Skip to main content

Stuck with ‘Office Housework’



A man who doesn’t help is 'busy'. A woman who doesn’t help is 'selfish.'

Anytime there is a party to plan at my office, food to share, water to serve, coffee to be made, desks and office machines to be cleaned, floor to be moped etc, everyone in the office looks at me.

I am a woman, and I am supposed to be used to these things? And when I refuse to do them, I am called lazy, selfish or ‘not a wife material’. Yes, ‘not a wife material’.

When I started work at my current office, I was informed the lady before me was doing the dishes among other ‘office housework’ which I found appalling. 

I was then informed by her (we are in the same church) that she was forced to do so in addition to her secretarial job. I found this very wrong.

After a while and some remarks, I realized I was expected to do same, but I could not be bothered. I refused to play the position of a housekeeper when I have been hired for another job.

I however did not fully get out of these chores because whenever there is a visitor, I am expected to be the one to ‘serve’ the person. No one cares if I am having lunch or I am on the phone, I have to stop whatever I am doing and perform this chore.

The visitor would be in a different department with capable men but no no. They are too manly to do these things so I have to.

It got me thinking about the statement “a woman’s place is in the kitchen”. Reality is, even at our various corporate jobs, many women still end up in the kitchen. 

Women end up doing dishes, cleaning fridges, and coffee making machines, washing napkins and running errands especially those in administrative roles.

It is gradually becoming a norm that four or five employees will be in an office, no one is expected to lift a finger to do the cleaning (not that there are no janitors), yet everyone, especially the men expect the woman to do the cleaning.

How fair is this? They want to keep us in the kitchen at home, and now we end up in the kitchen at the office?  


Shared Anonymously

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Efo Dela19 April 2016 at 08:58

    At my old job we had this problem. It was an Engineering firm and one of my team members was a lady and my boss would ask her to do chore stuff.
    At first we all complained then she just accepted doing it and it became a bit hard to complain.
    Sadly we accepted it as a norm

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sista Clinik22 April 2016 at 04:54

      At least you guys tried to change this situation.
      Sadly, most women believe that these kind of jobs are theirs to do.
      They do not want to be seen as "not a wife material".
      Rome was not built in a day.
      Hopefully, we will be able to educate many women to break from this way of thinking.

      Regards,
      Sista

      Delete

Post a Comment

Say something about this post

Popular posts from this blog

Female Sexual Coercion: How Women really feel

I am 40 years old, I promise you! Well yes I have only literally lived for a quarter of a century but I swear, I am 40. Or more. I say this because some of the time, or a lot of the time I feel like I have seen too much for my age. More recently I have learned that our experiences lead us somewhere good when we let them. I have seen mine do just that and it makes me thankful, not to say to have experienced them was a good thing, but that it turned out alright after all. I wouldn’t wish that any woman goes through even a hair’s breadth of it. I seem not be clear about exactly what this is about right? I know, I actually have so much in my head right now I probably have to slow down and take them one after the other, and so I’d do just that. This is only part one.    I am writing this about women, but I’d wish for everyone, irrespective of gender, to read because it is so important, I believe. It is the matter of coercion. From what it entails (its definition) to how ...
16 comments
Read more

Women, Marriage, Child Birth and The Blackmailing Older Generation in Ghana

S ome years back, in my late teens, I always told myself I’d get married before I was 23. The thought of being able to enjoy life with my companion in holy matrimony without being pressed (physically, psychologically, or biologically) for children was ideal. I wanted to travel the world. Know people. See places. For my partner and I to get our act together before creating and bringing life into this world.   Maybe the motivation came from knowing my parents discovered each other and started life together quite early. My mother had me when she was barely 21. Three kids down the line, my dad is now in his late 40s, with my mom, a little behind. Definitely, the ‘young old couple’ thingy is attractive. But. I’m currently in my mid-20s. And unmarried. So many things replaced the desire for me to tie the knot before 23. I realized, somehow, that there was no rush. My priorities had shifted. There was education, a lot of growing up to do, and basically life! And there was also ...
12 comments
Read more

Why I Quit Modeling

During my modeling years, I had so many encounters with male celebrities who saw models as easy women they could play around with whenever they wanted. I had some of them ask me to 'make their beds' because “ we happen to be on the same team, and as a model, this shouldn’t be difficult. ” I never failed to tell them how disgusted I was with their words, but were they to be blamed? Whenever we had traveled or hosted huge names from neighboring countries, our managers had always asked us to “ be nice to them ”. And girls who weren’t ‘ nice ’ would end up ‘staying at the bottom’ of their careers. Before I quit modeling, I met this man who wanted me, and some friends to star in his video. We were to meet the team a day before to get acquainted. He picked me up (I met him through a mutual friend, and my friend brought him to my house), but instead of taking me straight to the team, he asked that I help him choose some clothes and shoes from a shop to which I obliged. W...
10 comments
Read more