Dreck = 1 Me = 0

We are now in the mostly forgotten and dissipated energetic wake of #internationawomensday, with its theme of #choosetochallenge. OK, why not. For one year I will challenge some gender-biased dreck that I’d normally ignore.

I thought I picked something small. Worse dreck events happened in March 2021, things that really hurt my women-owned engineering consulting business, but I figured I’d start easy with this absolute gem of a man in “customer service” at a Canadian company that rhymes with JERX. They are a middleman of sorts, between buyers and sellers.

On the phone, JERX dude does not like my tone after disputing their recurring billing and credit card retention policies. I tell him their practices remind me of the shady skincare subscription my Mom got scammed by once. Realizing I was no pushover, right on cue, his demeanor instantly switched from polite to aggressively rude, like those international refund scam callers when things are not going their way. After a little temper tantrum, and hanging up, he immediately left a one-star Google rating on my business.

I flagged the rating as fake, sent proof to #googlemybusiness, who responded that the rating, “does not violate our policies.” “But its fake,” I insist, “its bullying, it does violate!” Normally I would not have bothered to protest further, but to honor my year-long quest to #choosetochallege , I emailed Google regularly for 3 weeks with questions, getting nothing but bot-like non-answers. “Reply to the reviewer,” they suggested. “Reply to a bully and legitimize him, are you serious?” I shoot back.

I deleted my business listing.

Dreck = 1, Me = 0. It’s going to be a long year.