My boss made the women do the dishes after the company BBQ but let the men leave early

Last Saturday at the annual company picnic in Portland, the guys all headed home right after eating while the women were stuck scrubbing trays and hauling trash for an extra hour. The owner said it was just 'how things get done' when I asked him about it. Has anyone else had a workplace pull this kind of outdated division of labor crap?

3 comments

3 Comments

felixm291d ago

Portland, Oregon has that reputation for being all progressive but the stuff i see at actual businesses out here tells a different story. My buddy runs a catering company and he says traditional gender roles make things faster, women tend to be better at cleanup and men are better at the heavy lifting so splitting it that way just gets the job done quicker. The owner probably wasn't trying to be sexist, he was just being practical and following what's always worked.

the_holly1d ago

Hold up, have you ever actually worked a catering event? The guys are usually hauling 50lb ice bins and grills while the women do plates and wipe tables. Your boss probably just didn't think about it and went with what he's seen work for decades. Not everything is some big sexist conspiracy.

eva_moore1d ago

Get past the whole "it's just practical" excuse and you'll start seeing this same mindset everywhere, not just at work barbecues. It's the same reason why in my daughter's kindergarten class the teacher automatically asks the boys to move chairs and the girls to pass out snacks, it's so automatic that nobody even questions it until someone points it out. People fall back on these old familiar patterns because they're easy and comfortable, not because they're fair or efficient, and they'll defend it with all kinds of logic about tradition or speed. But that's just laziness dressed up as tradition, and it reinforces that women are supposed to do the invisible cleanup labor while men get to clock out first. The boss could have just asked for volunteers or made a rotating schedule, he chose not to because the old way still felt right to him.