CJA Syndrome

Today I discovered yet another disease that plagues a sad group of humans...CJA syndrome. One of the men in my department suffers from it, but I didn't realize just how severely until this morning. I was in a staff meeting with my boss (white male, late 40s), the CJA (Taiwanese male, early 50s), another engineer (white male, late 40s), and our environmental tech (white male, early 60s) as we were strategizing what the department will look like once I'm gone and our environmental tech retires early next year. My boss wants to reduce headcount, but the group needs someone with exceptional computer skills to maintain a lot of the systems I've put in place (these men have basic computer skills), but that doesn't necessarily have to be an engineer. I'd already gotten a resume for a co-op who worked with the group several years ago (white male, mid-20s) and the guys really like him. So as we talked about hiring an engineer to fill my role, my boss asked for everyone's opinion on a candidate for the job. The CJA then said, "So when can we get {insert former co-op's name here} into the job? We don't want another young woman in the role because in the past, the women come in and get pregnant, then they're out for a few months which makes more work for us, then they leave!"

I was shocked! I'd heard rumor the day before that he'd made a similar comment while I was out last week when another woman told him she wanted the job. I wanted to believe she'd misunderstood him or taken it the wrong way, but to actually here the words come out of his mouth was like having fire spit into my ears. As the day went on, I came to realize that my technical development has been limited because he's been reluctant to give me more challenging work for fear that I'd one day leave. That made me very, very angry.

So this afternoon, I called my tech friend from work and told her what he'd said. She said, "What a jack@$$!" She asked me what his syndrome was (since SJA...selfish jack@$$...is already taken). The next time I talk to her I'll tell her he has CJA...chauvanist jack@$$ syndrome.