My mother and I have a fraught relationship to say the least. We actually don’t have a relationship to speak of, but that’s not what she would say. She wants us to be close because mother/daughter, blah blah blah. As you can probably tell, I don’t give a shit about that. Here’s the thing. I am not anti-mother/daaughter. I’m anti-prescriptive roles based on gender. Actually, I’m anti-prescriptive roles based on anything.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m libertarian with a small ‘l’. Basically, I’m for whatever you (general you and specific you) want to do as long as it doesn’t harm others. It’s interesting because at Ask A Manager, there is so much talk about what is normal in terms of at work. That differs for different industries and companies, of course, but there are some general things–like wearing pants at work, for example. It’s pretty universal for all blue-collar and white-collar jobs.
You start getting into heated debates when you branch out from there. Like bras. Do they need to be worn at work? Depressingly, many women seem to think so. There was a letter at AAM about someone whose…coworker? Intern? One of those built a blanket fort at work. The letter writer wanted to know how to address this with the…new hire. That’s what it was. The letter writer wanted to know how to talk with the intern about not doing this. Alison gave a great response about how she would want thing s to be and how they actually are. She said while theoretically there was no reason the new hire shouldn’t work from a blanket fort, well, it would be viewed as strange in most offices.
This is assuming there’s no medical reason for it. But it underlines the silliness of professional norms. I do all my work from my couch. I’m lying on it with my back propped up on one arm and my keyboard on my lap. The laptop itself is sitting on the coffee table. My cat is sleeping on my legs. This is how I type most days.
I did not read all 500+ comments, but there were several who were sympathetic to the new hire. And pointed out that it might eb a medical thing. I didn’t expect to find so many people pro-pillow fort, but it was heartwarming. I am pro-pillow fort myself, obviously. However, in reading more of the comments, there were plenty disparaging ones, too, including one who said she would consider firing the new hire for being so far out of the norm.
I mean…fire her? Come on. How are people supposed to just intuit business norms if they had never been in an office before? This was her first job post college, and we just went through a pandemic. It was very possible that she had never been in an office situation. Why would you even consider firing her without talking to her first? The letter writer hadn’t seen the fort for themselves, which was the first step they were going to take.
I think the bottom line is how comfortable you feel going against the grain. As several people pointed out, someone in her first job wasn’t goingto have the political capital needed to be the weird one. That comes with seniority, ounfortunately.
