Angry, weary of certain men at work...

[DoinItForTheKids]

Almost don't know why I'm posting in many ways but I have absolutely had my fill this week. This is what I'm having to handle (and by the way, it's not just me, the other two women on the team also share these views), in no particular order:

Man at work 1 - manager colleague for a different but associated department:

• Mansplaining something I have 20 years greater knowledge of than him
• Repeatedly inferring that I've done something that I haven't done which is framed as jocularity and a 'joke' but isn't actually a joke - it's 'professionally' inappropriate. I can't say it's bullying or aggressive, it's more like every comment is delivered with a condescending tone and an excessive amount of challenge and makes me feel like a twat
• Constantly talks over people, mostly women colleagues
• He and two or three others of this department have a social media group which I can't share the name of, but they've named it what could be the name of someone who is a 'loose woman' - he and his boy colleagues apparently saw/see no problem or issue with how the name for this SM group might go down with the women with whom they work.

Man at work 2 - senior director:

• On production by me of a table with colour coding "Oh what lovely colours" (I'm 55 btw, not 15) He's a DIRECTOR, yet he's NEVER here to lead the flipping team and it's a CRITICAL time in the business. As I'm sure many will know, many organisations are in business planning right now and trying to secure funds for projects and continuous improvement work etc. Whilst this £65k a year £&%& is absent at European conference after European conference - I calculated the other day that he was going to be out of the office over this critical time period (or significantly unavailable either by dint of endless meetings that negate an entire day or working from home or other reasons not to be available) for 18 days out of the next 30 - he is in a LEADERSHIP role and leads nothing - he couldn't lead his way out of a paper bag. Today he should have been at a meeting of the Exetutive Directors, but didn't attend that. Last month he didn't attend a similar meeting so that our projects were risk upgraded to amber simply because he didn't attend in order to give a verbal update! He actually stropped out of a meeting last week like a bloody toddler and constantly blames others for lack of progress
• Yet, he has a male colleague (senior manager from out team, a different idiot to the manager already mentioned) who does NO work AT ALL!! This guy's just left to miss deadlines and what have you whilst the rest of us are sent emails (which most recent one he actually called it a 'directive'!!) telling us what we haven't done etc - when he's the one that's never here, and his male senior manager colleague is the bloody laziest man I've ever met!

It's SO difficult to resolve because above him your next step up is the Chief Executive. So there's no managerial / operational layer above at all. And, of course, as luck would have the Chief Executive, he really likes this director! Who'd have thunk it.

If this were not proof enough, there's been FIVE members of staff who have left in just the last year (funny, roughly coinciding with when he arrived and starting being director for this department)!

Arraghhh! No idea any more what to do about it but I am SO fed up of these types of men at work! There's some lovely guys who are also of the same seniority of this director but have NONE of this twattish behaviour - it's really really difficult to report because your next level up is so incredibly high-up, it can end up sounding like whingeing.

I honestly don't know if the only way forward is to bring a Dignity at Work complaint or a Discrimination complaint against him - but it's very very subtle stuff (and I honestly think it's just a complete lack of self awareness actually) and it's only pockets in the organisation that are like this.... wondering if voting with my feet is the only resolve in actual fact.

Sorry for the moaning but blimey, this last month or so has been really tough going. I don't know how much more I can tailor my approach to this director for it still not to meet his wishes.

Nightmare situations. For man 1, implying you've done something stupid could you say ''you do love that joke don't you, wheeling it out again'' said calmly with a smile of course, lest he think you're reprimanding him for being an arse! Heaven forbid. Keep going ''oh the old joke is the OLD joke''. People who do this are trying to make dirt that isn't there stick I think. I've a colleague who says things like ''oh you're having one of those days'' and she seems to say it out of the blue, for no reason, as though I'd lost / broken /dropped a ball.

As for man 2 that is a tough one. The CE will think you're a sneak after man 2's job. You need a client to complain about him.

I couldn't be after director man's job (sadly, would love the pay package!!) - I'm two levels down (sadly really as, tbh, I could do it better!). Manager man - well, he's just an overbearing dick. We've already had one female member of staff leave that department because she couldn't tolerate the sexism - and racism (can't comment personally, am white plus have not personally observed this) - if me and my female colleagues are right we believe we identified the anonymised narraitve that we believe she had put on her staff survey questionnaire - it was absolutely damning on those front. Interestingly though, she did not submit a formal complaint / grievance. Which probably says more than anything does.

I am so stressed I had stomach cramps earlier and hit a bottle of wine and I've literally not drunk in nearly 2 months - that's how much it's started to affect me.

