I wanted to share this as proof that there is hope in this world.
We had a new person join our company and I had to go deliver his laptop to him today. We took care of the technical stuff and through several minutes of small-talk it was revealed that i was in fact a Marine at one point in time. The gentleman I was assisting was a full-bird colonel when he retired. He asked what i did and i gave my standard "same thing I do now, computer geek." As we entered the elevator he began to tell me his wife used to have the battalion at recruit training. This means that his wife was in charge of the one and only female recruit training battalion in the entire Marine Corps. I smiled and acknowledged this tidbit of information.
he then started trying to guess who my drill instructors were. I just smile and said no to each one he said. As he went into to deep thought in an attempt to guess yet again, I stopped him and told him, "You won't guess my drill instructor's names." he asked why not and i told him I was in first battalion when i went to boot camp.
He looked at me with a huge smile and a quizzical look and said, "Really?" I smiled and with a slight nod of the head, I said yes. He perked up and looked at me and said, "Well, OORAH!!" this is the uniformed greeting grunting noise used by Marines to express enthusiasm.
I could have let it go and not said a word at all. I could have let him assume everything he wanted to assume. To me, that is just as bad as blatantly lying to someone. To start a professional relationship based upon false assumptions that were brought to my attention and easily put to rest, would not sit well with me. I do not skyline my TS status but I will not make up a past to cover up my present. To let him assume that i had gone through 4th bn versus 1st bn would have been a gross misunderstanding and just as bad as lying in my opinion.
My company has discrimination policy that includes gender identity so even if he didn't like it, he still has to be professional about it. It is a win-win situation for me. In either case, I don't need to walk around on eggshells worrying about if anyone knows or not. a lot of stress is taken off of me simply by being honest to the people around me and to myself as well.
