You alright with that, Love?

There's a man, wielding an electric tool, trying to hang his front door.

"You alright with that, Love?"

The traffic slowed as we approached the umpteenth, 4-way traffic light across 5 miles of Wiltshire. It's as if all the people around a table in Highways England get the idea to improve roads in the same area, at the same time. It's really annoying.

Whatever, it was going to be a long wait.

Annie, my fellow female wood engineer, and I, had already spent our jokes about traffic and lights and roads and potholes and cones and rush hours and anything else to do with taking bloody ages trying to drive home. We just wanted to get home.

But luckily, here, at these lights, we could watch a random man trying to hang his front door. Entertainment indeed!

Even better that he was using electric tools.

He'd made good headway and it looked like the top of the door was attached - the sunlight glinted off the brass hinge nicely. But as he tested the opening/closing movement, it was clear the gap between door and frame wasn't so good.

I would have suggested the hinges were screwed on a bit wonky and probably not countersunk properly but, I didn't.

Annie and I sank deeper into our seats to escape the semi-automatic juddering of the screwdriver-bit skipping the internal drive on the screw head. A classic case of chronic inexperience.

I noticed he was using a drill rather than impact driver. "Ooof!" we simultaneously thought, blowing out our cheeks. Did he know the torque levels in an impact driver are higher than the drill? He'll be exhausted by teatime. The impact driver makes it far more efficient to quickly drive screws into the hardwood door. A lot less effort.

Should we tell him?

We felt his pain.

"Are you alright with that, love?"

His frustration was rising. We knew there were problems to come if he stripped those screws. He'd be ripping the door from the frame if things went really wrong.

Was it worth telling him now, before he attached more hinges?

Things did go wrong. Quite quickly. The sorry door suddenly hung from the top hinge, like a limb hanging from a tendon. The brass contorted from strain. And of course, he'd now messed up the pilot holes. His only hope was to drive longer screws into the existing holes through a new hinge. Our experience told us that was obvious. But was it to him?

We sighed.

I looked at Annie.

"Are you thinking the same as me?"

"Yep," she replied.

Sharing a knowing smile, we left his self-respect intact.

Finally the lights turned green. I released the handbrake and followed the moving stream of cars.

However...

What if we were to lean out of the windows and offer the all too familiar "Are you alright with that, love?"

You might guess the answer!

But, imagine if the roles were reversed. It's unlikely that a van with two blokes in it would resist offering themselves should they'd have stopped alongside us.

And, although this is more of a serious blog, it's a point I enjoy making!

The only time I feel undermined, embarrassed and deskilled when I'm working, is when an assumptive bloke says to me "Are you alright with that, Love?"

Memo to Men (Oh! That's a brilliant name for another Blog!)

And I'm addressing this demographic because it's the only category this applies to:

Just because I have an electric screwdriver or a hammer in my hand, you don't need to worry about me.

It's annoying!