And should you be treated differently because of your gender??
I SAY NO!
I work in a pretty blended organisation, it's got a really good mix of black, white, coloured, Indian, English, Afrikaans, male, female, young, older, thin, fat, athletic, not... etc. So a bit of everything and anything goes. I really like it.
Anyhoo on Fridays we have a big Project Management update meeting - so it's all reasonably senior people, about 15-20 of us pile into a room. There are usually 1-3 chairs short. So if you are late you are going to stand in the corner, or sit on the credenza. Such is life. I usually get there on time because it's a long meeting and most of us take our laptops and process mail and stuff while the others give their updates.
Anyway the point is we have recently got a new manager, a woman. So on Friday a female PM arrives late. We all carried on with our meeting and what we were doing. And the new manager piped up after about 15 seconds or so... 'I can't believe we don't have a single gentleman here!? No one got up.'
I think that is really wrong. Why SHOULD they? We are all equals and I don't think it is at all fair - to the guys. You can't fight to be treated as a equal, with equal pay, responsibility and respect etc, and then want to be treated 'like a lady'. Well I don't think so anyway.
And by the way the guys in the office are polite and will stand back at door ways if you approach at the same time (noting that I do too if they are ahead of me and approaching the same doorway from the other side) that is just normal courtesy. I don't think someone should have to get up, and give up the place THEY were on time for and are using to get work done, for someone who was late, JUST because they are female.
What do you think?
I SAY NO!
I work in a pretty blended organisation, it's got a really good mix of black, white, coloured, Indian, English, Afrikaans, male, female, young, older, thin, fat, athletic, not... etc. So a bit of everything and anything goes. I really like it.
Anyhoo on Fridays we have a big Project Management update meeting - so it's all reasonably senior people, about 15-20 of us pile into a room. There are usually 1-3 chairs short. So if you are late you are going to stand in the corner, or sit on the credenza. Such is life. I usually get there on time because it's a long meeting and most of us take our laptops and process mail and stuff while the others give their updates.
Anyway the point is we have recently got a new manager, a woman. So on Friday a female PM arrives late. We all carried on with our meeting and what we were doing. And the new manager piped up after about 15 seconds or so... 'I can't believe we don't have a single gentleman here!? No one got up.'
I think that is really wrong. Why SHOULD they? We are all equals and I don't think it is at all fair - to the guys. You can't fight to be treated as a equal, with equal pay, responsibility and respect etc, and then want to be treated 'like a lady'. Well I don't think so anyway.
And by the way the guys in the office are polite and will stand back at door ways if you approach at the same time (noting that I do too if they are ahead of me and approaching the same doorway from the other side) that is just normal courtesy. I don't think someone should have to get up, and give up the place THEY were on time for and are using to get work done, for someone who was late, JUST because they are female.
What do you think?
I do not think that they should get up too, BUT I think it would have been very cool if one of them offered. She could say no, but I still think it would be good manners.
ReplyDelete