Do you feel like you’re the one always stuck making coffee and tea at the workplace? Well, according to a recent survey of 3,000 office workers from CafeDirect, you just might be. Women are three times as likely as men to make tea in the average British workplace, and more importantly, two-thirds of men admit to lying to avoid making hot drinks for the workplace. Some 46 percent actually deliberately make a bad pot to get out of making drinks! Judging from my own experiences, this also counts for coffee, too.
The women aren’t blameless in this, either. About half of all trips to the coffee pot are used to avoid doing actual work. Some 24 percent of all trips are used merely as a way to exchange office gossip. So while men lie to get out of the making of drinks, women are using those trips as an excuse to talk and avoid doing work. So it all kind of evens out in the wash… err, the kettle.
When it comes to my workplace, I don’t make coffee. After one too many complaints about the strength of my brew, I just will not make it. I’ll bring in coffee for the maker, but I won’t make a pot myself. If I take the last of a pot, I’ll rinse it out and turn the machine off. This way if someone else wants coffee after me, they can make it themselves; if no one else wants any, then it’s off for the day.
Tags: gender studies, men trick women into making tea, office tea and coffee managers, cafedirect, women make three times as much tea and coffee as men in the office, gender relationships in the office
