I’m glad you added your story too, as it provides a good example of how you need to bide your time in certain situations. Good for you!

A couple of months ago, I was the lowest ranking person in a meeting with a vendor where most of the questions were being directed to the Senior Vice President in the room. I was the detail guy in the group and had a lot (but definitely not all) of the answers. Needless to say, I didn’t have the guts to interrupt the SVP for fear of career suicide and it made for a lot of awkwardness. Eventually, there was enough pause in the conversation that I could eventually contribute what I knew. By the end of the meeting, the SVP (who understandably barely new my name before) was deferring to me. Had I handled that differently, I could have ticked him off and left an unfavorable impression with a powerful person.

That meeting didn’t have the good punchline from my uncle, though, which is why I wrote about my aunts being bossy instead 8).

I’ve been in situations like this, and it’s terribly frustrating not to get attention when you’re obviously the one with the most knowledge, who’s asking the right questions, making the input, only to have the other (not always male) person continually address the “male”.