Reply #13: Tell them that

[skygazer]

Tell them you want this job, you can do the work and you'll work harder, stay longer and be more productive than the kids they've been hiring and losing.

I've worked much of my life in jobs that were supposedly "men's" jobs. Several of them I landed by being insistent and persistent, not mouthy or rude but firm and confident in myself. I once refused to leave the office at a book bindery when a male super refused to hire me - I told him he was wrong and that he'd never regret taking me on and he finally hired me just to get me out of there.

I've worked road construction and carpentry, heavy farmwork, was a snowmobile mechanic for a while and just out of high school in '79, I was the first girl hired at a dog track to work in the paddock area. It was never the men I worked side by side with who gave me a hard time - they saw that I could work and respected it. It was the corporate types who gave me the hairy eyeball.

Good luck to you. I know what it's like to need that extra money - that's what got me into construction.