Tuesday, May 13, 2008

In Which I Am More Sexist Than I Thought I Was

I'm still figuring out who everyone is at the new job -- I pretty much know my department, and the editors I work with, but the larger company still has huge blurred areas in my head labeled "here be Higher Ed" or "those people who work in Toronto." So I find myself looking people up on our Intranet Portal and following the org charts up and down when I'm not sure who people are.

And recently I found my expectations needed to be realigned.

In one department, there are two people who work in the same area: one man, whom I think is a bit older than I am; and one woman, whom I think is a bit younger than I am. (I could be wrong about their ages as well.) In my minor contacts so far, I'd dealt with the man.

You've figured this out already, right?

I thought she reported to him, but that was exactly backward: she's the boss.

And now I have another reflexive assumption to watch out for...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

While we're on the subject, how would you rate your wife?

Brad Holden said...

Hopefully, you made no tactical errors in conversation.

That is, um, the worst.

Tania said...

Ageist or sexist?

I usually assume the older person is in charge, because they presumably have more experience. One of my first employees had children my age, and I found it difficult to give her direction like the other people, because of her age. Luckily for me, she was very gracious about it and helped me get over it.

Andrew Wheeler said...

Konrad: Oddly, enough, I came across that at Boing Boing last night, and was asking The Wife the questions. She didn't do very well...

Tania: I think it was mostly sexist; the age difference isn't huge. (Any thirtysomething person could be in charge of a decent-sized division of a company these days.) But it was probably the combination that led to my incorrect assumption.

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