Email sent by colleagues addressed to 'Gents'

[funkymonkey55]

AIBU to be annoyed by a male colleague starting an email chain to other male colleagues where he addresses them as "Gents" and then he loops me in a few days later - when the actions around the original email topic (gathering information together) need to be picked up (by me of course!)?

It annoys me because I feel 1) I should have been cc'd in the first instance, 2) Isn't starting an email chain where you know females will have to be cc'd in / included with the phrase Gents a little rude?

I don't know if I am being a bit overly sensitive.

No, women’s efforts to break the glass ceiling are hampered because of those people who not only think it doesn’t matter, they can’t even see the issue in the first place.

But why is there an issue with saying “gents” to an email which includes men only?

And why is there an issue with somebody mistakenly omitting someone from an email chain? Have you never done that before? I know I have.

The issue with “gents” is that it’s singling them out by sex. It’s very odd. Their sex shouldn’t matter, but clearly the writer thinks it does, or he wouldn’t have done it.

Leaving someone out of an email chain by error is a different thing altogether, which may be completely innocent.

I just find that such a bizarre thing to take exception to. Do you find it just as problematic when a woman meets up with her friends and says “hi, ladies!”

Or when a man drops something on the street and somebody calls after him “sir!”

Or when some children are misbehaving and the teacher says “girls, stop that.”

Or just using Mr and Ms generally? Or anything that identifies by gender?

In a workplace you just don't start an email with "gents", "ladies" any more than you would start one "ladies and gentlemen". It's fucking weird and outdated.

You start it "hi all", "dear colleagues" or just "good morning". I work in manufacturing which is one of the least woke industries and everyone knows this, even the dinosaurs.

Well, I can agree with that, I wouldn’t personally use the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” just because it’s a bit of an old-fashioned sounding phrase. Not because I think it’s sexist or problematic, though.

I love that this whole thread is pure outrage that anyone would even notice the sex of their colleagues in 2023 when the rest of Mumsnet is all about how you can clock a transwoman at a thousand paces...

There are some barriers to women advancing further in the workplace but this isn't one.

He had no intent to do the work but took charge of telling people in other departments their team needed data to win an award.

If he had no intent to do the hard bit why make the OP's job harder?

Lots of jobs would just send the data back to the requester and remove other's off the email.
it can be that manager in the purchase department has no interest in having spend time reading what the other deparrments send back or communication chains between other departments. Or a manager forward instructions to staff even removing the sender as again the sender only needs work product not the email by email detail of how the data is collected.

Have you worked in a male dominated sector? This is common and annoying. As it's the practice of a group of men referring to each other as sir, in person as a sign of respect. But you get called by your name

But it is a barrier. It's othering and makes a division. Hard to be promoted when this is company culture

It’s a huge barrier - like saying you don’t exist.

Yes, I was the only woman on my team for several years. On one particularly memorable occasion I was representing my company at a trade association meeting - 40 people in the room and the only women were me and the woman taking the minutes.

Some of the men genuinely care and make an effort like the very senior male director who always did the drinks in meetings to avoid the idea that one of the women should do it. Others do it because they will be marked down at their appraisal because being able to demonstrate inclusiveness is one of their objectives.

It’s not perfect but compared to when I started (in the last millennium 😱) real progress has been made.

Wouldn’t bother me at all, if it does you just reply and say Ladies and Gentleman or Team. Have to say I like receiving one addressed with Ladies, Team feels a bit cold but each to their own.

I've exclusively worked in male-dominated industries for my entire career. It's been excellent because they're generally better paid, which makes it very easy to breeze past "micro aggressions" that everyone feels I need to worry about.

I've advanced quite far in my career by never getting involved in the "trade award nomination committee" too

If the 'team' its addressed to are all male this seems perfectly reasonable to me. If the email has been forwarded or you're cc'd you are being made aware of the email sent to them. He's not addressing you as 'Gents'.
If eg I worked in a school and the email I was ccd into/forwarded said 'Dear Parent/Guardian' I would feel affronted because I'm not a parent.
I think you're looking for problems where ghey don't exist!

Whether or not you should have been copied in from the start is a seperate issue to the form of greeting used.

The only people who have to decide whether "gents" is an appropriate form of greeting are the people the original email was directed to. Anyone who is copied on later down the line doesn't really have the right to a say.

This is because it's no different to Manager A emailing Employee B, starting the message with "Hi Employee B". If later on they forward/copy Employee C into the email chain, Employee C doesn't really have the right to be offended that the original email specifically excluded them from the greeting. It wasn't directed to them.

As an aside, I had a female manager once who always said "Morning Ladies" as she entered the office. The one male employee in the room never seemed to give a shit that he was being included in this form of address.

The real issue is deliberately excluding you in the original email, yet cc you as you are needed to do the work involved.

Nothing accidental in that.
Absolutely deliberate.

He is hugely aware of the shift in culture and using it to his benefit.

Keep a note of everything.

Are you in a union?

I hope you are.

Do not reward him by doing as he asks.

He needs to be shown to have fxxked up by excluding you.

How is that to his benefit? Wouldn’t it be to his benefit to cc OP as early as possible to make sure the work got done? Isn’t it more likely that he just made a genuine mistake in omitting OP?

I feel like people who make these kinds of negative assumptions are the ones who are constantly mithering and dissatisfied and falling out with people.

OP should just do her job now she has the info she needs. If she’s questioned why it’s taken so long, she can say she only received the info on x date.

I'm glad things have improved for you. I started work in 2006 and regularly got the gents emails. Get it now too. The last one I got, the writer assumed I was an assistant on the legal team. But I was a manager who had been pulled in to sort a problem

He is not the manager of the department.

He is at the same level as OP emailing department heads who instruct their staff to supply him with the data.
He then sends a second email to department heads asking that the data be sent to OP as OP has been instructed to do the grunt work.

If the other department heads send the data to OPs team contact (not her) the data has been received by X date and its an interdepartment fight with her name being dragged in to why the award application was not made.

Sure, but ultimately that’s still going to reflect badly on him, not her. It’s clear from the email thread when the info got passed to her. If he didn’t let her know as soon as he received it, that’s his oversight.

So yeah I can’t see why he’d do it deliberately.

Even if it wasn’t going to reflect badly on him, I’d still assume it was genuine error. Most people aren’t maliciously trying to sabotage their colleagues. People just make mistakes from time to time.

@Gladragsy
Sorry to hear you’re still having to deal with that sort of crap. Early on I did have some real dinosaurs as bosses. Like the one who was surprised when I refused to cover the phones when the team assistant was off especially when I suggested he asked one of the 3 males who was more junior than me.

No. The writer of the email doesn’t get to decide that - or shouldn’t. “Gents” is a completely inappropriate form of address in the workplace. So is “ladies” too.

If there is a problem and applying for the award is her job, OP is to blame.
As in OP failed to ask for the data from the employee who should not have gotten involved in a task which was outside his job description.

If there is no problem and the award is given to the company he is the named person directly linked to managing the process.

That is not maliciously trying to sabotage their colleagues its trying to use office politics to outshine and upstage OP with a new manager.
At year end he can now say he went the extra mile and his finished task "organised the award" should be recognised as taking on extra responsibilty. In some places extra = a bonus
For the OP "organised the award" is doing her regualar job. (No bonus).

You have worked for nice people in nice organisations but not all jobs are like that.

Im female but in my line of work hearing right lads lets go is a common phrase lol any one snowflakey or easily offended gets left behind lol