Working With Women

The BBQ Pit
1

I pit far too often, but I really do think this one in particular is worthy.

I hate working with women. Don’t get me wrong, I earned my feminist stripes in University, having been fully indoctrinated and all that jazz, but my real life experience contradicts much of what I learned in academia.

I work in a small office. My boss (the owner) is a guy. Totally easy going, and a pleasure to work with. The other three employees are all women. One of them is cool, I have a good working (read:professional) relationship with her.

The other two are making my life a living hell.

In other jobs, when I’ve fucked up, the coworkers have had the courtesy to inform me of my mistake. These two stew… and bitch… behind my back… and extrapolate… and lie and then eventually make shit up.

WTF is wrong with women??? And why are my feminist ethics being so compromised???

FUCK!!!

2

I was the only guy in a library with twenty or so women. Mostly librarians, mostly menopausal.

I feel for you.

3

It’s nice to hear a woman say something like this. That has been my experience in 25 years of working, but anything I have to say about it smacks of construed misogyny. These are generalizations, but generalizations can be very useful if people remember they do not apply to every case, but to many. Keep in mind that I have worked with men who act like this too, and people of both sexes who are mean-spirited and vicious and delight in bullying and causing strife and spreading rumors and such.

I honestly think the sexes have different ways of working out problems. I think men in general are more forthright and more willing to speak to the problem. I think many but not all by a long shot women do it this way: someone is upset with someone, and instead of going to that person and working it out, tells someone else about it, who tells someone else, who tells someone else, and often but not always one of those people will go up to the original someone and inform them that person x is upset with them. And the original someone is expected to go to the aggrieved party for the purpose of detente.

These again are my observations of a long period of time. I want to add that I did not have a sister growing up, and so don’t have that level of deep experience that others might. I am more comfortable with the male brand of assholery, I am powerless against the female kind.

4

That one sentence captures what I have been trying to make sense of for ten years now. I went to graduate school and was admitted as the first male ever in a lab with 10 women including a female professor. I got burned so hard during that experience that I may never get over it and most of it was due the type of working style that people are describing here. I was emotionally abused and betrayed in ways that I no idea how to counter. Their backstabbing and emotionally assaultive ambushing was something that I was not prepared for or how to respond to. My mother warned me when I was a child never to work in a workplace controlled by females. She is one of the most decorated people in her profession and was professionally accosted three times by females that had administrative authority over her work.

However, I have worked in two predominantly female corporate departments since then and that worked out OK. I have a female boss and an even higher female boss right now and the VP is a little out of control with that style but she works in another building so I have a reprieve on that.

5

I’m another one that has no proper weapon against female “assholery”.

If a man is an arsehole to me, it’ll probably take the form of some sort of arrogance or power play, or put-down. I can respond to those easily - usually in kind. I don’t always win mind you, but I go down fighting and even if I lose, the guy will know I’m not a pushover.

But with women, it’s the FREAKING MIND GAMES! I HATE MIND GAMES! If you don’t play along, they think you’re scared of them, and they win. If you give in, they win. If you do play along, then you’ve sunk to the level of playing mind games yourself, and they win. I just have nothing in my arsenal to use against this.

It’s refreshing to note that my greatest friend in the world, a bull dyke, also has the same complaint about women. She doesn’t get it either. She’s the only woman I can really talk on the level to.

6

I despise working with women, always have. Working with women is like walking in a field full of land mines. You never know when your next step is going to blow up in your face.

If a guy has a problem with you (or your work), he’ll TELL you, and that will pretty much be it.

A woman will go running to the boss and tattle, spread rumors and all that other 4th grade Mickey Mouse bullshit.

I’d rather work with 5 openly mean males than I would 10 nice-to-my-face females whose moods change with the temperature. If you’re gonna be a jerk, be one 24/7 so I know what to expect. If you’re gonna be sweet, then be sweet (with allowances for the occasional bad day/PMS/etc. Nobody’s perfect.).

None of this sweet one week/trying to get me fired the next stuff, though.

7

My friend Mindy and I have determined that we get along so well because she and I both hate women. (joking… mostly.)

