Ever experienced double standards in the workplace?

py2006 · 06-07-2014 01:12PM

Magaggie wrote: »

He does like to pretend that what's in his imagination is reality all right.

Good argument. Thats me told. You should use that one in every discussion.

steddyeddy · 06-07-2014 01:25PM

Awkward Badger wrote: »

Worked in two different supermarkets where it was the responsibility of the guys to do all the cleaning. The girls and women were exempt from a lot of the work and usually finished earlier than the guys. They were not expected to pack bags, help customers to their cars, collect trolleys, clean the floors at night, clean spills during the day, clean the unisex toilets, clean the store room or the canteen. Even the girls changing room was sometimes cleaned by the guys after they were all gone home.

Add to that the fact that all the guys had their own jobs to do and areas to stock the same as the girls as well as helping the girls stock their trolleys in the store when the stuff was heavy and bring it out to the shop floor a lot of the time too.

I don't know if there was a pay difference as I never asked but unless the girls were on 2 quid an hour it wasn't enough to make up for the huge difference in the amount of work expected.

I worked in three different supermarkets in my younger days and seen this at them all. That was 16 years ago mind I wonder has things changed. I have no time for sexism in the workplace.

steddyeddy · 06-07-2014 01:54PM

Plus I was on 2.15 and hour

. How times have changed.

Awkward Badger · 06-07-2014 02:03PM

steddyeddy wrote: »

Plus I was on 2.15 and hour . How times have changed.

Actually now that I think of it the first one was £2.95 an hour. That was probably 14/15 years ago. So maybe the women were on 2 quid an hour

fleet_admiral · 06-07-2014 02:25PM

Worked in a pub recently with a bloke who was best friends with the owner. He was the laziest arsehole ive ever come across. Sunday is one example, we all had the same hours on the early shift, 10 - 6. This lad would show up with the owner at ten to twelve dying from the night before, throw his massive weight around, feck off with the owner at 1 for his 'break' then come back at half 5 locked to finish. God forbid if any of the rest if us were grabbing a quick smoke when they arrived back. He would then sit in the snug all evening moaning about the 'lazy' lounge boys and girls that came in in the evening. A prick of epic proportions

Potential-Monke · 06-07-2014 02:53PM

Constantly. Day in and day out i experience it. There's one particular female who turns it on and gets the "nod" nearly every day, ie: gets to go home early because she's a poor single mother. She's a thick bitch all the same, who's going to get caught eventually, because she's gone home early a few times as she has "no babysitter" and within an hour there's a post on Facebook about heading out.

Also extreme favoritism shown to those who play GAA, but just GAA. Some of my colleagues play soccer and American Football, but they don't get any of the allowences that those who play GAA do (day off to play, arrive late, go home early, etc).

And of course there's blatant favoritism shown to the complete lick-holes who are terrible at the job, but get everything they want because they enjoy being 6" up the boss' hole!

As for the lifting debate going on, there should not be a difference between women and men, regardless of size, age, etc. If something needs to be lifted, and a female (or male) can't lift it, they should get help, not expect it to be done by a man. Anything over a certain weight requires 2 people to lift, or more, and for the really heavy stuff there should be one of those trolly things.

06-07-2014 03:27PM

eviltwin wrote: »

Only had permission to leave their desk to use the loo.

Slightly off topic but I'd find it very hard to work in such a strict environment. Where I work, getting the work done is what matters. There is no set start time, no set finish time and if I need something from town or want a break I can just lock my PC and walk out the door without a second thought (as can anyone), unless you have a meeting or something etc obviously.

On the other hand if you have to work a 14 hour day (or multiple long days) or come in at the weekend to get something done to meet a deadline you do it without question also (salaried job so no additional pay).

Cake Man · 07-07-2014 06:57AM

Here's one I notice a lot and it p!sses me off.

You're going through something with your manager that you're working on and then midway through, your discussion gets interrupted by your managers manager or someone senior/on a similar level to your manager who proceeds to start a conversation about an issue they're having, for example. And you're just sitting there thinking "can you not see we were in the middle of a discussion and you've just interrupted, could you not come back later?"

It just smacks of "ah you're not important, I need to talk to him because the stuff I'm working on is more important". Pure disrespect. Imagine your boss and his/her boss having a detailed work related discussion at one of their desks and you just barge in and start yapping to your boss about stuff you're doing, don't think it would go down very well at all. Double standards at it's finest.

07-07-2014 08:08AM

So lets see the people who get away with every thing in work are...female/males, a loan parents, a parent in general, a smokers, those related to the boss, play GAA, plus are very lazy and or a bit mental.

So therefore you need to be a female/male GAA playing parents who smokes is related to the boss and is either very lazy or a bit metal... and you will be grand and can do as you like in work.

