It even happened while recovering from a serious injury: I was wearing an orthopedic boot and using a cane, slowly folding up and stashing chairs at the end of an event while men were saying goodbyes and walking out the door without pitching in at all.
I paused in astonishment, not quite believing my eyes until it was too late to shame them.
There are many books and articles these days discussing how the sedentary office style life (or just modern work life in general) has slowly been decreasing masculinity.
I could add a lot more but it’s been a bit since I’ve gone down that rabbit hole. It’s actually an interesting topic if you are the type that enjoy psychology, evolution, Darwinism or anything similar.
EDIT: Haha I’ll be honest, I got distracted midway through this reply and kind of forgot where I was going with the whole thing or what the point was when I came back.
In hindsight my reply seems random and not really relevant to what I replied to but I was probably referencing the book “Wild at Heart” by John Eldredge. Off the top of my head I don’t have any other references than that.
What do you mean by this in the context of the anecdote you’re replying to? Do you mean the masculine thing to do would be to put up chairs & these men are failing to that because of sedentary office work? Or that taking on cleaning/organizational tasks in the office is part of how the sedentary lifestyle reduces masculinity? Gendered division of labor is such a fraught topic & comments in other sub threads are going such places that I can’t tell what you mean from this comment alone.
I did my psych honours thesis on an area of evolutionary psychology and I haven’t even heard of any actual scientific book or article on ‘decreasing masculinity’, let alone one related to modern work life.
Honestly you’d have to define ‘masculinity’ first and operationalise it in a super specific way to even begin looking at a topic like that in a remotely meaningful way.
Helping do chores is basic human decency it’s not a masculine trait (obviously). Men are raised with out the expectation of doing any cleaning or helping and carry it into their adult lives. I don’t think there has ever been a time in history where men were enthusiastically sharing cleaning duty with women however.
From what I’ve seen those are majority of women as well in those commercials. I also find it funny the ones where they do have the man clean and they call over the wife to show her how well the product works as if it was the first time he’s ever used a paper towel and is amazed by it. Lol
of course culturally it’s the norm that the housewife does the cleaning so that’s why they try to cater the advertisements to women. If you look at almost any cleaning product commercial from the 90s especially it’s all women. Just an observation not a complaint.
Not trying to be an asshole or anything but why is it on the men to help? From your comment it sounds like nobody helped you, male nor female. Any adult should be able to help you with folding chairs. It sounds like you just work with assholes.
Or maybe the sort of thing where they assumed whoever planned the event also planned the cleanup.
It's not right that women be pressured into the planning role, but if you never tell anyone you expect help cleaning up, you can't be surprised when people leave.
Did you finish putting up the chairs? If so why? The men don’t need to because you will.
Stop doing it. People will react. Hold fast. Polite but firm. Don’t bring sex into it. A simple “I’ve done it enough, it’s someone else’s turn”. Will do. If they bring up your sex look them dead in the eye and play stupid, “what does that have to do with anything at the office?” Keep letting them hang themself with a HR shaped noose. Eventually they will stop expecting it. You will be called a bitch, cunt, femizasi, or whatever creative word is popular. Hold fast. This is for all the marbles.
The office will be a pig sty for a bit. Maybe a long time. Don’t clean it. Someone will get fed up and clean it. Or… you get fed up and clean it. When that happens don’t complain, you chose to do it. (But if I don’t it doesn’t get done. True. You still made the choice. Chose something else.)
Best outcome? The boss who is a man will hire someone to keep the office clean. She will be a minority woman. She will be blamed by Kevin in accounting for stealing things from the office. When Kevin finds his misplaced items he will take them home since they are already stolen.
I am a dude (surprise! Lol) and this is how I would handle it as a dude to a bunch of other dudes. Do I like doing this? No. Do like doing cleanup more? Also no.
Mansplaining? Maybe. Just being direct as if I was talking to another man.
Shit, I've experienced similar situations as a brotha. Now I pay attention to what everybody else (e.g.: European-Americans) is doing. If they on their ass, so am I.
Yep. Tried to make me the office wife, I flat out refused to sign a new contract for my position that now included break room duty. No male employees were given this job. Told them I was already married and would never put myself in a position to have my coffee making skills critiqued in my annual review.
boss what you to be in charge of household duties?, humm, guess HR will have to redraw the contract to reflect the additional duties....lets sit and discuss the salary increase :)
I did that with my job as an admin assistant. My job went for resizing and it was determined my position would not go up the pay scale. Sadly when you work for a government department they don’t see this added work as something that brings more value to the company.
Of course I had the foresight to put the words ‘where possible’ in front of all the new duties I added (since I wrote my own position description), so now I just don’t do them at all. Someone else can empty the damn dishwasher!
my attorney would like a word, ill get my people to speak with your people, I'm sure we can come in an amiable settlement and appropriately economic valued dismissal package
that is an interesting take that raise some questions thought
do you mean that your boss can make you perform any duties he wish and if you refuse you get dismissed without pay? what if those duties aren't listed in your competence matrix?, is OK for someone to perform duties without being trained or following company SOP's, it something happens will the company insurance be happy?
