Well, maybe I’m lucky that I’ve always worked in nonprofits. I know nonprofits are not immune to this kind of behavior, but most of the places I’ve worked have been full of good people who are way more focused on the work in front of them than any sort of rivalry. Maybe unity is easier to come by when you have a common ‘‘enemy’’ - whether that enemy be poverty or local government bureaucracy or whatever.
From what I’ve seen/experienced it’s more prevalent in customer service and/or lower level jobs. However, I’ve also witnessed it in office settings.
The less “power” one perceives s/he has in one’s job the more s/he is apt to take it out on their colleagues IF s/he is a Type A kind of personality.
I think this is why from what I’ve seen, is most women would rather work in a gender mixed environment than one thats all women and many prefer being the only woman.
I noticed this also among Mom’s at my kids school.
It’s endemic in Nursing, to the point thatit’s considered a hugely important issue within the industry. We call it “lateral violence”, and technically it can involve any genders, but as nursing is still 70% female, it’s mostly woman on woman. The stories my hospital working nurse friends tell would make your hair curl. They may be all sweet and professional while they’re in your hospital room, but it’s too often a bloodbath at the nurse’s station. It’s one of the reasons I’m staying out of hospital nursing, to be honest. When I only see my coworkers twice a month, there’s far less of this shit. There’s not none, surprisingly enough. People still backstab and badmouth and make power plays, but it’s a lot easier to ignore when someone is texting my boss to complain that I reported the medication profile in their patient’s folder wasn’t filled out (or some other important procedural error), rather than confronting me in meatspace. I can keep my nose on my work and just ignore it. Helps that I feel secure in the job and am not looking for a promotion, though.
I’ve never seen this phenomenon in my office, which is almost entirely staffed by hot chicks.
Hotness, as opposed to beauty or general comeliness, is a specific thing, right? We’re talking full-on make-up, stylish hair, a certain body type, fashionable clothes. Sexy shoes. People aren’t born “hot”. Hotness is intentional and is a function of how much time and energy one puts into their physical appearance.
It wouldn’t surprise me that a woman who can check off all the “hot” boxes likely has certain personality traits. They likely care a lot about what people think and they thrive on positive attention. They want to be noticed. They probably aren’t the type who wants to play second fiddle to anyone. Thus, they will act aggressively towards women they see as competition.
I’ve never seen anything like this before, but it could be that my line of work doesn’t bring me in contact with “hot” women.
I’ve been fortunate to avoid it in most places that I’ve worked, but one former workplace, small law firm, had an established “Queen Bee” type. When I joined, she viewed me as her competition and started right in on talking me down, both to my face and behind my back. I was (and am) a female nerd type, clueless about social cues and motives, and just ignored/avoided her. I worked there for seven years, and she was at her nasty one-sided contest for dominance the whole time.
Now that I’m older and wiser, I have a bit of hindsight about the situation. I was an early adapter of computers, because I liked them, and I joined this place just as computers were taking off and becoming an important, ubiquitous office tool. I was the one other workers came to to figure out everyday application issues. She was a pretty woman, secretary to the big boss, and was used to being the center of attention. With the advent of computers, she lost the spotlight (as well as being stupid and stubborn about learning to use them).
I don’t think most men would make that distinction. Hotness is just “how good you look”. Most women will be hotter if they put in some effort, but you might be hot with no effort at all.
Really? When I hear a guy ask “Is she hot?”, I don’t think of girls who might just be classified as cute or having a “nice” face. I think of someone who has a very put-together appearance.
I’m skeptical that women can be hot with no effort at all. Women can be naturally beautiful, but I’m inclined to agree with monstro that hotness is a behaviorally influenced factor. If you think a woman is hot with no effort, chances are they are really good at concealing that effort. You don’t see all the tweezing and moisturizing or the hour they spend doing their hair in the morning. That quote ‘‘beauty is pain’’ doesn’t exist by happenstance.
I don’t like reporting to women. They get all tangled up in interpersonal stuff that doesn’t matter (I had one complain about my body language in a meeting. A meeting in which she had banged on the desk and yelled at us; and my crossed legs were a problem?) I’ve worked for a lot who, trying to “hear all sides” just fanned the flames of whatever secondary-school drama was going on. A lot of it is that people with no management skills are moved into management, but some is certainly based on ingrained gender norm behaviors.
Of course, there are a lot of weird people in corporate America, and it stands to reason that half will be women…
It is clear to me that the OP’s boss is totally incompetent: the boss should mandate that everyone act in a polite/professional manner to other coworkers: if they don’t they get fired.
I’ve dated a couple of women who were hot with no effort at all. Married to one now, in fact. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have found them attractive after three years on a desert island, but they were certainly hot first thing in the morning (and my wife still is, and spends less time than most women on her appearance).