RayCon · 07-07-2014 08:13AM

mariaalice wrote: »

So therefore you need to be a female/male GAA playing parents who smokes is related to the boss and is either very lazy or a bit metal... and you will be grand and can do as you like in work.

We're fcuked .... thats half the country right there.

Elessar · 07-07-2014 08:21AM

I see double standards everyday of the week. In my place there are those on "legacy" contracts, and those, like me, on newer contracts. The legacy people seemingly get to do whatever they want, with no accountability. Come in late, go home early. They get two more breaks than I do (I just get the 1 hour, unpaid). So at 11am and 3pm the place clears out as they all go for their mini breaks while I'm left sitting at my desk. Smokers seem to get an hour a day extra with all the smoking they do.

I don't know how these people get work done. One lad comes in to the office, without fail, each afternoon and proceeds to chat with the lads about football or some other event until about 4.30, then he goes home. Nothing is ever said.

If I did half these things I would be pulled up immediately.

tritium · 07-07-2014 09:06AM

Two female senior managers with between then 100+ sick days in one year. This included some remarkably trivial events. Nothing said.

A female junior member of staff(who was certifies as having a particularly unpleasant and debilitating condition but soldiered in through some pretty rough times). Is warned they'll have to be assessed by the company doctor after they need a week for a hospital visit

07-07-2014 10:20AM

Awkward Badger wrote: »

I don't know if there was a pay difference as I never asked but unless the girls were on 2 quid an hour it wasn't enough to make up for the huge difference in the amount of work expected.

Where I work, there's no difference in the amount of work but the men do generally do the lifting.

I quite enjoy physical work (I mostly work in the office so I enjoy the chance to stretch my legs in the shop and get paid for doing exercise) and so I prefer to stock shelves/clean rather than deal with customers. But there are a couple of Eastern European (maybe it's a cultural thing? might just be a coincidence though) managers who if they see me lifting things like soft drink crates will stop me and almost give out to me for trying to lift them, even though I get along just fine when the other managers let me do it.

Firstly, it feels pretty bad to be told to go and man the tills rather than finishing unpacking boxes. It feels like they're telling me I'm crap at what I'm doing. I'm pretty sure I get it done a lot quicker than the blokes, but because I'm a woman I get dismissed off to tills. I'm standing there, right in front of them, half the stuff shelved already, and they're telling me I'm not going to able to do the rest. That I shouldn't have tried to do the first half, since I'm obviously not able. WTF?

As for differences in workload, when I'm moved off stock because I've come across heavy items, I don't just stand there and watch a man do it. I go off to the tills/other stock/cleaning, and I do just as much work as the men are doing.

As for double standards for smokers, I do really have a problem with that in the office part where I work. Not only do these smoke breaks involve a 10 minute smoke, followed by 'just grabbing a cup of tea on my way back in' (another 5 minutes somehow), followed by having a chat with the deli girls after making tea, followed by milling around the office and messing with their bags/drinking their tea away from their desks (i.e. taking a break), but for some reason they have to go for smokes together, so I'm left manning the office on my own (which is very difficult - there are three people rostered in for a reason). It really wouldn't be that bad if they'd at least take turns. It probably adds up to 20-30 mins per smoke each, 3-4 times a day, yet they get an hour lunch during which they only need one smoke. And since one of those people is a manager, she gets paid just under twice as much I get paid to do it (and yeah it's the same work we both do).

CPSW · 07-07-2014 10:56AM

I work in the financial services sector, and one thing that has always bugged me is around Christmas time when everyone has to put forward their holiday requests for the period.

Unfortunately, we would only close on Christmas/Stephens day, rather than close for the period like other businesses do, so days from your holiday allocation have to be taken, and of course everyone wants it off naturally.

However as I am from, live and work in Dublin, the preference for days off and leaving early etc is always given to the people who have to travel home, weather they are a foreign national or from the country.

It's complete BS, as its always "So and so has requested that day off so they can travel home to see their family etc, so sorry you're going to have to be here, ah sure you don't have far to travel anyways", am I not allowed to take a day off so I can see my family?

And the funny thing is the bosses are from Dublin, they would have no problem taking the time off and leaving early to go home, while the rest of us are left to stay.....

suicide_circus · 07-07-2014 11:09AM

^^^^and there in lies the incentive to work hard and become the boss.

Frisbee · 07-07-2014 11:50AM

P_1 wrote: »

Female staff being allowed to wear seemingly whatever they want while male staff being bound to the shirt/tie/slacks combo comes to mind

This annoys me so much.

If I don't wear a shirt & slacks it would be commented on.

Yet women can walk around the office in the likes of Uggs and long sleeved t-shirts and it is looked upon as perfectly acceptable.

Aglomerado · 07-07-2014 12:49PM

Frisbee wrote: »

This annoys me so much.