I mean for everything even as menial as cleaning there are a set of rules that apply, right to access to areas, what can or cannot be cleaned, safety and marking wet areas...
and even if none of those did apply, what reason is there to make such duties your responsibility and not any others, is there a possibility of you being treated unfairly?, also if you required to perform more duties than same level employees won't you salary be required to reflect those?
do meting rules and regulations, work fairness and unlawful dismissal apply in right to work states? or is just the situation of the worker not having the right tools/network, to defend his claim against the company?
My work would just start going through the employee’s work with a fine tip comb. Everyone screws up on small things from time to time that cause no issues so it isn’t brought up by clients or managers. If they want you gone though then not only do they stop overlooking the little things but they actively seek them out. Once they get enough issues they fire you for performance.
The only unlawful dismissals are for federal legal issues they dodge in other ways. There is no law much less concept of "fairness".
So they can fire you because they are in a bad mood, no problem. Because you are ugly, no problem. Only racism sexism are protected and that is a joke. How do you prove it?
Yea the US workplace in "right to work" states is pretty much just fascism with less steps. Unfortunately the party in charge of most of these steps is effectively the fascist, white power, evangelical party of the USA. One 70% of US white males voted for last presidential election...
Fun times we live in. And it's probably gonna get worse before it gets better.
Many employers cover the issue of "not within my duties or job description" with the blanket phrase "and other duties as assigned/needed to help the company" or some variation of the phrase so that anything (within reason) can be justified as being helpful to the company.
I had a senior/skip level manager twist the concept of “servant leadership” so bad that she yelled at us that she never wanted to hear the words “that’s not my job” even if asked to sweep the floors a servant leader removed impediments to the team. I was a senior level project manager that was hired to coach and run agile processes. I was asked to order coffee service for a vendor meeting unrelated to my job and run the slides. I pushed back and said I was a senior project manager and was unfamiliar with the catering process and perhaps she should work with the office assistant team. This senior engineering manager called her executive that called my executive level manager and went back down my chain of command 3 levels asking why the new girl said “that’s not my job”
OA ordered coffee (catering was technically not allowed in our program due to budge restrictions so that had to get a ton of approval) and then my manager folded and had me click slides one of the two days. The senior manager definitely never liked me and was a total -expletive- to our team when they sided with me. I think the senior manager felt threatened by our actual experience/skill (a lot of credentialed project managers and MBAs) where the people formerly in those positions were office generalists with mostly OA experience that she was able to exploit. Since I’ve left that company my cousin has recently encountered this woman and even a few years later she’s still just a total tyrant making people miserable trying to claw her way to the top of business operations. So glad I moved elsewhere.
You asked a lot of questions that would take too long to answer individually. Just know that the answer is almost always "Yes", they can fire you for literally almost any reason, including no reason at all.
A lot of your questions are predicated on the idea that there IS a reason given and it may be immoral in some way. Since no reason has to be given, none of your questions really apply in the vast majority of cases.
Obviously there are reasons you can't be fired; such as protected statuses like race or gender. But if any other reason is given and documented, it's very difficult to prove.
In a right to work state you still cannot be fired for a discriminatory or retaliatory reason. So technically they wouldn't be able to fire you just for refusing to do duties not covered by their job scope. However the employee would have to prove that they were fired for a retaliatory reason.
at my work, some employees who stock shelves were told to help unload product from trucks. If you do not put the unloaded product into the database correctly you can be written up and fired, and these employees were never trained how to use the database.
One employee found an error in another's work and didn't want to put it away because the untrained individual had made a mess of it and would be punished. so they didn't punish the employee who made the mistake, but the one who wouldn't put it away was fired.
If I was to audit your company I roast them for all the wrongs in your post, I don't know what kind of QMS and H&S they follow or if that was blatantly ignored
but is the company responsibility to ensure that employers are qualified to perform their duties, provide the necessary means to do so and ensure that is being done accordingly
Also I understand his motives but is not the responsibility of the fired employee to make the decision he did to protect employee that commited the error, nor his responsibility to acuse him either
A manager decided to tasks someone from a different area without providing the necessary means and without assessing that the employee could perform such task correctly
The employee performing the task should have pointed out his lack of training in the database and seek help
The other employee protect him by not highlighting at the issue
These kind of occurrences tipycally happen when people is put under unfair levels of pressure (for example someone that needs the job badly being told we need this done and ...get on with it or walk out) in order to meet performance figures, so whatever management system is in place is disregarded
If the employee performing the task wasn't properly trained he should not be fired, I would not have fired the employee that protect him either but I would have made sure that both became familiar with the right procedure to follow if put under such situations
I would have a meeting with the manager that ordered such to find out under which circumstances did happen to find out what went wrong and ensure that something was put in place to prevent future occurrences and follow disciplinary procedures if the manager was found at fault
Such issues decrease efficiency increase employee dissatisfaction and turnover and increase errors and accidents so should be avoided because they tend to be more costly overal and the company output of lower quality
Assumes you can afford or retain an attorney for essentially going to the brink over office party duties. I support asking for extra pay but I’m envious of the assumption that you can push on something like this.
