I work in a male dominated profession and there’s a ton of ball busting. I’m usually a target for it because I am very much non-confrontational and I don’t really have the skill set or interest to give it back. Especially with people I don’t really know, it takes me a little bit longer to warm up to someone to feel comfortable doing it. I’m also horrible at reacting to ball busting, especially when it’s constant. After a while it always wears on me and I take it personally. I know the usual techniques, like laughing it off, ignoring it, etc. but I find that I still have limits. Today I made a bad choice and actually reacted, which I know is going to come back ten-fold on me tomorrow. For perspective, I’ll summarize what happened. I have been driving my work team around the last couple of days in a rather large van in a dense urban environment. I’m not the first driver and the other guys love to bust the balls of whoever is in the drivers seat. It’s just what they do. The first driver however was a seemingly amazing ball-buster and could return it and loves being the centre of attention. I’m not the same, at all. So I was ignoring all the comments, sometimes I’d laugh or just hold a smile until they moved on. However, at the end of the day today, it was dark and I was trying to find a spot to park the van. It was not easy and I had to do some funky maneuvering to get into a position. The team just embarked on a crusade of ball-busting, mocking my driving skills and trying to purposely embarrass me in front of the other people in the parking lot. Eventually I just had enough and said rather sternly, “holy fuck guys, does someone else want to drive?” There was a couple more chuckles but then the van went rather silent. Then as we were exiting someone who was previously busting the hell out of my balls had said thank you. I sense that they all saw that I was actually pissed off, I wasn’t really hiding it, and were trying to remedy the situation. I feel like I was pay for this tomorrow. I’m gunna keep driving the van because screw em, but how should I react in that situation when ball busting is so relentless submitted by /u/mullighanisdog
Originally posted by u/mullighanisdog on r/AskMen