Due to the infinite wisdom of high-level management in my place of work, a decision was made to distribute our teams around the world. We are a global company, after all, and must compete in a global environment. Really, this means we can save mega-bucks by giving my job to some folks in India or China. But, whatever...truth is, companies have to do what they have to do.
Anyhow, the point is, sometimes this arrangement is good for the company, and sometimes it's not. Today, it was not, and quickly ran into a situation where having the team in three countries basically means no one can get to the solution of a problem. So, the discontented side of me came out, wanting nothing more than to just commiserate with a fellow coworker about the state of things, and how things could be better if they would have only listened to my private rantings about this very thing years ago. Of course, had those rantings not been private, they wouldn't have listened to me anyhow, so either way, I needed to vent.
But then my coworker had the audacity to do something that is altogether male. Do you think he nodded his head everytime he was supposed to agree with me and shook his head everytime I said something that was unbelievable?
No. Instead, he tried to offer me a solution.
Can you believe that? I mean, would I have bothered to walk all the way around from my aisle over to his aisle in order to complain, and then expect a solution? He was supposed to just play along, complain about the state of the union, so to speak, and wallow along with me.
But he didn't. How utterly typical of a guy. I should have sought out a female colleague instead. You know, the feminine touch. The type of person who knows that when I'm complaining, I don't want someone to fix the problem, I want someone to listen!
And so it hit me. The problem wasn't that my coworker was "being such a guy." (You can just ask my wife, and she'll tell you that I suffer the same affliction.) The problem was that I was stepping perilously close to being in touch with my "feminine side".
Shudder.
No offense to all my women readers. There is nothing wrong with the feminine side. I love it, in fact. After all, I married a woman! She is the greatest thing since sliced bread, which is saying a lot since everyone knows sliced bread is the greatest thing ever!
But the truth is, I'm a guy, not a girl. And for a guy, being feminine isn't a compliment. (At least, not usually...although, my wife does find it incredibly cute when I admit to tearing up at the latest Hallmark commercial. Or so she says.)
So I guess I'm gonna have to just buck up. Take it like a man. Stop being such a girly-girl. (Insert any other feminine related insult to men you can think of.) Because the world ain't perfect, and there's no point in crying over spilled milk. Hmm. Any other cliches? No, I think that'll do it.
