Men and Women’s Annoyances in the Workplace

When recruiters make placements for job seekers, they are dealing with people who have refreshingly clean slates.  No one has asked brand-new employees to stay late yet.  No one has spread rumors about their romantic lives.  No one has implied that their child is funny-looking.  One of the perks of recruiting is that many of the people the recruiter encounters are on their best behavior with the freshest of perspectives as they come.

In a recent survey by CareerBuilder, the study encompassed many gendered differences in perceptions of the workplace.  Among the differences is what annoys men and women about working together in the workplace.

Men reported frustration at women co-workers who tend to gossip.  Men were also touchy about sensitive or emotional women.

Women’s complaints were quite different.  They were disturbed by men’s arrogance.  They disliked the inappropriate comments made by men.   Women were also unimpressed by men’s devaluing of women.  They felt that men did not take female co-workers seriously.

“The personal is political” was an early rallying cry of some feminist movements.  Indeed, it seems that the surveyed female workers were open to the idea that their frustrations in the workplace were connected with larger issues of inequality.  Perhaps, one need not be completing a formal survey to determine what unexpressed frustrations are compromising the workplace environment.  Maybe there are ways to address the frustrations of men and women in the workplace, so that they do not harbor too much large-scale resentment at the end of the day.

In the end, probably every worker misses that ignorant optimism that they experienced when they first received a placement from a recruiter.  Maybe it’s worth thinking about how one can resurrect a little of that optimism by confronting the deflating situations that can have long-term effects on one’s outlook.