she is convinced that none of the drama from the past two months would exist if the project manager (me) were a man and the junior engineer (her) were also a man.

Even until now, I am giving him the benefit of the doubt. I want to hear his concerns one by one. From what I can glean, he has claimed that I often bypass him in favor of the junior engineer's thoughts and opinions, and that the rest of of the team (mostly women) make decisions without his input.  This is 100% misleading and founded in no truth.  I am prepared to refute every single one of these claims with concrete evidence to the contrary.  I have emails which show how he often underestimates the junior engineer (in a not-so-polite way), and I also have meeting recordings that demonstrate how consistently I seek his input during every step of the project.

Women will shape the future.

I can't wait to tell my baby this story.

Bring it on.