I am still holding on to the idea that men and women are equal (but not the same). So when it comes time to move desks around, I would expect the women to help out. It's not really physically demanding at all, especially when there are three people doing the job, so to suggest that they simply aren't capable of the physical work is bogus. Here's what happened today.:
Marketing Woman #1 and Marketing Woman #2 (they aren't really in marketing, but I am not really impressed with them right now, so...) hold their little queendoms in the corner of my floor. They have huge work areas covering huge areas, areas that could be used for us. We hired two new guys starting Monday and there was no obvious place for them. MW #1 has stated that she is not budging in terms of her space. Now, there's a vacant office on our floor. She has, as I said, a huge work area at her desk. It's twice as big as mine, and almost twice as big as the sales manager's. The sales team is packed in like sardines. She complains that we are too loud, and is squatting in the vacant office. So she insists that we leave her work area alone, but won't work there.
The sales manager asked her if she wouldn't mind having her work are rotated so that I and two others could move over a few feet and allow a bunch of other changes to take place. She could have said no, and we would have been fucked. More on that later. She agreed, but instead of pitching in like the rest of us, she stood around talking to MW #2. So I and another sales guy picked up her huge work area and rotated it.
She just stood there. Ignoring the hired help. She didn't even offer to help. It was her desk, and even though it wasn't her desire to move, it would have been polite to at least offer.
Now I know that there are lots of women that will pitch in and get their hands dirty when physical work needs to be done. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any in quite some time. They don't offer. They suddenly become incapable or uninterested, especially these prissy, dainty passive-aggressive Baronesses of Bullshit.
Am I just an asshole to expect these women to do the simplest things such as change lightbulbs, or help move their own office furniture? I can tell you that every single man was expected to pitch in, but not a single woman was. Could be something specific to these people and this organization, but I doubt this.
Of course she didn't offer to help - she didn't want to move in the first place! That has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman, it has to do with the fact that she wasn't happy about the change. But I'm not condoning her attitude: if I were her boss I'd tell her to suck it up and give up her fucking desk as we need the space.
La, when I finish this entry, it will make more sense hopefully.
Get her the cone of silence or just spray her with oxytocin.
Sounds like you have some seriously high-maintenance co-workers. That or, as LA (I believe...) mentionned, some very unhappy, hence poutty ones.
Yes, as a woman I admit that it's sometimes easy to become lazy when stronger options are about.
That being said, you're not an asshole for expecting women to help out, though you might become one if you start thinking these women and their attitude are to be expected from all women...
Something you said though: "every single man was expected to pitch in." Why weren't the women? Keep indulging them and I promise you their attitudes won't change. An easy "Mind giving a hand?" while you pick up your side of her desk gets the point across, and makes her look kinda bad if she doesn't help out.
I had considered this, julie. My boss, the sales manager, had made it quite clear when I started asking him questions about the spacing requirements and their "rights" and so on that he had been through hell and back trying to make things a little more fair around the office (why do they get everything while the rest of us are jammed in like sardines, for example), and he got exactly nowhere. I was not to say a damned thing, lest the Furies unleash their holy wrath.
No, I don't understand any of this, except that their will is law around here. However, it seems as though there is a subversive and subtle attempt to get them off the sales floor to a quieter area, where they belong.
It sounds like there's a lot more going on than simply moving desks. If the people in charge are not willing to put their foot down and exercise their power, then these women will continue to walk all over them. How is that an effective management strategy?