women at work

[seigus]

Over on the Cursing Out Coworkers forum on CS, Food Lady asked why she had a hard time with the women she worked with. I wanted to discuss this here because it may be a sore subject, and peoples' observations might possibly offend.
That said, the times in my life I've been a supervisor I have ALWAYS had more trouble with women getting along with each other, BY FAR, than I have ever had with men. I'm not really sure what it is, but it has been borne out time and time again, in many different fields and locations. What's the issue here? Is it insecurity? Competition? I'm not meaning to be sexist; many women have agreed with me that this is the case. I'm really interested in the opinions of my fellow posters. I'm not just talking about anger at justifiable causes - I've seen women get into screaming rows over the most trivial (to me) things. Sometimes it is a complete mystery to me why enmity has developed. Got any ideas as to why? I'd love to hear them.
And, just to be clear, I am not in any way claiming that all, or even most, women are like this. It's just a trend I've noticed.

[Greenday]

Yea, I'll never understand it. But in my and everyone I know's experience, women are the source of 99.999% of the drama. Why, I have no idea. But I honestly cannot for the life of me remember when a guy has started drama in my life.

[Amina516]

Women are generally more emotional than men with the added agent of fluctuating hormones. Some women feel the need to compete, as do some men. But I feel woman are more verbal and tend to try and change things/people/actions and men are apt to just deal with it. My opinion, and my opinion only folks.

And believe me, i know plenty of men that start drama...

[jackfaire]

And believe me, i know plenty of men that start drama...

Well yeah it was a fun class :p

[Nyoibo]

AWiB is not quite true, but close when it comes to their interactions, guys are dicks, but more often than not it'll end up in fisticuffs and then they get a beer afterwards and end up mates, I know I have a couple of times. Women on the other hand are mean and vindictive when they don't like someone and it usually doesn't get resolved it just escalates.

Been my experience way too many times, but for some reason I still get on better with women.

[Android Kaeli]

I've also noticed that women get their panties in a bunch over the littlest things, it's annoying and gets on my nerves quite often. It's making a mountain out of a mole hole where there should be no mountain to begin with. I guess it's because of all the hormones and whatnot, because women tend to want to be better then the women two seats in front of her and she'll throw in a hissy fit to get what she wants.

I think sometimes women just want to make it seem like they're in charge of their lives and try to ignore their own problems by making someone else's life miserable.

[kiwi]

At my last job, my "boss" was a woman and despite being totally out of her depth she was wonderful, both of us had a boss a male and head of HR. Even though my female boss was in charge of me day to day, because I was in the HR department he was also my boss....

he was a fucking useless piece of passive agressive shit, he was actually as useless as david brent.....
all of my other bosses have been female apart from one, a male who after 10 months still couldn't remember my name despite having a staff of 8....

It is not the gender of a person that makes them a good boss or a terrible one, it is their individual skill as a manager of people and their individual intelligence and charisma as a person.

[Boozy]

Yea, I'll never understand it. But in my and everyone I know's experience, women are the source of 99.999% of the drama.

Women may cause a lot of the drama but they haven't cornered the market on workplace problems in general.

I think women do tend to get upset about little things more often. They also gossip frequently and take things personally when the situation doesn't warrant it.

But I haven't ever found it easier to work with men than with women. Men just come with their own particular list of problems. In my experience, anger issues, egotism, sexism, and immaturity are more common in men than in women.

Things like backstabbing and laziness are the two hardest things for me to deal with in a professional environment, and I've found that men and women are on equal footing in that regard.

Men and women behave differently, especially at work. But I don't think the negatives to working with one sex are any greater than the other.

[jackfaire]

I think they are both nuts.

And that fight, beer, mates thing. Yeah this guy was pissed at me because I questioned his authority, technically he outranked me but he wasn't in my chain of command and his rank didn't give him any authority.

Anyway he wanted to fight me I had no interest. Everyone was like "dude once you fight you will be friends"

I was telling them uhm no after I fight someone I don't like them any better than I did before and usually less.

[Ghel]

I've worked with women more than men, but I think part of the issue is how each gender tends to deal with personality conflicts. (This is a generalization, but it's one that I have to remind myself of or I find myself doing the same thing.)

Women will expect the other party to know what is wrong, so they won't come out and say what is bothering them. They will stew over minor "injustices" (or at least, I do). And they will hold a grudge FOREVER. They will rarely be the first to make amends, instead waiting for the other person to make the first move.

Men, on the other hand, tend to be more straightforward. If something is bothering them, they will go to the offending person and voice their grievances. Minor differences of opinion don't seem to bother them. And long-held grudges can be settled with a few words.

[crashhelmet]

A lot of women are catty. Blame it on insecurity issues, status issues, trust/jealousy issues, whatever you want, but a lot of women are catty. If they're not talking shit about someone they don't like for reasons even unknown to them, they're gossiping about someone or something. Put them together in one place and shit is bound to get stirred up. Guys typically don't have that problem, unless there are women involved.

CH

[blas87]

This may give me a reputation (if I don't already have one) for being an ageist or a sexist, but here we go.

