'I’m the only female in the group': Boss makes only female engineer organize office lunches, employee stands her ground

Advertisement
  • 01
    Font - Annoyed that boss keeps asking me to order team lunch Background: I'm an engineer at a midsized company, where office-wide free lunches are provided once per week, ordered by our office assistant. Sometimes when teams run labor intensive experiments, company pays for the lunch, but someone in the team (6-8 people) will place the order for everyone.
  • 02
    Font - Now the story: I am the youngest person in the group, but not the newest member. Not sure when it started, but lunch responsibility was shifted to me on experiment days, and I was fine with that since it's just for a few people.
  • 03
    Font - My boss oversees 3 teams and started hosting a bi- monthly combined lunch meeting. He asked me to order lunch for 25 people, which I refused and said we should consider deferring to the office assistant. He said no as it's an internal team meeting, and assigned someone else in our team to help me. I was unhappy but once every 2 months wasn't too bad. Maybe having sucked it up was my mistake at the time.
  • 04
    Font - (When I ordered from the same place 2 months apart, he said "this place again?" in front of everyone, intended as a joke.....)
  • 05
    Font - Now. This week an executive came visiting our office, and my boss has just asked me to order lunch for 20 people (2 teams) including the executive, under 24hr notice. I am livid because I don't think I'm working here as a lunch lady, but also don't want our team to look bad. I'm also angry that he thinks he can just agree to ordering lunches for whatever event and that it's ok to just swiftly mention it to me then expect food to be on the table. Any advise to handling this?
  • 06
    Font - I hope it's not relevant that I'm the only female in the group. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Update: Thank you for everyone's feedback and support. It's truly enlightening to digest the issue from different perspectives.
  • 07
    Font - I have told my boss that I do not have time to order food tomorrow as I will be busy with my job tasks. He decided to change the executive lunch meeting to a group lunch at the restaurant. I will ask him to rotate the lunch ordering task within the group when it comes up again. Also SERIOUSLY considering ordering the same thing over and over again until my hint is picked up. I will keep all communications documented, just in case HR needs to be involved in the future.
  • 08
    Font - To answer some questions in the comments: 1. I was very good with ordering the lunch, mostly because I'm an organized, punctual person I and haven't got any orders wrong, but frankly everyone in the team is / should be capable of doing that. I do think a part of this issue is coming from my reliable delivery.
  • 09
    Font - 2. There is a newer person in the group, same rank as me. In the combined group lunch, there are plenty of people lower rank than me. 3. My boss has asked me to order lunches which I was not a part of before. He has also asked me to call restaurants to make reservations for our team celebrations. I did both as at the time I did not realize this is an issue.
  • 10
    Font - 4. To those questioning why I can't just order lunches, I think it just doesn't sit right with me. I'm hired to do my job, not to be the team assistant. It's unfair that I am expected to perform at the same level or better than my colleagues, while I'm getting distracted by tasks outside of my responsibilities while others are benefiting from them.
  • 11
    Font - 5. I'll give my boss the benefit of the doubt and think he's just not sensitive enough to notice the problem in his requests. That being said, I will start looking at other opportunities internally and externally.
  • 12
    Font - very-square 17 hr. ago. edited 16 hr. ago . I hope it's not relevant that I'm the only female in the group. Sadly I think it is. God forbid the least senior male on the team order food; yr boss is a mofo. I would bring this up to yr boss again and tell them that you will defer to the office assistant to coordinate meal delivery/service, and that fetching meals for your coworkers is not part of your job description. I would also include HR in the convo/email/whatever. 231 Reply Share ...
  • 13
    Font - No-Locksmith-8590 17 hr. ago Its def bc you're the female in the group. Ask for a meeting, tell your boss you have actual engineering work and cannot be doing office assist duties when you have an office assitant. If he persists, get hr (or a union if you have one) involved. He's giving you duties based on your gender and wasting high paid time. If its not a big deal, then he can order lunch.
  • 14
    Font - Violet_Sky212. 17 hr. ago. edited 17 hr. ago I hope it's not relevant that I'm the only female in the group. Before I even reached the second sentence of your post. I wondered if I should ask if you were female... and there it was!!! Ding! Ding! Ding! That is why your manager is shifting that responsibility to you.
  • 15
    Font - I'm sorry that your manager is a sexist pig. You're not an admin assistant. You're a freaking ENGINEER. At every company I've ever been at, every team, it's always the admin that orders food and organizes meetings. (99.999% of admins are women, so there's that)
  • 16
    Font - If your manager insists that the office admin person doesn't order lunch, then YOU need to insist that the job of Lunch Orderer rotates to everyone on the team... not just you. A lot of men view work that women do as less important.. and that's why he asks you to do it and not any of the male engineers.
  • 17
    Font - AliceInBondageLand. 16 hr. ago THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE GROUP. I knew it had to be something like this. I am livid, on your behalf.
  • 18
    Font - monkeywelder. 16 hr. ago Next time order a full Hallal or Kosher lunch, full sushi bar, ham salad buffet or vegan tacos. Find the absolute worst places that deliver food most people wont eat. When he complains youre trying to keep it healthy and original. Have fun with it.

Tags

Scroll Down For The Next Article