I go out of my way to avoid mentioning work things in this space, but sometimes a moment passes that can't be allowed to escape. Today held several of those moments because today was, in every way, not a normal day.
First, some background. I am a Product Manager for a manufacturing company. Stated another way, I'm a woman living in a man's world. I spend my days surrounded by crazy smart engineers who sometimes struggle with the fact that it's *me* in my role. That isn't a condemnation of them; it's a statement of fact. They aren't used to women being The Boss of Things, so it's A Thing. Sometimes.
I'm super outnumbered. Like, SUPER outnumbered. I'm one of maybe three or four women in a product development role and our department has over 70 people in it. That means that when high schools tap the company for STEM programs for girls, I'm going to have to show up. It's absolutely a given because, again, the list of women in STEM roles is super short.
For what it's worth, I always feel like a bit of a fraud when I'm the Token Woman at these things. I'm technically part of the Marketing department, but product management is weird and requires technical competency, at least sort of. I'm certainly not passing as an engineer anytime soon, but I can hold my own. Still, I'm not an engineer. I play fake engineer in some meetings and then fake STEM person when high school kids are around.
ANYWAY.
That's how it came to be that despite a crushing pile of work, I ended up giving a manufacturing tour to a bunch of high school girls. They are all participants in a program that exposes young women to STEM roles and technology companies. The program touts that it's there for underserved youth, which is a fancy way of saying, "These kids go to inner city schools and don't have systems in place to support them."
They're poor.
They're minorities.
We have, as a society, already counted them out.
They may or may not graduate from high school. There's little chance they'll be standing in front of a group of young ladies giving in a tour in 20 years because the odds that they'll go to college and get the breaks that I've gotten are slim to none.
It is luck, you know. Breaking the cycle of poverty requires mountains and mountains of luck. There's some hard work in there too, but I absolutely had to be in the right place at the right time to leverage some of the privileges that have come my way. I hope the girls I met today encounter the same mountains of luck, but the odds aren't in their favor. Hopefully participating in a program like the one they're in will lead them to some mountains.
ANYWAY ... my office has a cafeteria. It's ... okay. I'm definitely not asking for any recipes, but the food is mostly edible as long as you like salt and a heaping pile of yinzer with your lunch. We are incredibly fortunate to have easy access to said cafeteria, a fact which is completely lost on me because WHY ARE THE VEGETARIAN OPTIONS SO BAD? I know the answer to that question, by the way. I'm just not writing it here.
When there are events, said cafeteria caters. Sometimes the organizer manages to pull together a solid menu, but mostly we end up with wraps and sandwich rings. They're about the same caliber as something you'd get at a gas station. Think cold cuts with lettuce, tomato, and onion. That's what we're talking about. There are definitely worse things, but we're talking about a step down from Subway in the quality category. The sandwiches and wraps are ... meh.
So I showed up to do the post-lunch tour at nearly the same time lunch showed up. I've never seen a group of high school students so excited to see lunch. The program screeched to a halt when the trays of sandwiches showed up, which is fine because I would rather eat than talk through technical mumbo jumbo and blah, blah, blah. The girls DASHED to get in line to grab lunch.
There was no need to hurry. We had too much as the estimate was for 30 kids, but then only 16 ended up making the trip. As a co-worker and I discussed which department we were going to take the leftovers to, I realized there would be no leftovers.
They took every last sandwich.
Everyone got some, but as soon as it was clear that everyone had their lunch needs taken care of, several of the girls started looking for ways to satisfy other needs. One girl packed up three sandwiches wrapped in napkins and put them in her purse because, "My brothers will be excited for these for dinner." Another girl grabbed six cookies. They grabbed and packed up every last crumb, including the bowls of mediocre potato chips. It wasn't in a "I'm taking what's free because I can" sort of way; it was in a "I don't know where my next meal is coming from" sort of way.
As this was happening, I was sitting at a table talking to a few of the girls. They were so confident and smart and ... responsible. They have the weight of the world on their shoulders because they are fighting the good fight all by themselves. There were a lot of little moments that made me remember where I've been compared to where I am, but I suspect that at least a few of them are currently in a worse place than I've ever seen.
I mean, I don't know many 16-year olds who see a sandwich sitting on a plate and think about how they can feed a sibling with that sandwich.
This Thanksgiving, I think I will be grateful for lucky breaks and that my kids will never know what it's like to wonder where their next meal is coming from. It's a heck of a place to be.