In one of my jobs I have created and implemented a volunteer training program for three years now. It started out being led by a guy I work with, but he proved to be so incompetent that they shifted the bulk of responsibility and decision making to me. I am now the official lead, which makes plenty of sense considering I've always been the one to draft the schedule, nail down the speakers and venues, and act as hostess and facilitator. This never jived well with the VP of our charitable foundation that funds the training. He is in his 80's, and has never treated me with much respect, but when I started wielding the power to disagree with him it got so much worse. He would do things like yell at me in front of my peers and volunteers, or call me, my immediate supervisor (also female) and my peers female supervisor lazy and stupid. I believe this is because I am young (25) and female. When he doesn't yell, he'll usually talk down to me. Today we sat down to a meeting. It had been a shitty day for me to begin with. This job is one of three that I have, and today was supposed to be the first day off I would have in three weeks. Unfortunately, my incompetant coworker hadn't checked his email for his entire 5 day work week (I seriously don't know why he still has a job) so I got a call from him while I was in class on Monday night saying he could meet with me and the others today. Realizing that it was so hard to get a hold of all of them, I decided to sacrifice my day off and do it. This also meant I had to get a rental car, because today was the only day I could bring my car into the shop to get it repaired which I had been trying to put off till I had a day off. I spent more money than I made by going to that meeting. To add on to that, the bird at the place I'm house sitting seems to be getting sick, and my car might not be done in time. As we sat down to begin the meeting, I handed them copies of the draft schedule I had spent the last couple months putting together, and trying to get management approval on. I'm literally one day away from complete approval from management. We also had a new ranger sitting in on the meeting, which made it twice as mortifying when the guy began yelling at me the minute he looked at the schedule. The days were too short, too many, and the schedule was ridiculous and stupid. Containing my days worth of pent up rage I calmly told him "(name) you cannot talk to me like that." He continued to rant and I said "I don't care, you cannot talk to me like that. It's inappropriate. You need to talk to me like a grown up." That shut his tirade down, and HE ACTUALLY APOLOGIZED TO ME! After three years of trying to tactfully ask for respect, and be kind, I finally made it happen! I feel very accomplished, and thought I would share :) EDIT: wow...how is it that my post is getting downvoted? This is a completely positive post :/