Fresh out of college eight years ago I was hired to work the swing shift in at a large print shop in a shady part of town. As soon as I was hired people working there were almost tripping over one another at the chance to tell the tale of how a woman working the same shift was abducted at gunpoint from the bus stop across the street and murdered. My working area was no more than 30 meters away from where she was abducted, I was literally facing that bus stop out the windows every day.

To combat this and actually have people willing work nights, the place offered taxi chits if you were stuck working past 11 pm, which I was daily. When I went to ask for them I was scoffed at, "you're a man, you can defend yourself", but they gave me enough for a week. I had only used one before they changed policies saying the chits were only allowed for women, and I was required to turn mine in. Begrudgingly, I did so, but not before sending an email to HR saying that my safety was equally important as anyone else regardless of gender and mistakenly included the trigger word "discrimination".

My argument was that I am just as susceptible to a knife or a gun as anyone else. Having a penis isn't some magical armor I can use to protect myself in dangerous situations. Being a stupid freshly graduated moron I was nieve enough to think that HR might stand up for me.

Boy, was I wrong.

I was reprimanded for sending that email, being told I "didn't know what discrimination meant" and not to "carelessly throw that word around". I even had statistics on my side, as men are more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than women, but they weren't having any of it. I barely made it past my probation period before they started doing everything in their power to make my working conditions absolutely miserable. I couldn't listen to my own music, while others working on the production floor had no such limits and were free to do as they pleased. I was explicitly told I couldn't help other people with their work when mine was done, so my coworkers started viewing me as a lazy asshole. I asked for more training on a specific piece of equipment, never got it, and when I screwed up costing the company money the owner who I had never even met before came down from upstairs to personally yell at me. There's more, but the icing on the cake was finding out that there was one dude who was allowed to keep receiving and using taxi chits despite the policy change.

Not long after I wound up throwing in the towel and quitting with only a weeks notice. My mental health was teetering on the brink of falling apart, and I couldn't tolerate working in a toxic environment like that much longer.

To this day, I still feel as though I was discriminated against for being a man and that I was pressured to leave that job for having the nerve to stand up for myself. It fucking sucked knowing that my safety wasn't worth a few extra bucks to the company just because of what's between my legs. Had I known now what I knew then, I would have fought for my rights a bit harder before calling it quits, but at the time all I wanted was out.

*Spelling and clarification