My husband would argue that I’m effortlessly hot first thing in the morning or whatever, but I’m not hot by any mainstream standard, so a person’s opinion of their mate is probably not the best source for data (not that hotness is anything other than a subjective judgment anyway.) There may be women who are effortlessly hot, but most of the hot women in the world do not do it effortlessly. I know a ton of women whose tedious, painful and time-consuming effort puts them several categories higher in attractiveness than if they just did nothing.
No doubt. I’m just saying there are women who are effortlessly hot. I’m sure they are a distinct minority even among the hot. For the record, I’m not one of those “girls look better without makeup” guys; even the “effortlessly hot” girls were hotter when they tried.
Okay, end hijack.
RNATB, the reason I think the definition of “hotness” matters is because I do think a certain kind of look maps on to certain behaviors. If hotness includes a vast range of looks and body types, then I wouldn’t expect the OP’s generalization to hold. But if we are using a narrow category of women to define “hotness”, then it wouldn’t surprise me that we’d see consistent patterns regarding “hot” women.
We could ask why “hot” women seem more materialistic than other women, for instance. A woman who spends hundreds of dollars on stylish hair and clothing every month will probably look quite hot, if we define “hot” as a woman who is very fashionable. And not surprisingly, a person who invests so much in fashion will probably be materialistic. But if “hot” includes women who are just cute or pretty, regardlless of fashion-sense, then the truthfulness of that stereotype breaks down.
In a recent situation at my current job (in the kitchen at a retirement home), it seemed to be more about competition in competence rather than attractiveness. One woman was, yes, smoking hot, but the other was about 300 pounds with a butch haircut. Both were very competent workers, but the “hot” one had been there for several months and was pretty much the “queen bee” in our department, and was accustomed to that status.
The other woman started working here and it was just instant conflict. Granted, it’s arguable that the “big” woman started it by remarking too loudly and too often on the “hot” one’s complete inability to show up on time (consistently 15-30 minutes late every day). My manager was going to talk to the two of them about “cooling it”, so before he did, I gave him some advice (he’s half my age): “I like [Hot One], and consider her a friend, so I’m not trying to get her in any trouble, and I know she can show up late and still get all of her work done [which is why Manager had been letting it slide]. But the point of punctuality isn’t so much about whether or not you can still get the work done. It’s a matter of courtesy to your coworkers so that they know you’re coming. When we’re 10 minutes away from time to start serving breakfast, and [Hot One] still hasn’t shown up, I have to stop my own work and start scrambling to get all of her pre-service stuff done.” Basically, I was as tired of [Hot One]'s constant tardiness as [Big One] was.
In any case, [Hot One] apparently started a covert campaign of harassment against [Big One] that culminated in her following [Big One] around, calling her “b*tch” and “c**t” and other unpleasant names. But she was careful to make sure nobody else heard her, so it was she-said/she-said when [Big One] complained to management. Upper management took [Hot One]'s side, and [Big One] quit, filed a grievance with HR, and apparently ended up with some kind of settlement.
A week later, after proudly reestablishing her dominance, [Hot One] pulled a no-show/no call and was dismissed.
Maybe I’m just different in my tastes, but I typically don’t equate “hotness” with “physical beauty”. To me “hotness” is an intangible, expressed largely through demeanor and body language. One place this is evident is in still photography of “models”, particularly “amateur” models. I’ve seen enough photos of objectively “beautiful” young women, with well-done hair and makeup and exactly the type of body I like, but whose photos do absolutely nothing for me, and I’ve also seen enough photos of “Plain Janes” who simply know, somehow, how to “work the camera” (again, in still photography). The latter, I find “hot”, the former, “not”.
I worked at a small firm upon graduating law school. We had shared office space with a few other firms and also a receptionist who worked for all of them. There was a female attorney who’d worked there for a while, and the legal assistant who had been there much longer and had a “closer” relationship with the boss. You could tell that this bothered the attorney and there was always an undercurrent of cattiness and tension between the two ladies.
When I was trying to get answers regarding internal procedures or work-related matters, I’d go to whoever was available, but I remember one day, the boss was out of the office and I had a question. I went to the attorney, but she was on the phone, so I went to the legal assistant. This caused a HUGE fight between the two ladies about who had more authority, who was the “right-hand woman,” etc. The rest of the day, you could have cut the tension with a knife.
The next day, I was called into the boss’s office and told that, from now on, if I had ANY questions, I was only to speak to the attorney.
Thing is, there was no real room for “advancement” in that firm, so I don’t think they were competing for promotions. It seemed to be more of a “perception” issue.
I’ll throw out there that 30+ years ago I saw this happening among young low level female employees who weren’t in line for any kind of advancement. In this century I’ve seen it happening with women in management positions. Progress?
Hot story, bro.