Am I being pathetic....?

pinkypoopydoo

It's an unfortunate throwback in office culture, but if you are the only woman AND the bottom of the seniority order, then tea making may be in your remit, rightly or wrongly. However, as someone who has been there and got the t shirt, I would suggest an equally sexist attempt at eyelid batting and the odd complaint about "womanly cramps". It works wonders at embarrassing the males into the sharing of tea duties.

lady1964

How about you just make yourself a cuppa & then when someone asks where theirs is, just say 'oh, as no-one else offered to make one, I just assumed no-one else wanted one so have just made my own'...

Sometimes, and the sexist stuff aside, the more someone does something, the higher the expectation that they will continue to do so. Time to reign in the expectation and good luck!

FBaby

I think as an adminitrator, it is perfectly acceptable to make tea for when clients come in, however, making it for the staff there? Because they are too lazy to do it themselves? I think that is taking advantage of your role.

Even if the Director kind of expect it if he sees it as his PA, I would hope that it was requested in an appreciative way rather than expected one, and doing one for your in return once in a while would be good manners.

I personally would agree to making tea for visitors and the Directors, but would refuse for anyone else whatever the time of the day.

maninthestreet

Just decline/ignore their requests, telling them you are too busy doing other more important work. They'll soon get the message....

flashnazia

It sounds like a nasty place to work. Is it? If so I would look at moving. Who wants to work with colleagues who treat you like a servant? It looks like that's what they see you as and it may be too late to change their mind.

gazzak_2

Hello? Does anyone on this thread realise it's 2013 not 1964?

Sod making the tea like a skivvy on their demand, tell them we're not living in the dark ages anymore and they can make their own, like most of us do in our own modern offices. Expecting you to do it is taking the p**s out of you personally, and forget the fact that they said it's because you're a woman, it doesn't matter what sex you are, you're doing a menial job because they literally can't be bothered to do it themselves.

You need to make a stand and do it today. Do not make their tea and suffer the consequences else you'll be walked over for the rest of your time there.

Making tea for guests or meetings is passable and one I can understand, anything else is plain wrong. You were absolutely right to get angry about this.

Paully232000

I have to agree that this is shocking, and needs to be sorted by taking a stand now, especially if it is because you 'are a woman'. No matter really an office should at least take turns making tea, if not all do it themselves.
I wouldn't even say that there should be an expectation that you should make tea for guests, and whoever has the guest been brought in by should.

I cant believe things like this still happen, and every workplace I have been in it has always been whoever happens to be making the tea at the time makes for others, or at least asks. These works have included directors, consultants, heads of department, senior staff. We never expected anyone to make us tea, especially not because the person is a woman, lower down the chain of command or whatever etc.

aileth

ap1986 wrote: »

I don't actually have a current contract, not that I've signed or am aware of. I have been asking for one for some time but nothing seems to be done about it.

In my current job description, it does state that I am to undertake any other reasonable tasks, as agreed, to ensure the efficient running of the company.

I doubt making cups of tea for the workforce would come under the remit of ensuring efficient running of the company!

How pathetic. I wonder how their wifes/girlfriends would react to that sexist attitude. If they want to play that way, I'd say each time a bulb gets blown or something similar, go to the top boss and tell him it's his duty to replace it 'because he's a man.'

Fluff15

This whole thread made me chuckle - not because of your situation, but because the same thing happened in my office a few months ago!

I work for a building company, so the majority of workers in the office are men (14 in the office in total), and are all men all out on site. Two of the women in the office were royally fed up because of the same problem you were in, although it didn't bother me so much as I only drank one or two cups a day. The issue was bought up at a staff meeting, and the women who had the problem said that they would no longer be making tea for the whole office, only one office round between them a day, the other times they wanted a cup they will be getting it for themselves and only for themselves (fair enough).

During this meeting, the Managing Director wasn't present. A couple of days later, just us ladies in the office (4) got this email:

"I understand that there was some discussion over tea making at the staff meeting on Friday. I appreciate we are all busy and that there are now more of us and consequently it takes longer to make the tea.

Can I suggest that you establish a rota amongst yourselves of maybe one day each with Fluff15(me!!!) doing two days per week.

I have not included the men in this rota purely because their time is more valuable in terms of revenue generation and I am not going to distract them from their work when they should be focusing on generating business."

Copied and pasted right from the email. I don't even drink that much tea, so everybody would only get one a day if we did what he suggested. But that's besides the point!

Needless to say, we were all furious by this point. Then, one of the women wrote our boss a letter, implying he was being sexist (although she didn't actually write that) and that what he said was not fair.

It ended up with each of us being called into the MD's office - the lady who wrote the letter went in first and was in there for over an hour arguing (they had a lot of previous issues).

By the time it got around to my turn, I told him it was unfair and very sexist. He'd calmed down and apologised, said men often act like cavemen (this still didn't excuse his actions but he still has time to learn!) and it was agreed upon that he'd buy a tea boiler (instant hot water from the tap) to save time, and we only have to make our own tea most of the time. We were still expected to make the others a cup of tea sometimes, but he also made sure the men in the office did the same.

Now, any mention of tea at work and I just want to crawl under my desk! Since then, I've cut down on my caffeine consumption and I no longer drink tea anyway :rotfl:

thecaveman

Nope! See it through