How not to 'fill the gaps' for men

Throwing the problem in your lap and waiting for you to volunteer to take up their burden is on my last nerve.
Want something? Ask for it! Then you will get a yes or no answer.
No response is a no.

Much applause
Yes to vague responses.
Even the fact that he won’t ask for your help is annoying. It’s expecting it without requesting it.

It becomes very clear when you push back that some people expect to be facilitated. Do not crack.

Exactly this. Every message he's sending me is a problem he's expecting me to solve e.g. "I can't find anyone who does next day delivery". Instead of trying to help I'm just replying with things like "ah bugger that's a shame". He can figure it out for himself.

Your ffs

I bet your brother only messaged when you’re expected this is what we have got mum message didn’t arrive.

definitelygc

Well done! It becomes very clear when you push back that some people expect to be facilitated. Do not crack. He’s relying on you feeling more guilty than him about your mind feelings.

Brace for the horror that is another woman also expecting you to facilitate a poor useless man.

categoricallycrackers

One of THOSE. Yes to publicising it. Ideally knock any informal “chats” on the head and make him request by email or book your time in a meeting.

If he makes a face point out you track where your time is spent and in the informal requests are not efficient.

I work in a very male dominated industry and at one point was one of only two women in our office. As the office junior tea making for visitors was my remit anyway but for a while it was also expected that we would do all the cleaning and tidying up after the others. Our boss realised it was beginning to cause an issue and sent out an email which included the sentence "The women in this company are your colleagues, not your mothers." No more filling gaps!

I just wanted to share a small personal victory thanks to this thread. Every year I organise a present for my mum for Mother's Day and sign the card from me and my brother (yes, I am a mug). The reason being that my mum is a sensitive soul and if she got nothing from my brother she'd take it quite badly.

Thanks to this thread I decided to get my mum a present just from me and let my brother take the hit. Unfortunately thanks to coronavirus the present is wrapped up on my desk and my mum is 100 miles away.

This morning my brother messaged me saying "what are we going to do for mother's day?". I am now in an extended version of "mother's day chicken" with him and it's become abundantly clear that the issue is not his incompetence, it's that he thinks he can just delegate these jobs to me. I can't believe I've never realised this before. He is trying every trick in the book to get me to sort this out and I am digging in my heels and refusing to cave. Fortunately for me I can post my present on Monday and be back in the good books

Thanks to everyone, especially @TorkTorkBam for the advice - the scales have most definitely fallen from my eyes.

This is a brilliant thread.

I agree with definitely jogging on any collections, nights out, team days, etc. as a starter. If the men want them to happen they will organise it.
Absolutely never make teas unless it's a woman only group (seems such a small thing but it makes a huge impact!)
Never accept being called a work mum or a work wife, even if it's meant affectionately.

I act as if I'm facilitated at home (I'm not), my female colleague relies on her husband for childcare and never ever lets anyone see the swan legs thrashing about under the surface of the water.

I share information and opportunities with women before men almost all the time and I do it shamelessly, because there is no male senior manager in my organisation who can legitimately say he hasn't done the same with his boys. I've never been called out on it.
My entire career is on the ropes with this financial crash but thus far I've done ok by sticking to the above.

I've read this thread and had a lightbulb moment. I'm senior in my company and working in an advisory type role. I have been uncomfortable about something for a bit but brushed it off and got on with my job.

This thread has helped me identify the problem and the solution.

I work with a chap who quite simply takes my technical advice then delivers it to others as his own. Makes him look great as I have loads of experience and know my stuff. New rules for me. From now on I will never give him advice without an audience - no meetings alone, every email cc'd to a few people. Otherwise I'm invisible and he's the wonder boy. I need a slap for not having acted before!

Thank you good women of mumsnet for giving me a wake up call.

I used to frequently use "Well, I could do that but surely there are much cheaper ways to get it done."

That's exactly what I did scifi! Said something like, of course but you are paying a lot if that's the work you need doing.

Working in office admin made me the radical feminist I am today.

@QuentinWinters you could reply with an incredulous "you want to pay me my day rate to take notes?!!!"

I don't actually mind taking minutes/notes and circulating them. Its when it becomes expected that I will do it and that's why I'm there.

