In the land of the dinosaurs
Yesterday I moved up to my new floor at work. I am to be working with a bunch of old engineers as a policy/project manager (with the secret brief of dragging my new colleagues kicking and screaming into the 21st century). I am the only woman to have ventured into this unit for a few years and currently just about the only one under the age of 50. The guys here have lead a very privileged lifestyle for quite a long time, earning very good money considering the level of their output. I could see quite a lot of synergies between what I do and what they are meant to be doing so agreed to come up here on a trial basis.
The senior manager with responsibility for this unit and the rest of the division (a very dynamic and capable woman in her thirties) has long despaired of getting these guys whipped into shape and said I am doing her a huge favour by going up to work with them. She also said she would give me any back up necessary, for instance, if they tried any tricks like asking me to make them cups of tea etc.
Sure enough on only my second day in my new desk, the manager alludes to a job he is hoping to get me to do for him. From his brief description, it sounded like a menial clerical job which would be more appropriately allocated to one of the junior (male) staff who seem to have plenty of time to sit around playing computer games and toasting hot cross buns. My ‘back up’ senior manager is out of the office at the moment and this guy wants to discuss my work allocation this afternoon.
I have decided that I will just have to be assertive to nip this in the bud. As this is only a trial position, the other alternative would be for me to suck it up and then just go back to my old job when the trial is up. However I really do want to make it work up here and for this to happen, I will just have to firmly establish my boundaries. Just didn’t expect to have to do this so soon!
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