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

Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor

Jul 4, 2023 2:00 PM EDT

As upsetting as this initially sounded, thankfully, this employee ended up standing up for herself. We know that gender bias exists in the workplace. This is obviously not new information and not the first time this conversation has made its way onto the internet. However, clearly there are some folks who still have yet to catch onto the unconscious bias and the unfortunate ways in which this dynamic has become ingrained in workplace socialization and office politics.

This thread was posted to Reddit's r/work subreddit by u/ivanpavlove, who just so happens to be the only female engineer on her team at work. Despite the fact that her job in no way includes the duties of an office manager or an executive assistant, she has been tasked regularly with organizing office lunches. This means getting everyone's orders in and ensuring that food is delivered on time while also completing her regular daily tasks. Those expectations are completely unrealistic, and yet no one in her office seems to take notice of that or defend her in the face of such discomfort. Instead, she was only given more lunch responsibilities during the week of an executive's visit.

Thanks to the suggestions and feedback from folks in the comments section, the Redditor confidently informed her boss that she wouldn't have the time or bandwidth to take this on given her primary work responsibilities. Hopefully, her boss understands that this isn't just a one time thing and that she will no longer be handling lunch for all the immature men in the office at all moving forward.

For more stories like this, here's a collection of employee secrets.