Men are just easier to deal with for some reason… and the women I do get along well with all feel the same way.

8

You just need to work with the right kind of women and be a man. The woman should be 28-31 - old to start worrying about a life alone but young enough to still have nice firm tits and a hot ass. Just pretend you want to get married. You will soon be elbow deep in pussy (if that is your thing).

9

Thank Og this is the Pit.

Kel, you are a moronic, drooling, steaming pile of dogshit. I bet you’re ugly, too.

That is all.

10

I much prefer working with men than women, for many of the reasons already stated. Things get done, there’s no mind-games, pecking order kind of shit that women in an office or workplace seem to fall into. Most of my worst experiences in my working life were kicked off by women.

11

I agree. (Most) women in the workplace are bitches. Most of my bosses have been women and they have all been bitches.

As a woman myself, I try sooooo hard not to be like that. I try to learn from their mistakes. I have always gotten along much better with the men in my offices.

12

Wow. No wonder people here don’t like you much. If this was serious then you need to be hit with something along the lines of a medium sized tree.

On the other hand, if you’re joking, then you should learn that most jokes are better when they’re actually funny.

13

One of the managers at my job is quite passive-agressive. The bosses at all my jobs are women, though that’s not to say all of them are terrible. However, the coworkers/managers that were women used tactics [as others have said] which were much more difficult to deal with.

If a male manager saw I was doing something wrong, he would confront me about it and tell me to my face, and once he saw I understood, put the matter to rest and would not bring it up again.

However, if a female manager saw that I was doing something wrong, rather than say anything to stave off further mistakes/miscommunication, she would wait patiently, the unload a laundry list of things I’ve been doing improperly for the past week, making me look like an incompetent worker. Female managers seem much more apt to simply assume I know what they want me to do, and when I don’t, treat me as if I had Down’s syndrome.

A great example of this happened about a month ago. I was told to leave a specific number of pencils out. Unfortunately, I had miscounted, and didn’t leave enough out [totally my fault, I can admit that] Later the next day, we were short on pencils. The female manager gleefully pointed out that I hadn’t left enough pencils out the previous night, and I was at fault for the shortage. She did not, however, offer up an explanation of why she didn’t put out the required number of pencils, because in her mind screwing everybody over in the interest of pointing out my mistake was much more important :rolleyes:

14

I work with about 30 other women and one man, in a team treating a population that is 95% female.

It’s okay, though, because I have a strong, and I mean quite strong, masochistic streak.

15

Ah, yet another case for Deborah Tannen, SuperLinguist! In her book, “You Just Don’t Understand,” Dr. Tannen explores the difference between male and female discourse. One important point is that women and girls communicate and cooperate differently from men. Male discourse is centered around competition, and the status of each individual as higher or lower than others. Women, on the other hand, form alliances, and communication is tailored to avoid the appearance of competition, supremacy, or status among the members of that alliance. In male-created settings, women are at a disadvantage unless they adopt male discourse; in female-created or -dominated settings, men are at a disadvantage: their open competition, preference for hierarchy, and space-filling conversational style is resented and ostracised by most women, to whom it represents an attack on the social order.

16

Oh yeah, to the OP… I work in an office full of women (myself included) and I’ve found the best way to deal with their backstabbing and gossiping is just to present yourself as strong and confident. Call them on their crap- first privately and if that doesn’t work then do it in front of the others. It IS possible to create an aura of “I don’t play that” and have them perceive you as someone not to play these mind games with. I’ve done it, and I’m well-respected in my office.

17

Wow, this hasn’t been my experience at all. The only reason I prefer a male manager is because they are much easier to manipulate. Most of the waitresses in my resturant are attractive and we get most of what we ask for. :smiley: But I prefer my female coworkers to the male ones and my new boss, who’s female, kicks ass and does more work than any of the three male managers before her.

18

I think this is true, but I don’t think the problem is just that there are two different ways of communicating. I think that the problem is that some women use both ways - going back and forth between “how dare you treat me different than a man” and “how dare you ignore the fact that I’m a woman”. It’s this shifting of perspective that makes some women difficult to deal with.

