And this is how sexism might affect your career guys.....

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Yesterday I went to lunch with a bunch of former coworkers. Another woman and two guys. The two guys are still at the place the four of us worked together at two years ago, the other women and I work together now again. And, like you do when you haven’t seen people for a few years, you catch up on the lives of shared coworkers - where did so and so end up and such. (Its a small sample size, but it would probably hold true for IT at Acme, by the way…women have MUCH shorter tenure).

And the subject of “Jack” came up. Jack had been an IT manager at “Acme” - the company where we all worked together. Jack had left for a job at “ABC Inc” We ladies looked at each other “Jack is gone?!”

“Yes, they went through a pretty big change at Acme, Jack turns out wasn’t up to the job and was quietly pushed out. But his job at ABC isn’t managerial, its technical, and he’s much better with the technical stuff.”

We nodded, that made sense to both of us. And we didn’t say anything other than that sounds good, or that sounds right.

“But their manager is leaving and they think they want Jack to manage. I have a friend at ABC,” continues one of the guys, “who works with him and I said he is a good engineer but not a great manager, and that they might not want to do that.”

“Besides,” say I, “he treats women like crap as a manager, which might get the company in trouble in the current climate.”

The guys had no idea. My friend and I told some stories about some of the things he said and did. None of it grabby, but most of it creepy or intimidating or sexist - and purposely intimidating - when my friend called him on it at the end of her contract, he said he does it on purpose to women because it gets results. We were both contractors when we were at Acme, he was an employee, and we just put up with it - even as employees it wouldn’t have been actionable, but it certainly didn’t create a comfortable work environment.

(I suspect Jack doesn’t treat his female coworkers with respect as an individual contributor, but since he’s just a misogynistic asshole and neither of us experienced sexual assault, as an individual contributor, his female coworkers should be able to take care of it.)

I have a feeling - I’ve worked with this guy for a LONG time, that any chance Jack had of getting promoted is now being sunk by a phone call that says…“I just talked to some women who worked with Jack and…”

Don’t assume you are really getting away with it long term. Most industries are small. And women who have something to lose don’t necessarily speak out to authority, so you can probably get away with it for a long time… But people will talk.

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The plot is kind of meh and the characters are very 2 dimensional. I give it 2 1/2 stars.

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People have always known which of their coworkers couldn’t keep their sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism or whatever to themselves. In the old days when companies were dominated by straight, WASP males that kind of behavior may not have been as much of an issue, but word always got around.

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Please refrain from posting in the thread if you have nothing productive to add.

No warning issued.

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Was that your first moderatin?

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Yeah, I think she would’ve went with the warning if she could have just found the button. :smiley:

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Actually, I’ve found that to not always be the case. Even as a woman, I’ve frequently been oblivious to what some people do in the workplace. Apparently I give off a “don’t try your BS with me” vibe, so many of the worst offenders not only don’t do it to me, but don’t do it if I am around.
I was recently at lunch with two former co-workers and one of them was talking about a similar lunch he had gone to recently with two of his former employees. The two women he was with were talking about another former co-worker with similarities to Weinstein/Trump/Conyers etc. As their former boss, he asked them why they had never told him so that he could do something about it. Their response was “we knew you’d make an issue of it, and we just wanted to get on with work” So, he too, was oblivious to what was happening in his own office. And he is not the ‘deliberately blind’ sort of guy either.

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Sometimes I feel very fortunate to work in the nonprofit field, which is overwhelmingly female. While men tend to rise to the top much more quickly than women, I’ve never had a sexist coworker or supervisor that I’m aware of. I think you’re more likely in those cases to have a shared set of values with your fellow employees.

I met our new boss yesterday, and during our first team meeting she said, "Your children are the most important thing. If your child needs you, I’d prefer you go sooner rather than wait around asking for permission.’’

This is the sort of thing I wouldn’t trade for a higher income.

