To be annoyed at being asked at work to prepare drinks and serve lunch

[Livingtothefull]

I work in an office with around 4 other people, all female, and have been here about 6 months. A couple in the office are PAs and there is a more junior person who supports them & me. I work in a recognised profession and was employed specifically in that professional capacity in a new standalone role; because mine is broadly speaking a 'back office' rather than customer faced role I have been put together in the department with the others although our jobs are largely separate.

It so happens that there is a meeting next week for which a sandwich lunch has been ordered and none of the others will be in the office that day....I have been asked to make sure the sandwiches are laid out and make the teas/coffees.

I am quite prepared to be told I am being arrogant and over precious but: AIBU to be really annoyed about this? I don't intend to denigrate anyone who has chosen a PA role; they are often very talented/qualified people in my experience. Also it is not that I am not willing to support colleagues and muck in when necessary.

But I have worked really hard and studied in my own time & expense to achieve senior professional status and get respect, and so I could do interesting work in the office which I have chosen to do. I also need to get taken seriously so that colleagues understand what I can bring to the business & approach me for support, this is already proving challenging. It is quite a traditional company & I have already been introduced by a senior manager to staff as 'the new (profession name) Assistant' (not my correct job title).

So I think some people are already confused about what my role is. How is it going to help if I am seen to carrying jugs of tea & fruit juice, and trays of sandwiches for meetings?

The meeting by the way is mostly internal and all male..I am not involved in it at all. I am annoyed that it always seems to be the women by default who are asked to do these tasks (there are various male workers in support roles who never get asked).

Who is taking the minutes? They could do it.

LHReturns has made all my points more eloquently. Camelhumps's email is nicely hands-off and is on the record so seems a good way to handle this.

Tango I agree entirely that (rightly or wrongly) support staff usually get lumbered with such tasks but in my view, support staff are not all the same. I sense that OP will be finance, marketing, or HR...and I'm not sure I would ask someone at a manager level in one of those functions to do what she has been asked. I suspect it really was an innocent PA mistake (which is why she should brush it off).

When I owned my business, also about 40 team members, if the natural individuals to assist with Front of House tasks were not available (they would be the PAs, the office manager, and the finance assistant), then it would have naturally turned to junior client executives...

I am a little surprised that you as Finance Director would have to step up before a junior client facing person in an office of 40...but maybe your seniority is so established it is no issue.

I hope the OP updates us! I would be very annoyed and I think the suggestion above handles it well - keep your vagina off the table (so to speak...) unless absolutely necessary.

And huge 2nd to making sure that your email sig accurately and fully reflects your status.

An internal meeting? They should sort their own stuff out for god's sake.

You ANBU to get the hump. I mean, it's got nothing whatsoever to do with you!

Agree about the unintended things that speak to unconscious ideas about importance. Loads of women on here when threads like this come up, about how when people are looking for someone / something / need something they will approach the nearest female (ie them) even when actually they are the most senior person about.

Women are socialised to be "nice" and "helpful" and furthermore this is expected of them - they are supposed to always be smilingly happy to help. This has fed through in the past into which jobs women were suitable for - nursing, secretarial PA type "looking after the important man" roles, reception. and to an extent in many companies this is where the majority of women will be found. Which is all fine, until some bloke asks you to do his shit for him because he can't be arsed and she'll be happy to do it obviously and they aren't even thinking and so we need to say "No, why can't you do it" and if we get a reputation for being a bit arsey then so what if we are scupulously professional and get the job done people will come to accept it, stop asking and maybe stop bothering other women as well.

Someone sent me an email the other day saying could I make sure notes are made and circulated after all meetings for a project and I said WTF and emailed him back and said politely "just to clarify are you asking me to do this" (ie pointing out what he had actually asked probably without thinking) and I got an email back oh no no no just if you could please help me out by making sure someone does them when I'm away. OK fine. I have no idea what he was thinking in the first place but hey I felt pissed off and said something and it's oK.

FWIW also there's this thing that if a bloke gets asked to minute or get the coffee etc it's kind of OK if someone asks me to do it I don't like it. Like, I don't mind helping out with other things like Excel fanciness or stuff. Just, when it's a, I don't know, looking after type thing I flinch and I think men think well I wouldn't have a problem doing that but it's different isn't it, I think though because of their position ie not minding, they can't see what all the fuss is about.

Sorry turned into a bit of a monologue there!

That set up of having to serve up lunch to an all male meeting that I'm not even attending would really raise my hackles. I worked in marketing before taking a career break and this kind of BS was commonplace - assuming you are more junior than you are, assigning admin tasks, piling you into a room with secretaries - all of that is horribly familiar.