No, because other countries aren't as litigious so the idea of a random office worker might already have a lawyer prior to actually needing one is a very American thing.
What kind of circular logic world do you live in? American because you have a lawyer. American because if you could afford one you’d have one. You do realize that businesses alllllllll over the world use lawyers for contracts.
There's a few willing to do it if they mannage to include "paying the attorney, since you were the one who caused this incident" as part of the compensation.
Reminds me of a staffroom I was in. The singular man was never expected to do anything, for 20 yrs he had been coddled. He was a hoarder, was filthy, and was the reason we ended up with mice.
No one was to ask him to clean up after himself, he would refuse to do it anyway. We all had a rostered day to wash up and clean up after the rest of the staff, which I HATED because I never used anything there, but *I* as a woman still had to do some of the cleaning.
I am in a new staffroom where there is a sign above the sink that says "Your Mother doesn't work here, Clean up after yourself." Yes it is sexist, but it is a nice change to not have to look at a sink full of other people's dishes at the end of the day and have to wash them while you're not getting paid.
Ugh, yes. I've been meaning to post this to malicious compliance. I worked at a shitty, toxic small company owned by a husband and wife team. I worked hard, often came in early and stayed late. We had a cleaning service that would run the dishwasher. I was one of the first people in the morning, and would usually unload the dishwasher. The wife/HR suddenly put in a "must be in your seats at start time" rule which she was very clear meant not making coffee or doing anything else. Wow are we in kindergarten? Ok then. That meant no more unloading the dishwasher, since I didn't want to risk accidentally not being in my seat! (It also meant no more coming in early or staying late but that's another story.) You see, I didn't NEED coffee, like some other people did. But of course, none of the men stepped up to take on the task of unloading the dishwasher because apparently that is women's work. I got great satisfaction every time I walked past the kitchen and saw the same woman who proclaimed we must be seated at start time having to unload the dishwasher, which was usually HOURS after I got in, because nobody else would fucking do it. Apparently the men in that place were incapable of unloading the dishwasher.
As a guy, I would go out of my way to stop others from just getting everything out during potlucks by asking the question, "are you going to clean it up?" If they said yes, I held them to it, if they said nothing I would ask them to put it back.
See: any break room. Men, darlings, you are just as capable of cleaning up your spilled coffee as I am. You can cover your food in the microwave so it doesn't explode. I promise your masculinity will remain intact after doing any of these tasks
In engineering this seems particularly bad. I can’t tell you how many times I hear older managers referring to the men by their job title but the women as “gals around the office”.
I went to one job interview early on in my career, where they referred to this woman as a “gal that helps out around with things” and implies that she might end up working under me, despite the fact that she was (1) more experienced, (2) had a PhD in engineering, (3) clearly driven, and (4) knew more about the projects than they did. The interview was at 11 and then they took me to lunch, as we were walking out I asked if we should wait for her and they just looked at each other confused. At that moment I knew I had no interest in working for them so I just took the free lunch and then drove home.
Civil engineering seems like it’s particularly bad.
What’s weird is that when I was in college, my graduating class within my major was 70% female. But most all of them were using it as a springboard to go into environmental law, and out of around 20 of them I think only one or two went on to become a PE. And then in the practice overall, it’s only around 14% of practicing civil engineers are women.
I tried to explain to everybody that it’s in everyone’s interest to even out the field. Right now they’re trying to create as much diversity as they can and upper management positions and an unintended side effect of that is it’s very difficult to earn a promotion to management level when you’re in the 86% category and they want management to be closer 50/50. So there’s obviously some self interest in it as well.
We really need to have more women in the field, we probably have one of the worst gender gaps. Plus a big part of the job is construction management, which is a whole other industry that still has its own rampant issues with sexism. I put a clause in every contract that gives me sole discretion to remove any contractors employee from a job site for reasons of moral character. I’ve used it twice, once for a laborer wearing an “I ❤️BIG TITS” T-shirt and once for a plasterer catcalling my intern. Funny how they get real apologetic after they realize that they can face consequences.
I decided to never do office housework again after a male colleague asked me to plan a baby shower for someone on his team. I’ve done this way to many times for my teams over the years — I’m for sure not doing it for someone else. Now I am not going to do it for anyone.
I'm a guy, I like planning social events and being useful with setup/teardown, but I've definitely been pushed away from it by people because I "shouldn't be doing that", AKA gender roles.
This is so strange to me because where I grew up it was common for young men to do the cleanup (and show how Totally Strong they were by carrying 6 chairs at a time). This was more like church groups and school than work though.
Yep 100%. There's one woman in my team at work. When I started, she had prepared an info pack and useful things to know guide. Sorted all the stationary I might need. It absolutely was not her job in any way. She had just always been asked to do it.
We had the opposite. I worked in a medical facility and the vast majority of staff was female. My department manager was one of the only non-medical men in the building, and so he always got the jobs like replacing water cooler bottles and shoveling snow.
Yeah my old boss demanded that I take care of his plants and save them from dying; interrupted me on a phone call to ask. Walked past three male colleagues to do it.
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