Empowerment is a wonderful feeling.

I work at a reference desk. It's essentially a customer service job and I deal with many kinds of people. I get the unappreciated, the very gracious and thankful, those who want me to do all their work for them, and the proactive kind. My very least favorite are the ones who think they know me, or who want to get to "know" me. There are the ones who ask for my number, who want to give me their number, who call me baby girl, sweetheart, princess, or darling. Those are bad, but the very worst I think are the patrons who think they can make whatever inappropriate comments they want about my appearance, my clothes, my hair, my glasses or lack there of, even the way I talk.

Well I finally stood up against it today.

Someone wanted a book and in the midst of me finding it he kept making comments like "You've lost even more weight than I have" paired with "My family thinks I've lost too much weight."

First of all, I do not know this person. Maybe I've helped him in the past, but I see so many patrons a day it is hard to say. Second, I am sick of these back-handed "compliments" about my weight loss. Yeah, I got healthier in the last few months it was my New Year's Resolution, weight-loss was the side effect. But calling me a "skinny heifer" (that's a cow in case you didn't know) or saying that I'm disappearing are not nice ways of telling me that you've noticed a difference. (And yes, those are both real comments I have gotten.)

But...the story at hand: I ignored the comments and stayed on topic about where to find this book, after the third or fourth time he asked "Why are you being so administrative all of a sudden? Last semester you were so nice and friendly."

At which point I had had enough. I looked him in the eye and said point blank...

I'm always friendly.
But I'm not going to discuss my weight with you.
It's none of your business.

Wow...I feel so much better.