It is really frustrating and makes me angry. Just think of the equivalent scenario: a male IT manager is put in the same office as the janitors and told to go and unblock toilets or fix a broken window because the janitors are out and, well, he's a man, isn't he? It would be ridiculous and if a man refused to do it, no-one would think any less of him.

But as women we are supposed to be helpful and pleasant and not rock the boat and too many women feel pressure to just do what they are asked as a result, no matter how ridiculous.

I would just not be available on the day. Leave the lunch in the fridge or however it arrives and if anyone asks say 'Lunch is in the kitchen - (PA name) is out today'

I may have missed something up thread, but has OP said anything to suggest her being asked to do this is related to being a woman?

It strikes me this is entirely related to her being new to a support staff / back office role so her profile is not yet established, and she happens to sit near the team who would usually cover catering for meetings. So as many have outlined she should breezily pass on this, as a simple mistake that has been made.

I think it very important that professional women don't jump on the 'just coz I am a woman' bandwagon without serious, reference-able evidence of sexism. The fact the internal meeting is made up of entirely men is not evidence, and as far as I can see only a female PA has asked her to do this, without thinking, or knowing what that will ultimately imply about the OP's professional credibility.

You haven't mentioned who asked asked you to carry out this task.

If it's not your own line management, you need to raise the issue with your line manager, and let them know what impact that this task will have on your own work load.

Explain by doing the task, it will reduce the time you can spend on your own tasks and any implications on your own work load. Also explain how this makes you feel in relation to the companies hierarchy structure, and mention being asked to help with other admin tasks such as booking taxis.

If your own line manager has asked you to do this task, you'll have to suck it up. But perhaps bring the issue up with them and explain the impact on your own workload and explain your feelings around being asked to to the task, along with being asked to book taxi's ect.

Think she said it was the pa

I agree with everyone who recommended sending camel's email. Copy and paste it first thing on Monday. Imply that you reckon someone wrongly thinks you're going to be part of the meeting. If the response goes along the lines of, "yes, but all the PAs are away and refreshments are needed" you can then have a face-to-face conversation about your role. I hope it won't come to that. Let us know!

I was once asked to go to m&s for the boss to get his sandwiches. I said no politely and then immediately started to look for another job. You are not bu
Tell them to sort their own sarnies out

I wouldn't do it and would tell the people involved in the meeting that it's their job to sort out sandwiches between them or they need to employ more PAs/ tea makers .
I can understand the most junior person in the meeting being asked to do it but not someone not going to the meeting.
They're taking the piss.
You should have said this at the time though, too many women say yes first then think about things later.

Scarlets right...at this stage downplay completely, assume the best (which is that the PA needs someone to cover for her, and she mistakenly asked you). You do not need a big pow wow at this stage about what you should and shouldn't be asked to do. Will look paranoid.

Camel's email is breezy and that is what you need to be.

You're not being unreasonable at all.

We have a weekly staff meeting, and two members by turn, who are involved in the meeting, sort out the nibbles and drinks.

I'd never dream of automatically getting my female staff to do it for no other reason, although that is what some of them expected.

I'm on next week.

But why would the OP be sitting with the PAs in the first place, LHReturns? Companies don't put IT managers with janitors or security staff and yet it is commonplace for female-heavy professions like marketing or HR to be lumped in with support staff as though their professional skills are not recognized. I've worked in a company where almost all the men on our floor had their own office while all the women, admin and professional alike, were crowded into one big room and I even heard some male staff refer to our office as 'the girls' as if we were all there purely because of our gender, undifferentiated. The only guys who shared an office were 2 IT support guys - nobody would have even dreamed of suggesting that the male staff pile in and share one big office with the IT staff and yet as women that wasn't even questioned.

I think rather than women being careful of assuming that everything is 'coz I am a woman', we actually need to be careful of ignoring subtle sexism like this that undermines the value of women's contributions in the workplace.

If it's a PA who's asked, it needs raising with their line management as to why you've has been asked to do the task. The issue why there's no PA cover needs raising with them too. And also any other PA tasks you've been asked to do needs to be challenged with the PA line management too.

I'd also flag the issues with your line manager.

2rebecca I think it makes complete sense that someone not at the meeting would do it - meetings are expensive, breaking up early for lunch so someone in it can organise the lunch just lengthens it unreasonably - what would everyone else do while this was happening?