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OP: Do you think Jack would have been promoted in the “old days” when there weren’t very many women in the workplace? Or would his lack of people skills/managerial skills have torpedoed his career even then?

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The culture of non-profits are a bit different, certainly. Any employer does need to realize that to parents, children are going to be more important than the stupid tasks you are asking them to do, so an employer would be an ass to say, “Your children are not as important as the work you are doing, I’ll fire you if you if you need to leave to take care of them.” (Also, that prasing may even be illegal). [Of course, if this leaves work that needs to be done, it will be the employees without children that will need to work extra to make up for it.]

Out of curiosity, did he say this to the male employees too?

Absolutely, in the “old days”, knowing how to “keep women in their place” would have been an asset.

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My new boss is a woman. There were no men in the meeting nor are there any on our team. There are very few men at the organization where I work. There have always been a dearth of men in this field (there were four men in my graduating class of 145 - demand is very high for men in social work.) When I have worked with men they have always been CEOs or in a supervisory or management position. I never once had an issue with the way I was treated.

Given the sort of organization I work for (pretty blatantly feminist) I’d be shocked if men with children were treated any differently. And it’s the kind of place that if you saw men being treated badly, and thought it wasn’t fair, you could bring it up at the next diversity meeting or whatever and changing the work culture to be more inclusive of men would probably be written into the strategic plan. We are certainly serious about our work but it’s probably a really foreign and weird environment relative to your average corporate day job.

I miss working with men a lot, actually. But I think the nature of our organization being targeted at issues traditionally regarded as the purview of women (sexual assault and domestic violence), we just don’t have as many men.

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Heeeeeeey, look who’s all grown up! Did you get shiny jackboots?

When they absolutely can’t, yes. But the smartest ones know who they can show it to and who not; there’s also some who aren’t particularly smart but the relationship with their managers is centered on getting friendly with the manager, and that means small chat is on whatever issues the manager brings up. If the manager never talks about sports, the same guy who spends half of each day in sports webpages doesn’t mention the word “ball” at all.

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I think everyone–both men and women–need to be aware that inappropriate behavior (however borderline) can come back and bite them in the ass down the road.

You never know who will be unit manager one day. It could very well be the idealistic whippersnapper in your group, the one you talk over in staff meetings and talk shit about in the breakroom. It could also be someone who doesn’t strike you as very managerial–like the person who comes into the office part-time to do administrative work. It’s easy to think such a person is just a peon, a nobody. Someone who shouldn’t take offense when asked to make copies or do a coffee run. But they may just have skills you don’t know about. My boss ended up blindsiding the whole lot of us when she got the job because most of us only knew her as that quiet chick in the cubicle who just did bookkeeping. You just never know who will one day be asked to give a reference on your behalf.

So always be respectful and professional.

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Something that one would hope most would follow even if they were 100% confident there was no way that the other person could end up being your manager some day.

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Wow.

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I agree with this. Seems like the offenders develop a pretty good radar for who will put up with it and how much they’ll put up with.
I’ve been a manager for multiple decades now and have people talk about things years after I didn’t know about and when I ask why it’s either because a) they thought everyone knew (not if the offenders are selective and no one reports it) or b) they didn’t want to make a big deal about it.

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:eek: :wink:
Joe Stalin is that you? Possibly Muammar Gaddafi.

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The thing is. Some people work well with minimal supervison. Others need a short leash. Treating everyone the same is not something thats workable.

My last two associates were like that. One was average workwise, but could be left to her own devices. The other was crazy smart, but needed regular mointoring to make sure she did not let her enthusiasm run away.

One got lots of indepedance and run of the mill work. Usually. The other had lots of challenging work.

Treating both the same would have been to misuse their talents.

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AK84, is that in the right thread? That different people need to be managed differently is one of those things that are obvious to some of us, learnable by some others, and incomprehensible to yet another part of humanity, but I fail to see the relationship between your example and subordinates acting differently with their manager and with others.

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Yes, I’ve always worked for non-profits too and am aware of how lucky we have it.