We don't have clients - it's public sector! Argggh!

Here's another example. We've just taken on a very much anticipated specialist manager - recruited for her incredible previous experience doing exactly what we need her to do for us, in another organisation. She's critical to the work that we're doing. Yet from the moment of her arrival, she's been dismissed and treated like, basically, an idiot. She meets with the consultants who are helping us at the moment and tells them one thing (the right thing, the right direction), then director man and the snr manager from our department will meet behind her back with the consultant and tell the consultant something different! And very sadly, that different something, is actually the wrong thing! Because they think they know what they're talking about, but they actually don't.

I want you and newwoman to win OP.

Hi OP
You could write a detailed report about the various issues you are having in your department and get your team members to add their opinions to it.
Approach the new Specialist Manager and ask for meeting with her asking if she will go through your report/concerns/opinions about how you could try and effect change or improvements e.g. saving money by sacking the lazy bar stewards who do no work!!
I think you, your colleagues and this SM could all do with support from each other.
Good Luck OP.

Yes, myself and colleagues are supporting each other with respect to the senior director man - it's difficult because his absence, strops and confusing expectations in combination with senior manager man who is the lazy arse, make is REALLY difficult to deliver the work and progress that we need to achieve! We have reported to another senior director and I believe she's taken it to the chief exec. I've reiterated to the colleague who's taken this step that I'm very happy to meet with this director too and I contributed my thoughts on the failings of our senior director and she incorporated them into her conversation, and those of my other colleague as well.

I had the mansplaining conversation with the other manager on Thursday lunchtime - I'm still steaming about it now. But I'm also aware that my irritation and rage at this guy also has a massive dollop of being at the end of the road of the interactions with idiot senior director and senior manager as well! So I don't want to 'give it to him' and feel that I'm lumping on him my total frustrations from preceding weeks (albeit he has been pissing me off for some time as well, but thankfully I don't have to interact with him that often).

It's really sad - I was looking at sources of info about 'the boys club' online to see what tactics people might use with this issue. And sadly the suggestions (from women) were: be one of the boys, share the jokes and (possibly dodgy) banter, go out for drinks after work whenever they're on in order to be accepted. I can't believe it - we are still kowtowing to these arses and changing our behaviour to address the problem!

How far we haven't come eh.

What pisses me off is that the boys club mentality obfuscates crap performance whilst also rewarding it with promotion and higher salaries!

I feel I have attitudes and beliefs are put on me not only because I am a woman, but are also because I'm 51 and I say this in relation to the phone call with the mansplaining manager, where in my op I said that he told me I'd done something wrong. This something wrong was a technical matter and I firmly believe with the way they've repeatedly tried to pin it on me, that the assumption is that I'm too old and female to ever understand what they're saying to me hence why they talk about it/me behind my back and repeatedly mention it to me. It's like "oh, grandpa's accidentally turned the wifi off again the silly beggar ha ha".

Hi op,

Could you do a chart to illustrate where man 1and 2 and the other dramatis personae sit?

Fwiw I picked up what you said about how response to man A and response to manB need to be teased apart.

Pick’em off one by one as a team.....

This environment you're working in is not typical of all organisations. You seem to have more than the average number of old boys club members in your dept/company.

With that many, you seem to be outnumbered. Do you really feel it is good for your long term wellbeing to stay and lock horns with them?

I know it's a bitter pill to swallow, but you may look back in future years and wonder if it was really worth it and what was achieved by trying to fight a worthy but seemingly futile cause where women are, within the very fabric of their culture, mansplained at, and treated so appallingly.

I can tell that your self worth has taken a complete hammering, and that's wrong, wrong, wrong!

I've got to say I've not noticed this type of boys club shit anywhere as much as I've noticed it here thanks and daisy although it's taken a long while for me to realise it and to get the measure of my senior director and talk to colleagues and find out the issues they've experienced so I could realise it wasn't me, it's him, with the problem.

Rest assured that there is a very united front between the three of us who have to work day in and day out with this senior director - we've got the one iron in the fire with the reporting the issue to another friendly senior director and are waiting to hear back the upshot of that.

It's not so much my self worth daisy as I think I've just reached a limit and just will not tolerate any more of this crap. And because I'm so utterly frustrated and fed up - and ANGRY - with dealing with idiots on way more money than me it's made it that it's just going round and round in my head and starting to affect my stress levels and is constantly currently on my mind much of my waking hours including every minute since that phone call on Thursday.

As you say, voting with my feet may be the only resolution which is a shame because I will lose access to training, fabulous flexible working, easy-peasy commute, so I have just started putting CVs round - but that can take months to find just the right role - and get it.