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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/engineermistake on 2023-07-28 23:50:41.

I (42M) work at a tech company that works in a very specialized domain. I am a software engineer but work with some very custom hardware chips in my day to day.

My team needed to integrate a new micro controller into a product we are designing and since I am the lead for the software that will interact with this component my manager set up a meeting for me with the electrical engineer in charge of designing that component who is on a different team.

I have worked with various such other teams in the past but this component was one that is considered quite specialized. When my manager and I talked about it, he did not refer much to the engineer I would be meeting and refereed to the team and used the they/them pronoun. I refereed to the designer as he many times and my manager did not correct me. The name was also very gender neutral.

When I went to the meeting room, there was a younger woman in the room probably in her mid to late 20s. None of the electrical engineers I have met before at my company have been women and in general the few women engineers we have all work on things like web and front end interface development. Since my manager had not corrected me when I said he/him, I assumed this person was some kind of product manager on their team or something. She was also very dressed up, in a skirt, heels and makeup which is an attire product managers and HR people typically have. I also would have expected someone in this position to be much older.

So, I told her, Ill be right back and make coffee while we wait for the engineer to arrive and to message me on slack if he arrives. When I got back, I said something like “he hasn’t arrived yet”.

She then finally mentioned she was the engineer and angrily stormed out. I sent an apology email to her but she has not responded yet but an HR representative has added a meeting to my work calendar and I can see that she has a meeting at the same time on hers.

AITA here? I feel embarrassed and I did not mean to assume she was not the engineer, had my manager told me, or had she had a feminine name or profile picture I would have not done so. I looked up her profile and she really is the most qualified person to work with me on this even though she is really young.