I hear ya, and I often have no problem helping an officemate find something. The times when it annoyed me, me & one of my staff kept getting pre-empted by a salesweasle/other staff to do secretarial/office supply things which was *not* part of the job description. If my title has "Director" in it, you can safely assume, even in a small office, that I am not going to stop what I'm doing to find you staples, not out of rabid feminism, but out of having much more important things to do.

Also, the office was really, really small. Go look, fer chrissakes! It's a closet! My breasts don't hide the office supplies either! :)

Gender sterotypes. There are about 500 secretaries at my workplace, and only two of them are male.

We are the only people who know where the staplers are, where they come from, and how to refill them. Not that we aren't happy to share the information with the mostly male staff we support, it's just that it's too trivial a matter for them to remember, until they have loose papers that need fastening. And then, if I am not there to refill an empty stapler, it is a TRAGEDY.

We are also not allowed to change our titles from Secretary to Administrative Assistant, as this may confuse the people we support into thinking we are Administrators, who are the people who work on budgets.

So, yeah, my tits have stapler-finding radar, and gender bullshit is alive and well in Pasadena.

So the two male secretaries also come to you? Otherwise, it sounds mostly like Stupidus Corporatus, the workers who can't be expected to do daily things any human with a brain should know.

I think the point flew over your head and out of the window, Daniel. Out of more than 500 secretaries, 2 are male.

I do not dispute the fact that 99.96% being female is gender stereotyping, whether it be through society or some gender issues by your HR staff.

I would also hasten to add that if someone capable of advancement to the other "suits" level are being blocked because they are a woman, kick their arse.

I was just pointing out that the stapler panic part was typical of many suit-type people in corporateland, who apparently can't seem to be expected to function outside of their limited function of their little worlds.

I think if I saw the ratio you describe, I'd think I had dropped through a wormhole to the 60's.

Meanwhile: Minearthread!!!!!!

I don't work in a corporation, I work in a government laboratory. When the suits are overwhelmingly male, and the people that serve the suits are overwhelmingly female, there's an underlying issue, especially when the females are denied prestige. Anecdotally, the very small handful of women I support can order a stapler, refill it, and find replacement staplers when needed. I am sure some women cannot. I am sure some men can, but where I work, it's completely predictable as to who can and cannot do such things as fill a stapler, and some other tasks that they find beneath them, like cleaning the coffee maker. I let it get moldy and stink. I made a rule that whomever runs a meeting is responsible for pushing back the chairs and making sure trash goes in the can. Has gone unheeded.

Thankfully, no one asks me to clean it, and more recently, one of the guys cleaned it. Progress.

I also don't keep candy on my desk, despite inquiries as to why I don't. Candy leads to baked goods, and baked goods remind them of mommy, and soon they call you at 3am from Sydney because they lost their shoes, and all of this can be blamed on cookies.

If it helps, I was shocked at the number of clueless men in college trying to do laundry.

Unlike many men in the dorm, my clothes did not fade into one shade of dingy gray or pink after one semester.

My mom taught my brother how to do laundry, but he still stomps them into the washer so that some barely get wet, and smell worse than when he started. Interestingly, he learned how to propoerly wash clothes, and iron them, in the Marine Corps.

I also don't keep candy on my desk, despite inquiries as to why I don't. Candy leads to baked goods, and baked goods remind them of mommy, and soon they call you at 3am from Sydney because they lost their shoes, and all of this can be blamed on cookies.

I might keep candy on my desk, but it would all be for me. Of course this is also the kind of mother I'm likely to be at this point in my life, so when someone called me at 3am from Sydney, I would laugh, hang up and then look lovingly at my pretty shoes.