Sometimes I think that I was dropped off on this planet by an alien spacecraft.

Never have I judged a person in the work place on their gender, race, religion or physical characteristics. What I judge them on is how well they participate in the overall project effort and their bottom line contribution.

My basic premise is that I have to work with Jane, Ming, Mohammed and everyone else on the team on a daily basis. My behavior can either improve the work environment or degrade it. If I degrade it, my job gets harder. If I improve it by treating everyone fairly, my job gets easier. Heck, even if someone has some objectionable quality, I just decide that it is something I can ignore or I find ways to work around it. There are exceptions however: bullying, sexual harassment and persistent pessimism. These qualities will have me speaking with my manager or HR in short order.

My first engineering job saw me paired up with a female engineer. She was a socially challenged person who had many quirks (a real nerd's nerd). But it didn't matter. I strove to establish an honest, friendly and supportive work relationship with her and whenever she did something awkward, I just blew it off because it didn't really matter. She was intelligent and got the job done and we worked very well together (probably because I wasn't an intimidating ***).

Bottom line is we have to give our coworkers a break and judge them based on their efforts and work product, not their fashion sense, marital status or whether they like to talk about their favorite sport team at every opportunity.

By the way, I'm one of those gym "meatheads"...:-D