
Superguanajas (the multitask women)

A personal space to share thoughts. Un lugar personal para compartir ideas
How to write an article about feminism now that is so fashioned? How to make feminism be understood and why its existance? And above all: Why do I want feminism to dissapear?
A song from Offspring (Self Esteem) came to my rescue. It tells the story of an abusive relationship in which she brushes aside the boy, bugs out on him, insults him and even cheats on him… Ridiculous and funny situation at the time, right?: what a henpecked guy… until you change things up and it didn´t look like a parody anymore (and I´m not saying that all men are al the same and we, women, are always the victim).
That´s why that I decided to revert the roles like the song did so the persons that can´t understand what feminism stands for. Now I want you, men, to imagine a world in which:
Do you need more reverse examples to realise the situation? I could write many other examples but I don´t want to extent the article much more. For these examples and many more is why I desire feminism to reach its goal: to make a person be judged because of being a person, not because of his/her gender. When this happens, feminism automatically will stop existing, it wouldn´t have a reason to be. That day everyone will have to make a party to celebrate. I´m afraid that there´s so much to be done still that I won´t be seeing the day. We are on the way: don´t stop fighting.
I invite you to watch a video from 1971… not that far away…
There´s a lot of talks about attitude: I like the one from Debra Searle. There´s other one in Spanish, by Víctor Küpers en TedxAndorralaVella. I can´t agree more with him. Knowledge and skils sum up: attitude multiplies the other two together. Knowledge and skills can be acquired: attitude, if you don´t have enough of to be successfull, it´s difficult to get.
Attitude for me is one reason to be motivated to wake up in the mornings and do the job I have to do during the day. It´s the electricity that makes me stand up with eager to eat the world. The energy to go forward, never backwards.
I have to admit that there are days in which I feel like eating the world and others (a few) that I want to reflect and rest and let the world eating job to others. Isn´t it part of what it makes us humans?
Throughout my professional career I have had to deal with colleagues or clients with different types of attitude. From colleagues that didn´t mind the end result of their work, to others that used to get sick because of their perfectionism; from clients that demand the impossible so you do the job correctly to others that don´t care as long as they got the standardized minimun.
And what about training? There´s plenty shades of Grey (do not get confused with the book). I see it in the generations of high school students. All of them in general say that they don´t like to study: they prefer doing other things. Just a few take their studies seriously because their eyes have been opened to reality and they know that their future depends on being as well trained as possible: if they don´t study, they know the consecuences and they don´t want to be economically dependent on others or obtain low paid jobs. Then there are cases of adult training people that want to have a better paid job with no effort at all.
Knowledge is acquired, skills is practiced but attitude has to be cultivated.
In this post I´ll talk about my own work experience, which I really know. In my wide work career I´ve suffer these bad behaviours, either with my own or other´s experiences. Let´s going to talk about it with some humour, even though it´s not a laughing matter.
Let´s start with presentism. There can be an exception to do presentism when you have to work for customer care. In other cases, the working hours should be flexible: for your own good and for the company´s. What´s the use of having an employee hired for forty hours and he/she stays at work for fifty? No use whatsoever. As a story taken from my collection of anecdotes, I can tell the time I was in a company where all minutes employed in one task had to be accounted for. When you had done your eight hours, you could go home. A have a co-worker that entered before me and criticized me behind my back because I used to leave the office on time: she usually stayed around an hour extra every day. When there was the need for staff reduction, she was the one chosen. I couldn´t understand why her and not me. My bosses were surprised at my question: “Do you still wonder why? Well it´s easy: you come to do your job and she dedicated more than an hour a day to make private telephone calls”. That´s when I learned that being isn´t synonymous of working.
Procrastination, such a difficult word to say that you feel like leaving it for later… 😉 That´s what it really means: leaving things pending to do for an uncertain future. It´s a bad habit that personally it´s difficult to get rid off… Who feels like doing something that is tedious/annoying/uncomfortable or all together at once? No one! It´s a defect that makes all more human. Let´s be honest, the sense of guilt wins over and you end up doing that task peevishly. I have to confess it: it´s ridiculously painful for me to organize a visit schedule to clients. It´s hard for the ego (even when it´s nothing personal) the fact that your petition for a date is rejected over and over again. You get over it with time but you keep on leaving it for later every time you can. Don´t you worry: you aren´t an alien.
I left the mania for meetings for last on purpose and that´s not because I wanted to procrastinate… The reason is because this is the worst behaviour of all for me and the one that gave me no satisfactions in my working life. Raise your hands who hasn´t suffered being in a meeting where they cannot participate, or what it´s discussed has nothing to do with the work they are doing or realizing that there´s no clear purpose of the meeting… or the three situations together. I still remember one of the useless meetings that I had in an important company where it was discused the project I was leading (well, I was the only person working on it) and the rest where arguing about closing the project all together and replace it for another. It seems that no one realized that my job was at stake and I was present hearing my (no) future in the company. There was no opportunity to express my point of view or anything. Many would think that my future was discuss in front of me at least. If I have to tell you the truth, I wasn´t obliged: I felt like an invisible being that no feelings where expected to have, as if the decision wouldn´t hurt anyone. And there I was, listening that in the near future I was in the unemployment office.
Have you realized that everything is related with time? Isn´t it curious?