Fetching Coffee as Sexual Harassment

Is asking your secretary to perform the act of fetching coffee, one of the modern office’s most mundane chores, an implied form of sexual harassment?

“Yes” is according to Tamara Klopfenstein of Levittown, NY.

Tamara’s story, first brought to my attention by Ask A Manager and covered in more depth by the Philadelphia Inquirer, highlights how delicate the relationship between boss and employee can be:

After working for a few weeks, her (male) bosses asked her to get their coffee for them. She declined, and her manager e-mailed her, saying: “This is not open for debate. Please don’t make an easy task a big deal.” Klopfenstein felt that getting coffee “reinforced outdated gender stereotypes,” so the next day, when she was asked to get coffee again, she sent an e-mail that read: “I don’t expect to serve and wait on you by making and serving you coffee every day.” Nine minutes later, she was fired. Klopfenstein promptly sued the company for sexual discrimination and sexual harassment. The judge ruled: “The act of getting coffee is not, by itself, a gender-specific act,” and dismissed the case. But Klopfenstein’s attorneys argue that “Some tasks are inherently more offensive to women.”

Ultimately, a federal court judge threw the case out due to lack of merit, which in my opinion, was the right call.

While a woman fetching coffee for her male bosses smacks of historical discrimination against women in the workplace, the Philadelphia Inquirer points out that,

To show discrimination, Klopfenstein would have had to be able to point to a male worker with a similar status who didn’t have to get coffee.

But the previous receptionists were all women and didn’t object to getting coffee for vice presidents Jay Shrager and Richard Blum, Jackson said.

Putting the harassment angle aside, the real issue at stake here is: can we refuse the parts of our jobs we don’t like?

Ms. Klopfenstein openly refused a directive from her bosses, to bring them coffee everyday at 3pm, something that all of her predecessors had willingly done in the past. Her bosses reiterated their request and explained that it was non-optional. Ms. Klopfenstein then refused to carry out an ‘essential’ (and I use this term loosely) job function and was fired.

I once watched a co-worker go through a similar battle. After several years of working at the company, she one day flat out refused to do half of her job duties—duties which were essential to the business. Management went out and hired a younger, cheaper replacement and a few months later let my co-worker go. Is it disappointing that an experienced employee was let go for a younger, cheaper version? Sure. But management hadn’t wanted to go out and hire someone new. By refusing to do her job, my co-worker forced management to make a choice, and can you really blame them for not wanting to be loyal to someone who “wasn’t a team player?”

I myself have had to do my fair share of grunt work outside the scope of my official job duties. One of the best bosses I ever had the pleasure to work for used to ask me to schedule department meetings for him. I wasn’t his assistant and I wasn’t the leader of the team, although I was in his department. Generally it was common practice for the leader of a meeting to schedule it themselves, so it felt weird that he would ask me to do something like that.

But did I do it willingly and without complaint? Of course.

For something as mundane as scheduling a meeting or fetching coffee, why start a war? Even if you don’t necessarily like doing boring tasks like copying, filing or delivering mail, someone has to do it and why risk ending up on your boss’ bad side over something so trivial? As Audrey Jackson, an administrative assistant at an engineering firm in Center City, put it:

“I would do anything for my boss except sleep with him, because he’s married,” she said.

Office Butt and Other Things To Look Forward To

No one tells you how exactly your life is going to change once you graduate college and enter the “real world.” Graduation day is a flurry of family, friends and long speeches by strangers, all assuring you that the $10/$40/$120,000 you spent on school was well worth it. And you now have the $2 piece of paper to prove it.

You’re young, your life is just beginning, you have your entire career ahead of you.

Here’s what you recent college graduates have to look forward to:

Office Butt
Gone are the days of all night study sessions, Frisbee on the quad and shleping from class to class. Instead, you get to spend 40 hours a week on your duff, staring at a computer screen. Fortunately, sitting in an air-conditioned office on an ergonomically designed chair is a lot more fun than running across campus to make it in time for your 9am lecture. Unfortunately, your butt (and even your hips, thighs and stomach) like it so much, that they continually expand into every inch of that comfy desk chair. Learn to start loving exercise now. It’ll make it that much easier to stick with once you’ve finally decided to lose those extra 10 lbs.

Listening to Idiots
If you think you escaped having to listen to long-winded blowhards espousing meaningless drivel once you stopped entering a professor’s lecture hall, think again. Most likely you’ll have to work with someone in authority who’s just as long-winded and pointless except this time you depend on them for a paycheck instead of just a letter grade. Practice the art of humility. You may know more than your boss does (maybe a lot more) but you won’t do yourself any favors by trying to show him or her up all the time.

Smaller Dating Pool
College is one of the last places where you’re surrounded by lots of single, attractive people in your age group. Once you start working, you’re surrounded by a cross section of several generations, a good majority of whom will be married or otherwise romantically engaged (and generally not that good looking). Not only that, but you spend more time at work than you ever did in class, and your social life will suffer accordingly. Just remember that “work-life balance” means nothing if you have no life to balance the work with—and start polishing that online dating profile.

Doing It All Yourself
Most colleges and universities make their services easily accessible to students. Need to talk to someone about your recent break-up? Just go down the street to the student counseling center and talk to a licensed counselor. Have a cold and want some antibiotics? Pop-in to the on-campus health center and get a same-day appointment. In the “real world” your company won’t have a medical clinic in the lobby (unless you’re really, really lucky) or a room full of graduate students to read through your business report that’s due tomorrow. Getting access to any kind of professional service is about twice as hard since you have to go out and find a professional and then pay for it all yourself. No matter how tempting it might be, don’t let your health slip. You don’t want put things (like Dentist appointments) off for too long or else you risk contracting something serious that could inhibit your ability to work (at which point you’re really screwed).

I know the above doesn’t sound all that appealing. But hey–at least you’ll make more money. Say “good-bye” to that IKEA furniture and Top-Ramen and “hello” to designer clothes and a new car.

Congratulations Class of 2008!

65% of Workers Delusional About Own Performance Level

Hilarious quote from The Wall Street Journal:

“Marshall Goldsmith, founding director of the Alliance for Strategic Leadership, explains the folly. Because 85% of us think we’re in the top 25% of our peer group, at least six in 10 of us are obviously “delusional” about our abilities.“

Naturally being in the top 25% of my ‘peer group’ (self-delusions aside), I am subjected to work with the 65% of workers whose “delusions of grandeur” greatly outweigh their actual contributions. I’m sure we’ve all had to deal with people like this at work: the self-important conversation dominator, the credit-hogger, the suck-up, etc.

It’s comforting to know that you’re not crazy when you feel a co-worker’s self-assessment doesn’t seem in line with reality.

And for those of you who are frustrated because these delusional people seem to be pulling the wool over management’s eyes, there is some hope. According to Professor Leanne Atwater, professor of management at Arizona State University West:

“over-raters “tend to make more money and get more promotions.” But they also have lower performance, she adds, and only get so far before their careers are derailed.”

That’s right—the cheaters get theirs in the end. So forget trying to play office politics—work on building your office karma instead.