Being mistaken for the PA

[BingBoings]

Twice this week I have been in email chains, where I have been asked to supply dates for a meeting.

The reason for this has in both cases, I assume, is that I am the only female name in the thread.

Both situations have seen large numbers of clients and colleagues copied in on emails where… I am asked if I can help give times when my male colleagues are free. I am usually senior to them.

Am I the only person this happens to? I find it half hilarious, and half embarrassing… A few months ago I was asked in a meeting if I could do coffees when I walked in…

i have no issue with managing my own diary nor is there any issue with being a PA… it’s more that I don’t see men having this issue…!

Same thing happened to me this week! I confess I was unpleasantly passive-aggressive in my response.

Yep…and to take the minutes…no mate, I’m chair, perhaps you could take them 😉

Yanbu assuming they really do just assume you are the PA.

No personal experience of this but I bet it happens a lot. I'm guilty to some extent, I work with doctors and had assumed an administrator who was standing in was a doctor, just because he's male (other admins were present but women).

Did you say anything?

@HouseOfRunners oh god that suggests it never stops.

The most frustrating part of all is that it’s usually other women making the assumption…!

I have had this. I politely went and made the coffee for 3 men who were extremely rude and dismissive to the "admin". When I sat down to chair the meeting not one of them could meet my eye - or provide anything useful to the subject at hand, as it happens. One of them blamed me after for having a gender neutral name.

That was a bit of a career low...

I was described as forthright today - it was meant to be a compliment but I've never heard a man be described as such 🤦🏻‍♀️ when will it ever end...🤦🏻‍♀️

But if you are the chair why are you not the one arranging who takes minutes?

Oh god me too.

Them - “Bunny Ears, is there coffee being delivered to the meeting?”

Me - “No idea, I’m here to discuss my analysis of the Edinburgh Reforms”.

Urgh.

@EmmaDilemma5 yes, of course, although I am always far more generous than I feel about it.

if I was a man I’d probably tell them to F off.

I've just had to go through company training on this funnily enough - training in unconscious bias 😂 all the blokes (I'm the only woman in my team) are now too shit scared to let me make them a tea when it's my turn in the round now as some of the scenarios HR specifically mentioned was expecting the women in the team to make the drinks or minute take in meetings 😂

@MrsBunnyEars oh god it’s terrible isn’t it.

Not all that long ago someone gave me a pile of papers and asked if I could make copies for them as I walked in the room. I was there to run the project.

Mortifying. For everyone.

I am usually mistaken for someone's PA or HR. When actually I am the female senior manager of a department in a very traditional male dominated industry. It is scary how often it happens and often by genuinely nice blokes-which shows you how pervasive it is and how far we still have to go. They aren't even that embarrassed when corrected which shows they don't realize how offensive it is. In their mind it is the only possible reason I could be there as a woman! Scary!

I'm an ex-PA and the one thing I used to advise those usually younger-to-me women going into meetings is don't make drinks, fetch or carry anything or offer to take minutes.

@MyFlagMeansIceCream oh dear god.

No one addressed it?

TBH mistaken identity aside, the idea you would bark service instructions at anyone when they walked in is dreadful.

I'm foreign (though white), senior in a very specialised profession and I think I've gotten away without this happening to me because I've always behaved a bit "superior" - not quite rude, but brazen; not quite patronising but as arrogant as the most arrogant man in the room..

Yeah, it's crap isn't it. I've been in a less obvious situation when an interviewee asked for a glass of water and looked at me to get it.
Now, I would get a glass of water for anyone, and did. But they did look uncomfortable when it turned out I was head of department and the boss of the hiring manager.
My own boss (male and very senior) actually steps in and offers to make the coffee etc. if he perceives that I'm being asked because I'm female. He's the boss equivalent of a keeper :)

You say you are senior to them do you think maybe they will work around your availability for the meeting? I'm a career EA when organising meetings I base it on the availability of the most senior attendees everyone else needs to make themselves available. I do this for both men and women.

@RustyNails sadly not.

The emails read more like, ‘can you please let me know when @RustyNails is available to arrange a meeting with X’. No querying of my availability.

I was once asked in a meeting if I could 'pop out to the shop' to get one of the male managers some Sudafed as he had a cold and was struggling and 'if it isn't too much trouble to grab everyone a Starbucks on the way back would be really helpful'

So I did as asked without question.

When I came back 20 mins later, the meeting hadn't started, everyone sat around looking awkward because as a senior manager, I was chairing it... and consequently everyone was kept an hour later. They assumption was I was a junior note taker, being the only female in the room.

Oh dear lord thats terrible

Yes all the time

This week I have declined to take minutes in a meeting I attended as much more senior member of staff there to observe the process, came down hard on a man objecting to the tone of a young woman's (perfectly reasonable) email, declined to meet on my day off under considerable pressure after I chased the rest of the team (men) for past two weeks to sort out a time.

I urge you all to call it out every single time.
The most successful businesses are those with a diverse management team so are fully aware of issues which help both men and women meet their potential at work. And in life - but that's for another time

@NotRainingToday

I did have a client last year where I had to tell the client their PA kept asking me to send meeting invites and had been incredibly rude when I had asked her to arrange.

Turns out they had thought I was just a lazy PA asking them to set things up for me.

Im not a senior exec or anything but still fair bit of responsibility (public sector) and I’m always assumed to be a more junior member of staff by visiting SLT or it’s automatically assumed that a male colleague sitting near me is my manager 😡

In my first job I happened to answer the phone as it was lunch time and one of the receptionists was out at lunch. it happened to be a query for something I looked after so I started answering his query and he stopped me and said can I speak to an engineer please, surely you're only a receptionist 😱

We also used to host county councillors for meetings now and then, the women used to have to make tea/coffee, hand round food and then wash up after, none of the men ever were asked, they did kindly carry the heavy plates back to the pub that provided the food though