“Who’s cattier: men or women? What? What’s wrong with that question?” Nothing. Nothing at all, sir. Ducking out for real this time. It’s past my bedtime.
Nighty night schnookems.
I just read this lovely book on the interactions between adult women in the workplace and it made the case that we’ve not really been taught, in many cases, how to be ambitious or competitive. We’ve been given so much of this “nurturing” lesson that when it comes down to it and we need to be cuthroat, a couple of things happen.
Either we can’t do it,
Or we do it but we do it sloppily
Or we do it and do it well but our female coworkers don’t expect it because of the whole nurturing thing
Or we do it and do it well and the female coworkers don’t know how to do it so they resent it
The book went on to say that women in the workplace need to be taught more and more how to be competitive and ambitious and not feel guilty over taking another woman’s job.
Now the book was about twenty years old so you do see changes in the workplace since then and things have gotten better. But I did find it an interesting read. I’ll see if I can remember what it was called.
That specific shit, I’ve had it done almost exclusively by men. I’ve had two women do it; men, I run out of fingers and toes. It wasn’t even linked to my work history being heavily male-coworker-skewed, a ridiculous amount of those (including the two women and more than a dozen men) were from the same country, whose name I cannot remember - I’ve had other coworkers from that same place who were perfectly nice. Many of them were in a “dog eats dog” situation; the notion that a coworker being “on loan” from another institution meant this loaner coworker was not part of the scrimmage didn’t enter their minds. It’s a pity I didn’t take close notes of that team’s dynamics, because with a bit of tweaking I could have turned it into some sort of Thieves’ Guild novel… backstabbing was a way of life, there.
Pretty much the same between the sexes. It is, however, NOT the same in all workplaces; some places are absolute nightmares of political maneuvring, and some workplaces don’t have a lot of that.
My previous workplace had so much backstabbing and political machination that it was a pig’s head short of being “Lord of the Flies.” My current workplace has essentially none of that. It all depends on the management.
You asked who is more adept, so I said female. If you asked who did it more often I would say about equal.
That book is missing a very important part: the men’s reaction.
My coworker Laura is a petite woman; she’s an Electrical Engineer, spent ten years as a HS science teacher*, left work when her second child was born, and now that both kids are in school has rejoined the workforce as a consultant (the same field her husband works in). Recently and having had a couple of beers, she told one of our managers (“grandboss”) that he sometimes causes more problems than he solves, as he tends to blow off a gasket and that makes people revert to their primal ancestors, many of which seem to have some Noncapus Chickenus genes. The two of them were alone at the time, she would never have done this in front of others, beer or no beer.
After picking his jaw up from the floor, he apologized and has been making an effort both to aovid blowing gaskets and to apologize to people when he does.
She was telling me about this and was very frustrated by how surprised he’d been. “If it had been David or Al, he wouldn’t have gotten that look!”
Her problem, and one I also have (although less than her, since I’m not petite, being petite makes it worse), is that many men do not so much underestimate as desestimate us; they file us under “girl”, or “nice girl”, and - who expects a nice girl to say “you really need to stop blowing up at people”?
- I’m not familiar with her specific school, but even in nice ones, that job has to be between “high voltage electrician” and “lion cage cleaner” in the danger scale.
This, this, this. HR women are a special breed.
I figure these women know exactly how to play the game to keep their jobs (because part of being in HR means knowing why people can/do get fired). They have spent lots of time and energy figuring out how to do so, and thus have learned that being backstabby-and-“nice” is the exact best way to ensure their own job security.
In fact, that’s the only talent these women seem to have. They never bring anything else to the table. They simply combine “playing exactly by the rules” with “doing exactly as they are told” with being 'backstabby and fake-nice" and voila!–a career that doesn’t require actual talent or much real work at all.
These are people I truly don’t understand. What happened to trying to give something useful back to the world?
There must be so much quiet malice in their hearts. Where does it come from, I wonder?