If I don't wear a shirt & slacks it would be commented on.

Yet women can walk around the office in the likes of Uggs and long sleeved t-shirts and it is looked upon as perfectly acceptable.

I know a guy who got sent home for wearing shorts to work on a hot day recently.

And yet female colleagues can flap around in capri pants, flip flops and tops with spaghetti straps that display armpit stubble to perfection....

(I am a woman BTW, I just don't dress like that to work. )

The Cool · 07-07-2014 04:12PM

My last bosses were very much of the "do as I say, not as I do" mantra. I was a project manager, and worked with the MD and the owner used to totter about as well.

We had a client that had very high standards and usually preferred to send their jobs to a different company that charged a lot more but was a lot better. Owner boss sat myself and the MD down and told us that we had to improve our performance with the client, etc etc. so we had to lick up to the client to get them to send us work. Then, one week where the MD and I had a Friday off, I told the owner boss on the Thursday that the only one thing he had to do while we were gone was to deliver a job to that specific client, and it was super important to meet the deadline, but that was all he had to do. He didn't bother, and as a result the client sent an angry email first thing Monday morning saying they'd be taking their business elsewhere. It was fine because, after all I was only the PM, it was really no skin off my nose but it was a bit infuriating knowing that if my MD or myself had done that, we'd have faced disciplinary.

Another time a client had a complaint about a project which was partly down to my own project management which could have been better, but also down to the fact that I had very few service providers because the owner was awful for paying their invoices, and lots of them would tell me to feck off til my boss paid them. Anyhow, I was in the firing line and I made the point to my MD that if the owner paid the service providers, we wouldn't have had the problem. I was told that that was rubbish, and I had to accept responsibility for my messup. The next day, the owner reprimanded the MD over the project and she told him, if he paid the service providers, we wouldn't have had the problem. Well I was raging! I had two disciplinaries over that crap.

It was one of the instances that made me think, Feck office politics and I quit and am now self employed, working from home. Hell is people. My dog is my favourite colleague yet.

Wanderer2010 · 07-07-2014 05:40PM

Women and sick pay seems to be a big issue in workplaces, particularly the unwritten rule that men who get sick and take time off are big wusses whereas women can take a load of sick days, weeks off when it comes to sick kids and convenient Mondays off after a hen night and nothing is said. I used to just accept that line of thought in the workplace but last year I had to take 3 days off due to a nasty flu. I was floored with the virus (literally) plus didnt want to infect anyone in work so I did the right thing.

Came back to work, first thing boss wanted was my cert, it was clear the work that wasnt done in my absence bothered him, and he was barely polite on the surface as he scanned the whole cert. Then he goes "Please watch your sick days". I told him that "X, Y and Z take loads of sick days every single year and nothing is ever said about the work they leave behind and this is the first time I was sick in 3 and a half years and you are giving me a hard time". He didnt know where to look, but he didnt tell me what I said was wrong.

Any managers (male or female) care to add some opinions as to why they often look the other way when it comes to male vs female sickness?

LynnGrace · 07-07-2014 05:47PM

Aglomerado wrote: »

I know a guy who got sent home for wearing shorts to work on a hot day recently.

And yet female colleagues can flap around in capri pants, flip flops and tops with spaghetti straps that display armpit stubble to perfection....

(I am a woman BTW, I just don't dress like that to work. )

Good point. Generally speaking, where I work, flip flops, shorts etc would not feature. There is an expectation that all employees wear appropriate office attire.
We used to share a building though with other companies, at one stage, and some of what I used to see, mainly on girls, was not great.
I was in the lift one morning, with a girl who looked like she was dressed to go to a night club. I know some places are more relaxed than others on this, but it looked awful.

PizzamanIRL · 07-07-2014 05:54PM

My last workplace had 2 bathrooms. One for men and one for women. What a crock.

thegreatgonzo · 07-07-2014 06:10PM

UCDVet wrote: »

I used to work at McDonalds as a cashier and, even though all the cashiers had the same position/same pay scale - it was an unofficial rule that the male cashiers would be the ones that did the lifting of heavy items.

When we switched from the breakfast menu to the lunch menu, a male cashier would have to go to the fridge and get the boxes of frozen fries down. We also had to take the trash bins out to the dumpster.

The shift manager was a woman, and that's just how she ran things. The guys were expected to do more work, and really the most unpleasant parts of being a McDonald's cashier, on top of all the regular work. For the same pay.

Hasn't that got to do with the weight limits for men and women regarding ergonomical hazards in health and safety legislation though?

Qualitymark · 07-07-2014 06:19PM

UCDVet wrote: »

I've seen women at FlyFit that can out lift most 95% of men).

