“Kavitha, can you please order pizza for the team?” I was deeply buried in a work conversation at a special Saturday workshop when I was jolted back to the real world with this question from a very senior person in the room.
It took me a minute to figure out why this honour was being bestowed upon me. And I murmured a feeble, “I have no clue what to order”.
The senior person persisted with a “Come on. Two veg and two non veg large should suffice. Order anything you think will be nice. I am sure you will do a great job”.
I have had many low points in life, but I can assure you that this was one of the lowest.
“Alia, can you please arrange for tea for everyone?”, “Bina, please take charge of the fun games we should be doing during the offsite.”, “Chitra, why don’t you book a place for the party tonight?”
If I earned a dollar for every time I heard someone give a woman employee a random, “fun” task that had absolutely nothing to do with the work they were expected to do, I would own a small shack in Manhattan by now (Ok, American citizens, don’t go all ballistic on me, it was meant to be a light-hearted allegory).
So what, you ask me. Do you meekly do it? I don’t. I did fall for that once but not anymore. I have cracked the code, if you may.
“You know me, I am no fun”, “Ah! I have no clue about where to party”, “XYZ is very good at this, you should check with him”, or the good old, “Oh! I am running short on time. I don’t want this task to get deferred forever because it sat in my bucket”.
It works. It works because I am persistent, if only nicely and smoothly so.
Don’t take me wrong, I am helpful by nature, if it is about work. But honestly, this isn’t work and I do need guardrails to preserve my sanity.
Why not say a simple “No”, you wonder. I find it difficult to explain such an ingrained bias, worried that the other person will argue about how I am making a mountain out of a molehill.
So, I choose the road less travelled, albeit a cunning one, gently nudging folks around me to think harder, preferably beyond their biases, or even better, do the task themselves.
P. S. Views strictly personal. Post doesn’t refer to any organisation that I am currently associated with.
P. P. S. Mahima Vashisht wrote a fab piece on the subject a few months back, in her newsletter, “Womaning in India”. You can access it here.