Why bother [pressing on with her pitch]? It might well have seemed like the most diplomatic path out of the room. One might also make allowance for shock. Whe

Why bother [pressing on with her pitch]? It might well have seemed like the most diplomatic path out of the room. One might also make allowance for shock. When you're stunned, a natural reaction is to fall back on the script. If I might dare to speculate further... One wonders how easy it is to know just when to walk out. I'm a man, a straight man, a clueless straight man, so I have no real first-hand idea of what it's like to be hit on all the time. But my understanding is that women get hit on a lot. Like, really a lot. Depending on the woman and the circumstances, one might even use the word "constantly". So one imagines that few women in tech can afford to have a hard-and-fast "if you hit on me I'll walk out in a huff" rule. Instead, one imagines that at one time or another every woman has felt that "nauseous" feeling of being hit on against her wishes. And that "at one time or another" can sometimes mean "several times per day". And I'll bet it wears you down. Or toughens you up. Actually, I'll bet it does both, at exactly the same time. My guess is that the poor woman in that story was pressing forward, rolling her eyes inwardly, and feeling nauseous and miserable all at once. She kept going because she had trained herself to suppress that desire to retch, even though her nausea was her subconscious trying to tell her to flee the room. But all I can really do is guess, of course.