I was skimming through my favorite sections on the HuffPost this morning when I came upon an article about the "mean girls" myth. All snide Lindsay Lohan references aside, I clicked on the link hoping it would provide a decent commentary on working women in the professional world, and perhaps some advice on how to avoid being typecast as the Hillary Clinton of hospitality (don't get me wrong, I love me some HilRod). I'm going to step out on a short limb and argue that the notion of the mean girl is not a myth.
HOWEVER, that's not the point I'm trying to make here. Let me take a few steps back.
I have this coworker: female, student, my age, generally friendly person. The first round we had as coworkers didn't go well and she ultimately quit after a couple of months. I was left with a rather unfavorable impression despite all the nice things our coworkers had to say about her. We are currently in the middle of round two as coworkers; to put it nicely, it's been a roller coaster.
On a personal level, we're chatty 20-somethings struggling to find a balance between books and booze and I can say that I truly like her. On a professional level, she drives me bat-shit crazy. Over the last few weeks I have been very vocal about my displeasure with her work performance to her and to my boss; it is for this reason, I'm sure, that she has taken me for a "mean girl." It is not for personal pleasure or benefit that I concern myself with making her ineptitude public knowledge, I do it purely for the sake of preserving the sense of duty and unity that is SO important working at this particular establishment.
My chiding did not go unnoticed: this morning my boss decided it is time to find a replacement. I must admit, I did experience intense triumph but not because I feel responsible for pushing her out. The final straw was all her own doing... she failed to set up the overnight phones properly, did not take out the trash, did not even attempt her delegated housekeeping duties, wrongly assigned room keys, caused a near-catastrophe for housekeeping, undercharged rates, wrongly upgraded rooms, failed to clock out and left before her shift was scheduled to end, and then she called in "sick." And that was just yesterday. The triumph I was so happy to bask in came from the fact that the "meanness" she attributed to me wasn't without cause. I'm not actually mean, I'm stern. And mostly importantly, I'm not willing to sugar coat the facts of her laziness just to make her feel better about being lazy, or to make myself feel better about telling the truth.
Whether or not I a mean girl, or if she's a mean girl, or if mean girls exist at all, I resent being painted into categories based on my gender that will either render me meek and passive or strong and bitchy. Politics has given us shining examples of this gender bias: either you're a ball buster-with-cankles-Hillary-Clinton type or you're a ding-dong-with-a-nice-rack-Sarah-Palin type (or a pushover-as-influential-as-a-skeleton-Nancy-Pelosi type, but that's a third element that doesn't exactly fit the purpose of my analogy). Either way, I'm fucked.
Ever notice how no one talks about man cankles?... sexism, puh.
End of story: I GOT A RAISE.
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