The women where I work, mostly the older ones, engage in this conversation on almost a DAILY basis:
1= woman one 2= woman two

1= I absolutely cannot stand that Judy woman! She is so useless and lazy and thinks this whole factory would blow up if she dare took a day off!
2= Oh I agree, did you hear what she did last night?

Then fast forward two hours later, to next break time, woman #1 and Judy are taking break together laughing and sipping coffee like old friends!

That's Ann and her evil clan of Hens. Don't get me wrong, the young ladies do it as well, but nowhere near as sneakily and as catty. They are just learning.

[tropicsgoddess]

Men are more direct than women at work about things and/or people they don't like at work . Women on the other hand may not like you or whoever else, fake it and/or do something sneaky and underhanded. I've been there before. Being the workplace gossip fodder thanks to some catty ass bitches? Check. Being stabbed in the back? check. Being treated like shit by somebody else for whatever petty ass reason? Check. After the experiences I've had I prefer working with men than women. Women are more apt to be passive aggressive, vindictive and downright spiteful.

[Cassandra]

I work in a small office with 5 other women and our bosses are women. I hate it! There is so much cattiness and they all like to play mind games so much! I agree that men and women communicate in very different ways and that it can cause major issues in the workplace. I think much of this can be contributed, not only to the differences in communication styles, but also to the fact that there still is a bit of a glass ceiling and women feel that they have to be competative to be successful in the workplace.

Women also like to talk more than men which leads to more gossiping which then leads to more tension between the women. When I first started in this office, I worked with one of the women here alone for a couple of months. I was taught everything wrong on purpose so that the other women would attack me when they came back from vacation. It backfired on that woman because I took the critisim from the other women as a learning experience and made sure to not make the mistakes again. This has lead to some tension between myself and the first woman. That incident happened back in July.

I have always said that I would prefer to work with 500 men than with 5 women. Men see an issue, confront it, and walk away (for the most part). Women will drag out that issue for ever.

[jackfaire]

I have always seen this whole thing as a person to person thing. Some of the men I work with are catty and talk behind each other's backs. Others are straight forward. Same with the women it doesn't seem to have much to do with gender but then in my region not much does.

[XCashier]

It is not the gender of a person that makes them a good boss or a terrible one, it is their individual skill as a manager of people and their individual intelligence and charisma as a person.
This is true. I've had brilliant bosses, horrible bosses and everything in between in both genders.

I'm working in a place with about twenty other people, and all but one are women. I haven't noticed any drama, but that may be because the people in this town are generally pretty laid-back, or most of us in the store are over 40 (and even the younger ones are quite mature and sensible), or maybe because we've got a really good management team.

I have, however, worked at other places where there's been a lot of drama, office politics, backstabbing, passive aggressiveness, etc. I never saw the point of it, but that's just me.

[Arcade Man D]

Women will expect the other party to know what is wrong, so they won't come out and say what is bothering them. They will stew over minor "injustices" (or at least, I do). And they will hold a grudge FOREVER. They will rarely be the first to make amends, instead waiting for the other person to make the first move.

Men, on the other hand, tend to be more straightforward. If something is bothering them, they will go to the offending person and voice their grievances. Minor differences of opinion don't seem to bother them. And long-held grudges can be settled with a few words.

As much as generalizations are rarely true, this one is frequently true, at least in my experience. Every one of my male friends, if I angered them, or they angered me, it got brought up. However, if a female friend was angry with me, I'd ask them what was up, and they'd get angrier that I didn't already know. I think it goes down to the generalization about how the two sexes act as children.

"Boys will get angry with each other, have a tussle, then go down to the fishing hole together, joking the whole way. Girls will get angry with each other, and hold the grudge for years."

[Fashion Lad!]

The difference I've noticed between men and women in the work place is that women try not to hurt people's feelings by being upfront. Where as men just tend to be more blunt. But when the bluntness does come, women will (these are all just things I've noticed) tend to stay mad for a long period of time. Men will fight it out there. Then there are grudges and all that fun stuff.

I prefer to work with men, but I have enjoyed working with a lot of girls that are more laid back.

[guywithashovel]

For some reason, I almost always tend to find myself working in places where women are the majority. I worked for Wal-Mart for five years, and the majority of my co-workers there were women. Back then, roughly 72% of Wal-Mart's workforce was female. Talk about being outnumbered. ;)

After that, I worked for a school as a tutor, and most of my co-workers were women, though I did ride to work with a male co-worker. After that, I worked for a camp, and once again, it was more females than males. However, the university housing association I worked at was a little more even.

Still yet, I earned a master's degree in library and information science, a field where women outnumber men. And now, I work at a technical college with significantly more female colleagues than male ones.

I don't do it on purpose, I swear! :cool:

Overall, I've never had a whole lot of trouble working with women. The worst any of my female co-workers have ever done to me over the years has been trying to include me in their female conversations. I've always been able to tough that out, though.

[crashhelmet]

Overall, I've never had a whole lot of trouble working with women. The worst any of my female co-workers have ever done to me over the years has been trying to include me in their female conversations. I've always been able to tough that out, though.

That's because you're a guy. You're not perceived as enough of a threat to the rest of them and their catty ways. If you haven't seen it yet, wait until they trust you enough to really include you in their conversations.

CH