I work in professional services at a day rate of upwards of £1000 yet have still been invited to a meeting by a client and patronisingly asked "are you getting this all down?"

The other men at my level will do the clinical but then just neglect all the admin, they just don't do the very basic tasks. Unfortunately if they don't do them these fall to the nurses/admin staff/cleaners etc who already have enough to do. (Theowl)

I really recognise this as work for the NHS. I’ve had issues with women members of my staff (band 6 clinicians) spending enormous amounts of time running around after consultants and smoothing their path by organising clinics, doing joint consultations where their only contribution is to do the notes and organising events that were nothing to do with our work and everything to do with the senior, male doctor’s. One was doing it on top of her own job and massively overworking, the other is underperforming in her clinical work as she’s prioritising his.

I am more in line with Dido’s way of thinking, so just get very cross with them and their refusal to see my point of view because I’ve managed to avoid doing it. But I don’t get on so well with these men and they do sideline and cut me out of things if they possibly can and reading blibby’s description of the modern workplace, I get why, but just can’t see the middle ground of how to do our fucking jobs without cleaning up their mess.

@TorkTorkBam thanks for your thoughts.
That's is actually one of my long term plans, I'm paying off debts some of which we got because I switched from work P/T to F/T but with the same salary to do this job, so we ended up with extra childcare costs.
I'm also making sure I network as much as possible so people know me, that's working as I've been asked to speak at a couple of events that are now cancelled

I'm going to attack this two ways Bilby story but with the long term plan of going Alpha male on them and leaving.

Also falling into the “hosting” role or basically being “mum” at work social events.

I noticed I did this to some extent, but this was an essential part of what was needed by staff at the events we hosted. Since I was a manager I made it a part of my assessment of my staff and talked up the fact we did it to our managing staff. It became a part of our quarterly appraisals. Turns out, if you make these tasks something that is, in some way, measured and appraised it becomes much less of an "office chicken" situation. But that only works for a few things.

Also falling into the “hosting” role or basically being “mum” at work social events. So often used to find it was me asking polite questions and “drawing people out”. Again a form of chicken because I couldn’t bear sitting in awkward silence.

This thread has been so enlightening for me. Thanks for starting it @daringdoris. Bookmarking to consider more carefully over the weekend.

I have in the past offered to take minutes as a surreptitious means of taking control of meetings that tended to waffle on without achieving anything. “So, just to clarify for the minutes, we just agreed that x will happen. Shall I put the action to Bob?”

Like a pp said, it also means you get to put your own spin on the minutes.

Yes yes yes to 'office chicken'

One example of this was that I volunteered to sort tickets to an annual work event for a group of colleagues. Not my job to do so, I was just being helpful. All enquires about this event, that I was not organising, also seemed to come my way. I answered them because I am helpful and agreeable.

I did it the following year. Then the next.

The fourth year a male colleague asked when I was getting his ticket. It was a lightbulb moment.

'Aha' I said. 'You know it's not my job to do this'

'Yes' he said. He didn't blink.

'I've done it for the last few years as a favour and now it's someone else's turn'

'Uh-huh'. He still didn't blink. Didn't speak. Didn't thank me for doing it in the past. Didn't offer to sort out his own ticket let alone get mine and the rest of the team's.

He followed up the conversation with an email a few days later asking if the tickets had been arranged.

I ignored it.

I only lasted a week before I caved and sorted the tickets again. 🤦‍♀️

I'm learning. For years I didn't recognise the issue. Then I recognised it, felt resentful but did it anyway. Now I'm old and grouchy and better at chicken. I am also more aware of my professional worth and less likely to do gap filling work to demonstrate my worth to colleagues.

The annual event has also been cancelled

Tbh I had similar, although not necessarily because men expected me to fill in the gaps but because senior management was poor, we had different locums every day so no case continuity and as one of the only permanent members of staff you inevitably become the overstretched safe-pair-of-hands fighting fires and handling complaints all over the place. The final straw for me was a gaslighty team building day when we were effectively told that there was nothing wrong with how things were running, only the attitude of the staff who raised concerns.

I left in the end. About 12 of us did in the space of a year. Sometimes it’s the only way.