The Ego of Masculinity

Hello again and welcome to another edition of my ranting. Before I get into this one, I want to thank the 50 people who are now following this blog, especially the ones that take the time to leave a comment. I love you guys and you make me a happy girl. If I knew who you were, I'd give you lollies for sure. Keep up the good work.

Ok so let get stuck in. This topic has been festering (sounds gross I know) in my mind for some time and every so often I reach boiling point. Also, just a heads up - I am not saying every guy out there is like this, in fact, its probably the minority. I just happen to work, have worked or know most of them.

This happened while out for dinner with my bud, Miss M. Miss M was having a rant in general, as is normal for when you get together with gal pals. Her rant was about the men at work being pigs and expecting women to do menial tasks. That set me off too. I work in a corporate office now in the public sector but used to work in a corporate environment in the private sector. There the management were all men. In fact, any job that is not admin based was and still is done by men. I worked in a male dominated environment for a male dominated company within a masculine industry, so of course I am going to run into men on power trips and also men who do not understand that women do more then photocopying, cleaning and cooking.

So anyway, Miss M's rant was that there is a dishwasher in her office that does not get unpacked. She had dirty dishes and noticed that there was a mixture of dirty and clean ones in the machine. So she turned it on to clean them all and then came back later to unpack it as it was apparent that no one else was going to. It was while she was doing this that a male colleague came in behind her with a dirty plate and waited while she unpacked the thing, and also had the gall to say to her "So that's part of your job is it?". Big mistake. Miss M is not one to take comments like that, in fact I would say she is quite a firey person, but I think it's part of her charm. She said something like this to him "No, but it seems as though no one else was going to do it. You know if you helped me un-pack the dishwasher, you could put your plates in and go." This guy was shocked the a she would speak to him and suggest that he, a manly man, should do something that was obviously so below him. However, he may also have been afraid of another tongue lashing by Miss M, so picked up 2 plates and and put them on the counter. Fantastic effort there big guy, you are now officially house trained. NOT!!! What kind of jerk does that? Seriously. Actually, they are the kind of jerks I worked with. That said, not all the guys I worked with were jerks. It's only a select few. Here are the choice cuts from them.

• One guy walked past 3 photocopiers, and down 2 flights of stairs to get me to photocopy a sheet of paper for him twice. I know. Ridiculous.
• Then there was the cranky old guy in accounts. He comes down to me and says "There's no milk". Umm, so? He thought it was my job to go and get him milk and tells me so. I tell him that he is wrong and if he wants more milk he will have to go get it himself. He then yells at me and says that it's definitely not his job, how dare I suggest that he should have to go get some more himself. It should be pointed out that the shop is about 50 meters up the road, but the issue has now become a matter of principle. He goes to my boss and tells her that I wouldn't go get him more milk. I love my boss, she's a champ. She basically told the old man to shove it up his ass. The kicker with this story is that I don't even use the milk. I don't drink coffee and don't eat cereal in the morning. I swear this guy would go through 2L of milk a day on his own. Maybe he wouldn't be so on edge if he stopped drinking coffee, or at least cut down. Maybe I should have told him that. No, you're right, probably not the smartest idea I've had.
• Lastly there was possibly the stupidest comment ever made by my bosses boss. There was no receptionist in the building. We had a main line ringing on a phone in each dept. There were four departments. Accounts, Marketing, Exec and IT. The phones were not currently not ringing in IT. When my boss commented on it to her boss, she was told that they were boys and they were busy and it's not their job. She went off her nut. It was awesome.

I can't believe that some people still think like this. Anyway, that's the rant for today. Please join in, share your rants. It may be that you work people like the ones I described, or maybe you work with a woman on a power trip out to turn it around onto the fellas. So share your rant with us, it will make you feel better.

 

And fyi, while this was aimed at the men I have worked with, I have plenty of fodder for a post about the women I worked with, so I am certainly not biased on the subject. But that is another post for another day.

That's it from me today.

Be awesome to each other.