What I got back is whining about how it feels to be left out because of one's gender.

I'm sorry, what? He cried on a feminist thread about what? I tried to read the rest of your post, erika, but was ever so slightly hampered by the fact that my eyes had rolled right out of my head.

Congrats on the job, Stephanie!

Having spent a very difficult day ploughing through an article for a presentation in my evening class, the class itself was even more demoralizing. It was on feminism. I am in a minority, apparently, with my crazy misguided ideas on the importance of equality. I thought it might cheer me up to come here and talk to people with slightly less depressing opinions. And then I saw that there was already a lovely snarky feminism discussion happening! And now I am happy and all is right with the world and I am going to cheerfully wait for my (female!) partner to come home to our (non-heterosexual!) household so we can watch Eddie Izzard and do other things of which patriarchy would not approve (not that).

Brenda, nice hair! Though in the picture you look very uncertain about it! :)

Congratulations, Stephanie!! YAY JOB!

I went and saw four houses today with a realtor! Eep. And got prequalified for a mortgage. Double eep. EEEeeeeep. All the houses had plusses and minuses. Clearly I need to frankenstein them into one perfect house, magically. With a magic lower price than any of them have. Gah.

All the houses had plusses and minuses. Clearly I need to frankenstein them into one perfect house, magically. With a magic lower price than any of them have. Gah.

Welcome to house hunting.

Maybe you guys can help me make sure I'm not being too hard on myself (I mean, slnrlbf and my mom think what's being asked of me is a wee bit unreasonable, I want to see if y'all do to).

There were layoffs and duties had to be moved around. I got the responsibilities of my primary back up receptionist (who wasn't well liked). We have a student loan program and she handled, I thought she just processed the payment checks but it turns out she pretty much ran the whole thing with minimal supervision.

So now I have to handle the student loan program. I have no accounting background. I'm 2 months behind on sending out the loan apps to the schools that are supposed to be returned by March 31.

I have to also answer the phones while I'm processing the payments and dealing with this mess of excel sheets.

I guess I want to know if it sounds a little unreasonable to make me the one in charge of this.

But at the same time I think that if my back up receptionist and been a little bit more liked in the organization *I* would have been the one laid off and not her.

I'm 2 months behind on sending out the loan apps to the schools that are supposed to be returned by March 31.

This is problematic. Do your bosses know you're this far behind? Because if they don't it's going to a serious shit storm when they do. Stuff with deadlines that affects (a) money and (b) other people directly is the kind of stuff that can't slide.

What I got back is whining about how it feels to be left out because of one's gender.

Women just don't understand that feeling! They've always been included in everything! ...Wait.

Women just don't understand that feeling! They've always been included in everything! ...Wait.

I kind of need a feminist moment equivalent to Lindsay's "Let me wipe away my tears with my plastic hand."

JZ, that is what he meant by "essentialism stings", right? Now, maybe, I did create that impression by talking about him being "a guy trying to fix stuff" but it's not because he has a dick, it's because he was being one. You don't come in after a column's been set up for months and say "The title sucks, and I think you should change it." and then expect people to be friendly, welcoming and respectful of your academic credentials...well, you can, but then I'll think you're a domineering asswipe. So, maybe not twice?

I don`t think the duties in and of themselves sound completely unreasonable in context, but if you were never given any way to know what was expected of you, that`s unreasonable. I agree with Hec that it`s a problem, but it`s not one that will get any better with waiting so definitely bite the bullet and confront it.