It was a very good comeback, though!
Another take on microaggressions.
I’m a guy, but this can happen to anyone.
At meetings, my previous boss, after directing a task would say ‘That will be easy’. Moving on …
Ummm. No… I’m not sure yet. Sounds easy, sure. It’s possible that this could be very deep and have far reaching effects. A two day job can turn into two months.
But it was something he saw online, so it will be easy.
It looks like magic, but it’s not.
That happens too, sometimes. There’s a celebration, birthday, retirement whatever, in the break room, with men and women. Everyone throws away their own plate and stuff and leaves the rest. I can almost guarantee, only the women, or the one woman, will get scolded for leaving a mess.
I worked at this place that had these Xmas parties where each department was given a theme and expected to decorate along that theme.it always fell to the women in the departments to do it. One year we all agreed we’d just half-ass it together and get drunk. Did we win the contest? Nope, but we got drunk at work, best team building ever and no one was left on a mountain.
That is astounding on several levels. Work expects you to decorate for a party? And they pay you to do this? Never mind the whole religious-holiday-at-work thing, which would not fly anyplace I’ve ever worked. Even the places that did a Christmas something were very careful to keep it inclusive and avoid all allusions to Jesus, Santa, and their friends.
It probably was a “holiday party” not religious, and the decorations were always funny (to corporate types) themes: like Downton Abbey or some reality TV crap. The event happened on Friday and transitioned into our office party. I think that the winning department got gift cards or some such.
There was this awkward cultural division in the office, in general the support departments loved it, but the project departments did not. Our office displays were often cynical and a little mean.
I volunteered to serve on a resident utility committee that was created to provide transparency and offer recommendations to the township board on the O&M of the utility. Eventually I was the sole minutes taker because my minutes were detailed and precise. I had plenty of headspace to participate fully in the meetings. I was asked often to join the township team and become a paid transcriber for other meetings. No thank you!
They started publishing our committee minutes online where residents could read them and then the trouble started. Certain residents started complaining about stuff they read in the minutes not getting done to their satisfaction or they’d question the wisdom of the utility operators and dispute their findings. We even got sued because the previous contractor didn’t like what he read. They threw out his lawsuit.
I went on vacation and missed a couple meetings. On my return we had to approve the previous meeting draft. It was my template with my name at the bottom and filled in by another interim note taker who worked for the township. It was crap note taking and I was highly annoyed that they wanted me to sign off on it. WTELF? Time for me to resign and I did immediately.
Eventually they deep sixed the minutes online and never published them again.
This. This, this, this.
– I’ve been reading through this thread creating a huge long post, most of which has already been said repeatedly by others, so I’m not sending that part.
And yet you are certainly doing that all of the time without realizing it.
Do you give your requests the same way to your boss as to your subordinates? the same way to your spouse, your grandparent, your child? the same way to your immediate family member, your best friend, your neighbor who you know only casually, a total stranger? your neurosurgeon and your housecleaner?
The whole point of recognizing microagressions is to try to get the taken-for-granted background noise out in the open, so that people can see the extent to which it’s been screwing up everybody’s ability to hear.
that’s not a microaggression, that’s just willful optimism.
Yeah. I know these guys are overworked and underpaid. They snowplow our road with a 6x6 articulated grader. A ~ 12 foot blade on the front, and also a wing blade on the side and the standard blade on a grader.
Our road is basically dirt, and whatever the Rocky Mountains throw at it. BUT. It’s a dedicated county road.
I will plow the road a few times a year because they are so busy. Personal plow trucks are good, and can do it, but it beats the hell out of my truck.
One time the county turned a grader around in my driveway messing up my retaining wall (backed into it). 
They are not supposed to do that.
I did not complain. I did not see the damage until the spring. And I’m not a lawsuit type of person. Ya just deal with it. I’m putting up a retaining wall of 3 foot boulders. They will notice that. 
Life at altitude and snow, is wonderful, but can be incredibly difficult. I chose to live here. So I deal.
Yeah, I’ll take that. Good way to put it. Often turns into a Wait, what? moment though. Before I could get a ‘wait a minute’ in there, the meeting has moved on. The assumption that anyone is gonna take notes is bad, bad, bad. As is, ‘Hey, this should be easy’. Ummm…
Some of this post seems to belong in a different thread?
– I have once or twice had discourse try to conflate posts I was considering making in two different threads.
I think I did a side track there. Sorry.
Back in the day, I was part of a research group with about 50 people, about 40% with advanced degrees (mostly PhDs). About half a dozen were women. In meetings, if they weren’t being asked to get someone coffee or take notes for the group, they were often ignored. One of the scientists had a business card that read Dr. First Last, PhD. The first time I saw it, I thought, “How silly!”. But then I thought about all the small slights and ignorance she had to put up with, and I understood that it was an attempt to push back without being considered a b***h.
I always made a deliberate effort to introduce my women colleagues early in (or before) meetings, if only to a couple of the most influential people in the meeting to short circuit the issue.
Microaggressions are these small things that happen over and over and over and over. Sort of like the water torture of dropping single drops of water on someones forehead, for hours. No problem right? It’s always just a single drop of water. If the one being tortured cries out, they are being weak and unreasonable because it’s just a single drop of water that causes it, right?
It is a straw in a long line of straws, and it is very convenient for some not to see all the other straws and act surprised, and maybe even offended, when the camel’s back breaks.
Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss always believed that any task he didn’t know how to do was easy.
I agree. Maybe “micro slight” would be a better term?
I like that.
Isn’t “micro” making it small enough? Who’s ever going to care if someone legitimately says “My life at work is full of micro slights and I’m sick of it?”
This is not a microaggression. This is straight up aggression (as @Dewey_Finn already pointed out).
Changing verbiage so that things don’t seem so serious is pretty much the opposite of the direction I would like to see this discussion go in.
I think it’s not the size, but the imcomprehension: “Why are you so sensitive?”
Also, it’s the cumulative size. A billion micro somethings is a thousand somethings.
And changing verbiage so things didn’t seem so serious is in itself a micro aggression.
One more straw….