We don't really have enough knowledge to know if the root of asking the OP was sexism or simply that the asker thought they were an appropriate person, the OP also hasn't been there long enough to know if this is usual. It may well be, but equally not, you'd need more knowledge of the place than to judge on the single incident.

I agree with Tango, that when the PA's are unavailable, it tends to be the more senior person that steps into the role to fulfil a minor activity (10 minutes putting out sarnies and the tea urn on). Often because so many of the juniors to go "it's not my job, I'm a professional..." I often think it's why those senior people make it seniority.

Ugh, this sort of thing is so annoying. In my office the receptionist and PAs answer the phone, PLUS a few people in other (professionally qualified) roles - all of whom happen to be female . It is a really tricky one as one doesn't want to appear 'difficult' but at the same time, it is really not on.

I moved from a PA role to a 'professional' role in the same company, so I understand your annoyance and your predicament. I decided early on that my reputation as a credible professional was more important than risking a reputation as a difficult person, Feminazi or whatever else people call women who stand up for themselves. I was very blunt (polite but unapologetic) about saying no to PA-type tasks from the moment I moved into my new role. It made a few of the more, shall we say, 'traditional' men upset, but they now show me the kind of respect they never show their poor PAs.

I was lucky to have a very supportive (male) manager, who always backed me up. He told me the office manager had asked him if I could still cover reception in my new role, and he said no, pointing out that my male predecessor had never been asked to do that.

This is difficult because you've already kind of said yes, although I understand why! I think you should go with CamelHump's email.

SolasEile, you may well be right. Regarding your former situation, that is clearly a ludicrous case of sexism, and if course unacceptable, and I hope you departed as a result.

With OP's situation, I am simply not jumping to conclusions (and suggesting that she reacts strongly - yet) for a few reasons:

• having read the thread in full, all I see is that one of the PAs asked OP to cover for her by dealing with the catering for this meeting
• I don't believe anywhere she has said that her line manager or the men attending the infamous internal meeting even know she has been asked to do this
• it is possible the PA simply made a mistake, didn't think about how the OP is not quite 'another one of them', so asked of her of own volition
• possibly it is nothing more than the PA's sexism going on here, which then also needs to be carefully handled so PA doesn't conclude that OP is looking down on her ('you may do that sort of thing, but I don't!'...that would be a disaster)
• OP is new to her company and role (a newly created role too, so colleagues are still working out how she fits in)
• OP has also said that she likes the company and her role, and wants it to work out...so I assumed from this that she hasn't yet witnessed a horrible sexist atmosphere from the start

So all of this added up leads me to urge OP to exercise caution in highlighting any, even subtle, sexism in this particular example. She is still at the stage of establishing her value, authority in her field, and also being the sort of team member people want to have around. Looking after relationships with her colleagues is critical to that, in my experience. Being just good at your job is not enough to be truly successful.

Separely, I don't know enough about OP's office set up to comment on whether her being seated with the PAs has a sexist subtext or not. She describes it as being related to her also being 'back office'. I think seating all back office people together is hugely old-fashioned, but it isn't in itself sexist. Anyone in that particular support team could be male and I assume they would sit there too.

Before I started my own business 15 years ago, I worked in marketing and experienced all the same 'lumping together' of support staff, professions and admin as if all the same, just as you describe. At times I agree it can be enormously frustrating. But at the same time there were PAs of such enormous seniority, clout and expertise (earning far more than many of the functional team members), that I never really was bothered by that....I just knew I wanted to be client facing.

Perhaps I should also admit that at its max my business employed 38 women and 2 men....the men were both the PAs!! This was not by design just the best people for the jobs at the time in a fairly female dominated sector. Worked beautifully.

As I say, you may end up being absolutely right, I'm just not convinced we know enough to say that is what is happening here. So I feel protective of OP managing her profile in her early days at a place that she feels generally good about so far.

Oh I agree, LH: in the OP's place I wouldn't openly emphasize the sexism aspect either when dealing with her specific problem. The email suggested up thread that attributes the whole thing to a misunderstanding is definitely the best way to handle things for now. In general though I think we as women need to be more alive to sexism in the workplace as it is still very much an issue but is just quite subtle these days. It does need to be tackled carefully though, as you say.

Yabu because nobody else will be in the office that day.

... Erm, apart from the men actually attending their own internal meeting....

I agree now, raising this as a misunderstanding as a first point seems the best way to go.

YANBU - it is not an all hands on deck situation, it is an internal meeting so let someone who is part of the meeting and getting free grub deal with it!! It is not in your job description and I think you need to talk to your line manager about being moved away from the admin section.