I don’t know if I’ve truly seen backstabbing behavior in the workplace. I’ve seen people break the chain of command and complain about a boss to their grandboss or higher, but I’m reluctant to call that backstabbing. I’ve seen others engage in some tattle-tellish talk with their boss about their co-workers, when it would have been better if they’d just keep their mouths shut. I’ve seen men and women do this.
When I was a technician assistant during vet school, some of the technicians there were so passive aggressive in their interactions with me that I almost had to laugh, they were that childish. These were all women, but I never associated their stank attitudes with their gender. Not all the techs were like this, and neither were all the female techs. It was just this band of insecure cuckoo ones.
Yes, it did so specifically. The book was exclusively about women in the workplace. I noticed the same thing.
ETA: One thing I have come across that I don’t like one bit is women saying nasty things about other women or men: “He must have been blowing the boss every night to get that job” or “They were awful friendly at that last meeting, you know what’s going on!”
I don’t like this at all. This kind of gossip disgusts me. Maybe you don’t like her methods but don’t accuse her, even jokingly, or sleeping with her boss to get the job - it’s not remotely respectful. Criticize her work habits, or ways, or anything else.
I am sure men do this too but I don’t get into those conversations - men probably keep those conversations amongst men.
Not that I ever recall. It might have happened a generation ago, when pin-up calendars and the like were still acceptable, but not since.
In my experience, men are the worst in the workplace. Some women may be emotional and too verbal about the coworkers they dislike and perceived misjustice but men get the prize for being the most manipulative and backstabbing in order to get ahead.
I work as a programmer and it’s a male dominated field. There are a few women around and, frankly, they seem to be the source of the majority of the drama in the office. I can kind of understand why that, because it’s a male dominated field, women probably have to work that much harder to make their place, and competition and all that is fine, but when it comes to backstabbing and perceiving everything as a personal slight… it’s just unnecessary.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some men here that do that sort of thing, and it could just be the sample size since it’s just two out of the three women creating the majority of the drama. Even when I was with my ex, who was in the same field and worked in an office as one of two women, even from her I heard an enormous amount of complaints and accusations of that sort of stuff which just seemed off, especially when I met her coworkers and they all seemed to get along fine. So it could also just be a part of the field and it being so heavily dominated by men, and not necessarily women in the workplace in general.
It’s something that troubles me a great deal and I honestly don’t really know how to deal with it. I have made it clear I don’t like it and no one says it around me (And they even say now “Mika, you probably wanna leave and don’t wanna hear this”).
It’s obnoxious and very rude and it’s filthy. I mean, sometimes, it’s so vulgar my ears burn - I’m certainly no virginal fainting maid but it is so inappropriate for work, like talking about how one man who is married and has children must be blowing the manager who is also married and has children in incredibly graphic language. And everyone laughs.
I’ve thought about making a thread here but I’m not really sure how people could help, and even talking about it feels almost as bad as saying the original gossip in the first place. 
ETA: Blaster Master I’m majoring in IT which I know is a predominantly male field. I wonder if I will see similar things.
It has occurred to me that we don’t even know who the people most adept at this are, because they’d cover it up so well.
I voted for women; but to be fair my department has 29 women and two men including me so it’s not really a contest.
Well, duh.
BUT, if you’re working with more educated people, they’ll hopefully be more sensitive, too, and you wont get the graphic tastelessness.
Wow. All I can say is that I must work in a more professional environment, but I’ve been working for (let’s see) 28 years now and back in the early days there might have been some “nudge nudge, wink wink” innuendos, but holy shit never anything like you refer to.
My jaw would drop and there would most likely be firings coming up for that kind of shit. Actually, I just remembered someone in my workplace was fired in 1988 for spreading rumours that he saw two colleagues making out in a back room.
In my experience, it’s about equal. I’ve actually had more men than women stab me in the back at work, but I don’t really trust anyone I work with or for. I’m pretty sure most of them would happily throw anyone under the bus if it would be beneficial to them.
They really are. So nice to your face, and so untrustworthy.