Offices- Women vs. Men

Last night over dinner, (Dan's special, mince cooked in grease with onions, followed by ultimate brownie desert which Jonathan managed to serve without any of the brownie which was left clinging to the metal- actually they were both yummy!)Dan discussed his frustrations with office life, and in particular, women in offices.

His claim was that women are more suited to the open plan office environment than men, and that women adapt more to administrative type functions, whilst men like to hole themselves away in dingy little offices where they can view soft porn in private, sorry, where they 'strategise' and do high level business things. Far from being a sexist comment (I just haven't described it very well), it actually held some sway with me when I realised that much of what Dan was saying I am infact, very guilty of.

The first 'office' trait was the desire to comment about everyone you have spoken with on the phone. Whether this is 'I really like her, she's such a sweety' or more simplistically, 'w*nker', or 'f**king asshole'. It's a compulsion, and one from which I suffer terribly. Only at work mind.

Secondly is the incredibly inane chat about calories/weight and then ramming baked goods down your face faster than Vanessa Feltz. Yesterday, I am ashamed to admit, I was the ring leader of this behaviour in the office. I was ruminating out loud about my 1/2 stone recent weight gain, and then an email popped into my inbox entitled, 'cakes'.

B*gger it. Who am I to fight the forces of nature, and sugar.

When I arrived at the kitchen 0.002 seconds later, inbetween me and the cakes were a gaggle of women, inspecting the calorie, fat levels, salt and sugar levels etc etc and working out the 'least bad' cake. Despite my earlier 'fat' thoughts, I lunged and grabbed the biggest greasiest one and pegged it to my desk where I scoffed it.

So I can deduce that whilst women might very well be guilty of some fairly inane chit chat in the office and perhaps selling ourselves intellectually short on occasion, the alternative would be that women were 'kept' in small offices where they would build enormous collections of shoes and cardigans and men were forced to open plan it, in vast seas of testosti-pods, in groups of four. I can hardly even bring myself to speculate how dire that might be. Sugar, calories and bitching would be the least of our worries.