One of the key professional skills I mastered was that of leading a team. In delivering complex construction schemes it is a pre-requisite. If you asked me to teach it I couldn't - humour, self-confidence, supportiveness and all those sort of things came into it. And one has to do it time after time after time, and each time anew, with a fresh team. Sometimes a consultancy firm sent along an engineer / QS / designer / CDM supervisor with whom one had worked on a previous job, which was always a joy. And women were quite equal to men in every role. Except one that had me foxed. She was unhappy. The little signs were not hard to miss. But she was good, a valued team member, highly professional and I promise I acted utterly scrupulously in treating her not one mite different to any other member of the team. One Friday during a wind-down drink-up with another female colleague I mentioned the odd dynamic. "Ah" she said enigmatically when she had quite absorbed the situation "You need to remember she's a woman". I'm still not quite sure what she meant.
Many of you will recall this wonderful photo of McDoom -
Now this is the first time I've seen the pic below of Theresa May. The jacket is very clever - it avoids wearing an actual combat jacket but affords an equivalent camouflage. But look carefully. She's not that fat; I swear she's wearing ballistic armour under it. I take my hat off. I never thought there would be one single aspect of May's premiership that would win my grudging admiration, but here it is. I should perhaps have remembered that she's a woman.
7 comments:
Well he wasn't called the Prime Mentalist for nothing.
Good Afternoon,
Entertaining post. Women are given us to prevent us acting upon our baser instincts, and encourage us to behave in a civilised manner. We are NOT supposed to understand them.
Mrs May is that fat, she has no need of personal protection standing in an RAF hangar surrounded by rather bored looking un-armed airmen. She is the worst, and most expensive, PM since Bliar. She should be sent back to the Maidenhead Library and given a vacuum cleaner to manage.
...She should be sent back to the Maidenhead Library and given a vacuum cleaner to manage...
But only the pushing around bit - not the switching on and off, or changing tools.
"One Friday during a wind-down drink-up with another female colleague I mentioned the odd dynamic. "Ah" she said enigmatically when she had quite absorbed the situation "You need to remember she's a woman". I'm still not quite sure what she meant."
Easy this one...
If she was your boss, agree with her, if she wasn't your boss, also agree with her!
You should meet my dear lady, Raedwald, who was the head of operations for a national body, and now happily retired.
She would explain what your colleague might have meant, but it seems fairly clear to me, even from your brief sketch.
That picture of brownstuff brought back horrible New Labour memories. nearly ALL of their shite remains intact. Until Vampire Blair's desecrations are reversed and Brown's rape of prudence paid for, things will only get worse. BoJo's manifesto does neither.
It always amuses me how little time or sympathy professional women have for women acting up in the workplace. Indeed women often prefer to have men on their team rather than women for reasons which if given by men would sound 70's chauvinist.
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