This is a guest post from Placide Buduri. Placide who is a long time reader and 25 year old male who moved from the Republic of Congo to Texas for work. He is planning on starting his own blog here soon. In this article he talks about his experience working in a female dominated office (something more and more of us experience) and how he copes with it. You might find some tips to help cope as well if you find yourself in a female dominated workplace. Enjoy.
This article is about my experience in a female dominated office. I finished college at 23 and started working for a huge hotel company as a barista. The coffee environment was fun and easy but not as rewarding for a college graduate. I was faced with a challenge of keeping up with loans, rent, and basic needs for a $9.00/hour pay. It was almost impossible.
However the company I worked for encouraged everyone to switch careers and try other jobs they felt comfortable with within the company.
Career Change
I consider myself a man of action. I moved from the coffee world to work as reservation agent . A reservation (similar to booking agent) agent is someone who books hotel stay for guest at a hotel, resort, or even air trips.
I was excited about getting paid about 4 dollars more. A switch in careers was an exciting move since being an agent requires sale skills. Let’s skip the interview process, I got the job; my excitement was over the roof. I was looking forward to not wearing aprons anymore and leaving work without smelling like coffee for a change.
Its not until I started training that I found out, I was the only heterosexual male in the office full of females, the other two guys were homosexuals.
To clarify I have nothing against gay men, those I’ve met are giving, caring, and fun to be around. However, they mostly behave like women. Both women and gay men consistently chit chat about nonsense, they get emotional too quickly, and try hard to be liked. I am sure everyone would have similar or different views or opinions on this depending on the experience.
That being said, I grew up in a society were masculinity is encouraged. Men and women both play their biological roles instilled in them without any questions. Lets face it, American society has gone to shit, people cut off their genitals and most people are okay with it. Female households have increased, and masculinity is quickly disappearing from the western culture or at least where I live.
I was saying how excited I was to start a new job and then I realized, I will be spending 8 hours a day in a female environment with no masculinity energy in the room? I panicked. I tried finding out about articles or books written about surviving in a female world as a modern man, and here we are. It’s 5am when I wrote this line when it suddenly hit me that I can actually write articles about a female oriented office, after working there for only 3 months.
Challenges
The job itself is challenging. Working in a people business is difficult enough. It’s almost impossible to please everyone. Scratch that, “its impossible to please everyone”. You have customers who are happy with your service, and you have others who will threaten to give you a bad review if you don’t refund them for their stay, just because housekeeping took long to bring an extra towel or soap.
The others will give you 3 stars because the food did not taste as they expected. How the fuck do you measure food taste with ratings? “Ohh, my burger taste like 2 stars, while a different person might say: “it’s the best damn burger I’ve had in a long time. However, lets all agree, it’s about the service, if someone receive the best service where the waitress or waiter pay enough attention, smiles and have few banters with the guest, the meal does not become an issue, the customer is satisfied in that case. But when you forget to refill the water, it becomes a rating matter.
My point is, when you combine work challenges with female chit chat in the background, talking about nonsense, you ignore it at first. But when you have a customer on the phone, trying to book a stay, and you are trying your best to focus and close the sale and you have co-workers who would not shut up, and laughing uncontrollably, it’s raging. When you tell them to shut the fuck up for a second, they listen and then they go back to the same behavior after 5 minutes
Charles Sledge once wrote “Women are like children“.
One time I had a customer over the phone repeat his credit card number three times, because it was difficult to hear. Other times customers would personally ask me to make my co workers shut up.
Women & Work
I love women, I grew up with 3 sisters, I’ve had few girlfriends, I’ve had female classmates. Nothing about their behavior is new. The only issue is If I were to embrace my masculine nature in the office, I would have been fired after one week. But, women are so protected they get away with a lot shit that are unacceptable in a work environment.
You may ask, is there a positive side? Of course, I was trained by a women, my supervisor and my manager who hired me are women, and my success sometimes depend on how dedicated these women are to help me succeed. They are always present when someone needs assistance; some of them have the most creative and brilliant mind I have come across (millennial standard).
How do you survive? Do you blend in? Do you embrace your masculinity and risk it all? Do you stay true to whom you are?
There is no right or wrong answer, it depend on what makes someone happy. I take one day at a time
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It’s totally true that women get away with all sorts of shit at work. They know about the HR dynamic, but most of them are clueless to the extent that they are able to get away with shit because of it. You can be a man around them, but it has to be “positive”, semi-PC masculinity – make them feel good for being around you, and try not to say too much shit that will get you in trouble. If you flirt with a chick at work, do it with your eye contact and general attitude and try not to say anything obvious. But don’t shit where you eat if you care about your job.
Working with them is a skill that can be cultivated and improved, like anything else. You have to naturally expect to do more work than them. Develop a good reputation with the management for when you inevitably hurt one of their feelings and get reported.
Great insights. Looking forward to the guide. To me it seems no matter what way you slice it unless your the boss it’s a losing game. And even then depending on how things even being the boss won’t do much against a crazy woman hell bent on ruining your career with the power of the state and media behind her.
Men and women working together is a set up for sexual
harassment, I have been married 24 years happily but stick
me with a bunch of women and I’m going to do what men
do naturally, try and get some ass.
Yup pretty much. Unless your a good looking guy or the CEO in which case you can bang em in the copy room and they’ll never say a peep lol.
Thank you so much for the spotlight Sledge. Thank you everyone for your insightful comments.
No problem and thanks for the submission Placide.
This is why I took early retirement from the medical field, which is now dominated by women. On my last job I was the only male in the clinic and lasted there (miraculously) 15 years until I could take them no more. It is only because I spent those years investing in real estate that I converted to rentals that I was financially set to take my complaints to the EEOC because once you’ve gone to them then as far as you’re company is concerned you’re finished (possibly you’re career too if you seek employment elsewhere). I charged them with harassment, including sexual harassment (that’s right-payback time, baby!). Gotta say, that part was fun!
That’s awesome Drifter. I know many men who wish they could do the same thing.
How did that go? I’d love to hear the details if you can put some of them out there.
Joe, the good part is that the EEOC is something no company wants to have around going through all their files and holding them up with my 25 pages worth of of examples shoing their hostile treatment of me for being a male and the only one there. The sharp attorneys at my company knew I had a case before I even thought of making one, so they were prepared and began destroying evidence. What evidence I copied and kept, like male bashing cartoons on the bulletin board and my time cards showing my overtime before my boss whited it out then denied it then the whited-out cards were discovered, and showing the final Christmas all-employees photo they left me out of (not that I cared, that wasn’t the point!) -while this was repugnant the EEOC could not obtain enough solid evidence to charge the company with discrimination. However, they said I could sue them with what I had. The sad part was I had an attorney who misrepresented my case and got it thrown out by the (female) judge. Then I hired a high profile attorney who reviewed my case and said “Now you have and even better case against your former attorney.” When he told me that would cost $50,000 (for a start) to prepare for a trial I said “never mind, I bloodied my company’s nose, they’ll never forget me and I know for certain they had another big meeting about sexual harassment to remind everyone that it happens to men as well, so be careful.” (seven years later even my friends at that company are still afraid to be seen talking to me in this community! That’s power, man!)
In my early retirement my main goal is to help out other men still going through what I did but to avoid doing what I did unless they are prepared for the consequences. Until then it is best to remain a good employee and remain silent (going to HR will backfire on you) and hope the situation will change or find a better job. Let me know if I can be of any help to you good men here, I will drop in periodically. My profile has been private for the past several days because I have a feminist stalking me online who won’t climb off!