This is so accurate and I don’t think men really care. I’ve worked in the United States, in Britain, and on contract in Japan and yeah. Consistently as a woman despite in several instances having a higher degree or whatever it may be than all the men I’ve been expected to serve them tea. Like their hands don’t work or something. In Japan I got so sick of it I developed this habit of being incredibly clumsy until the men just did it themselves and stopped asking (read: demanding). I mean, perhaps it would be different if they were my son or my husband or even my brother, but these were random co-workers who expected me to be their mom (or mum as the case may be).

And not to go on but I nearly clocked a classmate of mine in postgrad. I’d been working this insane shift and I had a lab class I needed to set up AND there was this awful flu going around and I was quite ill. So I dragged myself out of bed to get to lab figuring I’d just have to set up and it would take me maybe ten minutes. As it turned out the day prior this guy had been leading lab and he was sick and decided he’d just leave everything dirty for me. And I found out that was his actual reasoning. He was sick so rather than clean up after lab he realized I was on in the morning the next day and he just left at 4pm. I had to spend a good hour frantically cleaning and fighting the urge to vomit and collapse before lab because he hadn’t even bothered to soak anything. I lost every ounce of respect I’d ever had for him that day.

Gentlemen, if any of you have read this far or even just this article, the very least you can do is get us some coffee from time to time. Or barring that at least find a way NOT to make a disaster in the common area.