This is one of those stories I hear all the time in “Worst Job Interview” stories on both Reddit and other websites, and every time it’s retold I always remember it’s prefaced by “Didn’t happen to me but to a friend/coworker”.
Basically the story goes a guy applies at a job at wherever (Restaurant, grocery store, office) and seems qualified and enthusiastic until he gets told that some of his occupational duties will involve “light cleaning” and then he suddenly turns angry and demands “I’m not cleaning, that’s women’s work” and either angrily walks out the interview or the interview ends right there and he’s not hired
Now I know this isn’t impossible, but I’m curious if anybody actually has first hand knowledge of this? Mainly because I saw this anecdote said again on X (Twitter) as a “Can you believe me these days?!” stories again as a “My coworker said” story. And I don’t want people posting “Well considering the time we’ve living in I’m not surprised” because then you’re falling into the urban legend trap.
Well, I had a restaurant employer who wouldn’t hire men as servers because “that’s women’s work” so that’s the closest I’ve got, anecdotally. This was years ago.
I was interviewing an internal candidate for a supervisory position, and tt the end of the interview, I asked him what would he change about the area he worked in. “There are too many women in management,” was his reply. To this day, I don’t know if he deliberately sabotaged his interview or if he thought that was a valid response.
Not exactly the same thing, but we have people come in to do court-ordered community service all the time at my job.
We almost never send CS over to the dog section because it requires a fair bit of training just for basic safety and it’s not worth putting that time in with someone who will only be there 20 hours total. And there are PLENTY of dudes who throw a whole hissy fit when they find out that they’re going to have to clean and wash dishes in the cat area. Cleaning and cats are both for girls and they are simply far too manly for that. They came here to walk dogs and maybe do some kind of welding or construction or something.
We get women who pull that every once in a while, but it’s usually guys. It’s also almost always the guys who, when asked to wash dishes, vacuum, do laundry, or mop, will claim they don’t know how.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone literally say “that’s women’s work” and community service is not the same as a job interview, but I’ve definitely witnessed plenty of the “I expect to do only my exact preferred chores/activities and anything else is beneath me. You don’t understand- I’m special in my manliness and it’s only right that I get to do what I want” attitude.
We also, btw, get plenty of people- of all genders - doing community service who are delighted to be there and happy to help and plenty who just put their head down, do what’s asked of them, and get it done without complaint. The PITAs stick out more, but they’re the exception.
Volunteering.
Concession stand and food truck.
After the games/events all the men volunteers would slide out. They only volunteered cause they thought they could watch the game. Never happened.
We began asking men volunteers what they thought they would be doing. No one ever said cleaning up after the event. Which took, all hands on deck, at least another hour.
We had a few straight up say they weren’t cleaning anything.
In the South there’s still a culture of womens work and mens work differences.
My gf is an advertising executive. She regularly works 10 hour days from home, with barely enough time for a pee break. When I peek over her shoulder I can’t understand, it’s like hieroglyphics.
The great thing about stories that get passed around on teh interwebz is that they probably happened to someone’s grandfather in 1953 and have just been told and retold for the last 70 years…