19

Well, you might claim feminist ethics, but you lost your sense of perspective and rational judgement somewhere along the way.

You work, by your own admission, in a small office with one man and three women. Hardly a representative sample that justifies making sweeping generalizations about the either sex.

20

Female here, and I also hate working with mostly females.

I worked for seven years at a factory, and my department was 95% female workers. Backstab, gossip, lies, mind games. I tried to stay the hell out of it, but now and then, I’d be dragged against my will into the fray. What a bunch of bitches. Ferexample: One crazy bitch of an old woman loved to hotwire people against each other, regularly. I got sucked in once when she told one of my “friends” that I had “run home to daddy” (my father is the foreman in a particular department) and ratted on her and her forklift driver loverboy, saying I told my father they were “practically having sex on the forklift” the night before. See, old lovaboy had been talked to by my father wuite a few times, and that day he’d gotten a final warning. One more slip and he’d be fired. I had no idea about the incident, but my friend called me out and we had some pretty nasty words for each other. It was mostly me screaming at her that I had no idea what she was talking about, and her screaming that I had to “run home to daddy” to tell him everything I saw. Frankly, I didn’t see, nor would I care if I had seen. My family all work at the same factory, and we go out of our way to not bring work home or talk about it to each other. But how to tell her that when she’s freaking out that lovaboy might lose his job? Whatever. So I just didn’t speak to her for several days, stuck my chin in the air whenever I saw her and ignored her dirty looks. Finally, a few days later, she was forced to work beside me while I fixed a machine, and I was talking to another lady, and everytime I said something vaguely amusing, she would glance at me and smile shyly, or giggle just perceptibly, so I’d notice. When she had to go back out to her normal post, I decided she was sorry, so I’d go out and see what she had to say. I came out and raised my eyebrow at her, and she still looked all shy and nervous, so I broke the tension by saying I thought I’d said some things the other night I didn’t really mean. The floodgate broke, she apologised, and I told her who I thought was behind the whole mess: the crazy old bitch woman. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped when she realised she had been played for a fool - it was the old woman who had told her I was the one who had ratted. So, for jollies, when we went for break, we had to walk past crazy old bitch woman, so we walked right under her nose, with our arms linked, laughing together like we shared some great joke - we’re best old buddies, us two. Crazy old bitch woman’s mouth dropped open and she paled - she knew she was caught. We never confronted her either way about it, we just let her freak out about it. Neither of us spoke to crazy bitch again.
But she kept going, with other people… one young girl was sick often, and had terrible problems with her brain, and was absent from work with a shunt in her skull (I’m foggy on the details, I just know the girl was awfully sick, and I brought her a few fruit baskets during her many hospital stays). Crazy bitch found out one night while we were working that the girl had gone to play Bingo with her mother, and had won the $5000 jackpot. Good for her, we all said, how wonderful it must be for her to be able to get out, and have such good luck, too. Not crazy bitch woman, no sir… she went around whispering to everyone that she must not be that sick, since she could get out and play bingo. Oh yeah. That one got back to the young girl’s mother who also worked with us, and you should have seen the sparks fly that night, by Og.

I could go on, but I think I’ve bored you all long enough. :smiley: I’m only describing one woman. She wasn’t the only one, just the worst, because she acts like she’s this sweet old grandmotherly type, but oh no she’s not! There were still the other woman who picked apart the shy, attractive lady, calling her a snob and a bitch, who thought she was too good for everyone else… because she didn’t talk to them. See, she didn’t talk to anybody, unless she was in the mood to talk. She was shy. I did get her talking one night, and she was so sweet, and so kind… and quite a motormouth! But only after she feels she can trust you, or if you get on a subject she can relate to. I’m sure the other women were jealous because she was so pretty and didn’t wear (or need to wear) makeup, and still she looked great. She looked like a blonde Tori Amos. But all the other women said she was ugly, snobby, and stupid. She was anything but.

Oh, yeah, I was going to stop a while back. Carry on. :o