Can you make a pot of coffee? Do I have to do everything around here? And there I am, looking uncooperative, unlike a team player, over-educated, under-employed, unable to predict when random people with very specific coffee preferences will show up in the small kitchen behind my office.
In a snit, last week I started making hash marks in my to-do list every time I made a pot of coffee. It has averaged out to about once per day (although I made no coffee today, I have made as many as 4 pots in one day). The most ridiculous part is that I don't even drink THAT coffee. Yuban through a Bun-o-Matic = Me ban Barf-o-Matic. So we're not exactly talking about nectar of the gods here. It's office coffee.
I do wish I could be the perky secure type who selflessly makes a pot of coffee in anticipation for demand, with no regard for how that places her in the hierarchy. There's that ickiness about a MAN asking a WOMAN for coffee in a professional setting. But I worry about how that makes me look. What's next? I'm going to buy your socks for you? You've seen Nine to Five, yes?
But the main reason it seems icky is not the gender, it's the power imbalance. Making coffee as a female seems less degrading when you have "agency", as in the power to decide for whom and when you will make coffee. This is the argument that confuses so many about feminism. It's not that women need to choose to be either butch feminists or girly porn stars - it is the agency to choose or just fall in-between. I may or may not have that power right now.
My options are these:
1. Pretend I don't know how to make coffee. This may confuse them, because I have previously made coffee. But that's what the highest in power do - someone who went to medical school can't figure out how to make a pot of coffee? Balderdash.
2. Grudgingly make coffee, while pointing out that besides the actual physicians, I have the most education of anyone there. This seems kind of petty and unwise, and honestly, I don't think I could even pull it off.
3. Remain willing to make coffee, but appear too brilliantly distracted and busy to get to it. This is kind of what I've been doing, minus the "brilliant" and "busy" parts. This is honestly the closest to the truth.
4. Make coffee, but make it horribly (bitter, watery, full of grounds, whatever). Theoretically, I wouldn't get asked to make coffee very often after a while. This seems like a sitcom set-up waiting to backfire. For example, I brew the most horrible pot and then realize that I've forgotten my thyroid medication and need caffeine, which forces me to drink my own awful coffee. ha HA.
I guess I'm really picking between 3 and 4 (I really like 4! It's got legs, whatever that means!). And I do have the power and confidence to do what I want. I just must remember - never play coffee power games with anyone. Or you'll have rat poison instead of skinny and sweet.
In a snit, last week I started making hash marks in my to-do list every time I made a pot of coffee. It has averaged out to about once per day (although I made no coffee today, I have made as many as 4 pots in one day). The most ridiculous part is that I don't even drink THAT coffee. Yuban through a Bun-o-Matic = Me ban Barf-o-Matic. So we're not exactly talking about nectar of the gods here. It's office coffee.
I do wish I could be the perky secure type who selflessly makes a pot of coffee in anticipation for demand, with no regard for how that places her in the hierarchy. There's that ickiness about a MAN asking a WOMAN for coffee in a professional setting. But I worry about how that makes me look. What's next? I'm going to buy your socks for you? You've seen Nine to Five, yes?
But the main reason it seems icky is not the gender, it's the power imbalance. Making coffee as a female seems less degrading when you have "agency", as in the power to decide for whom and when you will make coffee. This is the argument that confuses so many about feminism. It's not that women need to choose to be either butch feminists or girly porn stars - it is the agency to choose or just fall in-between. I may or may not have that power right now.
My options are these:
1. Pretend I don't know how to make coffee. This may confuse them, because I have previously made coffee. But that's what the highest in power do - someone who went to medical school can't figure out how to make a pot of coffee? Balderdash.
2. Grudgingly make coffee, while pointing out that besides the actual physicians, I have the most education of anyone there. This seems kind of petty and unwise, and honestly, I don't think I could even pull it off.
3. Remain willing to make coffee, but appear too brilliantly distracted and busy to get to it. This is kind of what I've been doing, minus the "brilliant" and "busy" parts. This is honestly the closest to the truth.
4. Make coffee, but make it horribly (bitter, watery, full of grounds, whatever). Theoretically, I wouldn't get asked to make coffee very often after a while. This seems like a sitcom set-up waiting to backfire. For example, I brew the most horrible pot and then realize that I've forgotten my thyroid medication and need caffeine, which forces me to drink my own awful coffee. ha HA.
I guess I'm really picking between 3 and 4 (I really like 4! It's got legs, whatever that means!). And I do have the power and confidence to do what I want. I just must remember - never play coffee power games with anyone. Or you'll have rat poison instead of skinny and sweet.
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