They shouldn't, imho. If a woman's womb prolapses, she can die when giving birth later - assuming she doesn't have to have a hysterectomy, in which case she will never give birth anyway.

I hope all these people who are talking casually about lifting heavy goods have been trained in the correct way to lift, by the way?

My only experience in sexism has been by observation of the way that in most businesses women are the privates and men are the officers, regardless of ability - most school principals are male while most teachers are women; most newspaper writers and sub-editors are women but most line editors and editors are men; many doctors are women but most consultants are men, etc.

gugleguy · 07-07-2014 06:25PM

The last post that I thanked on this thread reminds me of the engineer who worked on the design of the Commodore Amiga computer. He had a paw print of his own dog made and put on the door of his office to credit the dog in the work effort.

thegreatgonzo · 07-07-2014 06:27PM

Qualitymark wrote: »

I hope all these people who are talking casually about lifting heavy goods have been trained in the correct way to lift, by the way?

.

It's all here :-) The most boring thing I had to study in college.

http://www.hsa.ie/eng/Publications_and_Forms/Publications/Occupational_Health/Ergonomics.pdf

Miss.Mayhem · 07-07-2014 06:40PM

I'm a non-smoker and I once worked in a job where the smokers were allowed to take as many "smoke breaks" as they liked. One time I had to run an errand on my lunch break and I was a few minutes late back. The boss gave me a right bollocking for that which really annoyed me because I spend twice the amount of time at my desk than the smokers did. Some of them would be gone for half an hour at a time when they took their smoke breaks.

I got my own back when a left the job at our busiest time of the year (2 or 3 weeks before Christmas) without giving any notice (my new job needed someone to start right away or I wouldn't have got the new job).

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5 · 07-07-2014 07:02PM

My last job as a waitress generally involved running around carrying heavy things while being in dire need of a fag. Based on this thread I need to rethink my life choices a lot. where do ye all work?

Any double standards I've seen have just been the good old garden variety favouritism or 'do what I say, not what I do'. Friends or relatives of managers being hired and then getting away with murder - showing up late, taking crazily long breaks, stinking of drink sometimes and generally just stacking up one firing offence on top of another and getting paid for it while the plebs do all the work for the same (or often less) pay.

UCDVet · 07-07-2014 08:04PM

thegreatgonzo wrote: »

Hasn't that got to do with the weight limits for men and women regarding ergonomical hazards in health and safety legislation though?

That seems like a cop-out to me though.

They could trivially reduce the size of the boxes such that instead of lifting one heavy box, you lift four boxes. But, my problem is that the guys were expected to lift the boxes, it is that they were expected to lift the boxes *in addition* to all of the normal duties the girls did.

Either pay people accordingly to the work they do, or give other work to the girls to offset the work that the guys are doing.

Also, the garbage wasn't particularly heavy - it was just dirty and smelly.

I'll also say that there was no mention of these policies written down anywhere which makes me skeptical of any justification for them. If the corporate office overseeing restaurants in country X decided that according to local legislation, only men could lift the boxes of fries for the lunch change-over - it would be written down. They wrote down EVERYTHING. They had operating procedures that told you exactly what to do at what time. Granted, nobody really followed them, but we were shown them in new hire training and the books were in a corner office in the back.

UCDVet · 07-07-2014 08:20PM

Qualitymark wrote: »

They shouldn't, imho. If a woman's womb prolapses, she can die when giving birth later - assuming she doesn't have to have a hysterectomy, in which case she will never give birth anyway.

I hope all these people who are talking casually about lifting heavy goods have been trained in the correct way to lift, by the way?

My only experience in sexism has been by observation of the way that in most businesses women are the privates and men are the officers, regardless of ability - most school principals are male while most teachers are women; most newspaper writers and sub-editors are women but most line editors and editors are men; many doctors are women but most consultants are men, etc.

In fairness - potential causes of uterine prolapses seem to be:

Child birth
Aging
Chronic cough or constipation
Pelvic tumors
Obesity
Heavy lifting

And the exact mechanisms are unknown. I certainly wouldn't advise women not to lift weights for fear of death.

steddyeddy · 07-07-2014 08:40PM

Qualitymark wrote: »

They shouldn't, imho. If a woman's womb prolapses, she can die when giving birth later - assuming she doesn't have to have a hysterectomy, in which case she will never give birth anyway.

I hope all these people who are talking casually about lifting heavy goods have been trained in the correct way to lift, by the way?

My only experience in sexism has been by observation of the way that in most businesses women are the privates and men are the officers, regardless of ability - most school principals are male while most teachers are women; most newspaper writers and sub-editors are women but most line editors and editors are men; many doctors are women but most consultants are men, etc.

Some women are stonger than men and some men are stronger than women. It's not a men lift. women don't scenario.

Ever experienced double standards in the workplace?

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