Catherine, mon amour, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon.
Deneuve of that woman.
Then she might already be “here”, wherever “here” is.
Maybe she’s sitting next to you and you didn’t even notice
“This expedited justice already has its victims, men prevented from practicing their profession as punishment, forced to resign, etc., while the only thing they did wrong was touching a knee, trying to steal a kiss, or speaking about ‘intimate’ things at a work dinner, or sending messages with sexual connotations to a woman whose feelings were not mutual”
I can’t even. The worst thing, as a man, that I’ve had to deal with at work is people coming up behind me and grabbing my shoulders, in a misguided attempt to instill either relaxation or a sense of fraternity (note any of you who may someday meet me: intentional, uninvited physical contact will make me more tense, and will result in me silently resenting you for an undetermined period of time). This has happened to me probably no more than a half-dozen times in the decade-plus that I’ve been working.
I am not, by nature, a violent person, but I swear that if I had to deal with half of just what Catherine Deneuve describes above on a regular basis, I’d snap, probably injure someone, and end up getting myself fired.
And, from what I understand, for many women, it’s not just “a regular basis,” but a more-or-less constant barrage, going far beyond what the letter describes. If that were the environment I had to work in, I would be completely unemployable. It’s probably more tolerable for people who are less than neurotic than I am, compared to how such an environment would affect me, but I can’t imagine it being at all pleasant.
The very fact that Ms. Deneuve and her coauthors cannot recognize that what they describe is problematic behaviour that needs to stop is a large part of the problem, and while I don’t know the specifics behind the disciplinary actions she’s referring to, I doubt that I’d have much more sympathy for the “victims of expedited justice” if I did.
A year and some months ago, through a sustained comedy of mis-translation and international misunderstandings of what job titles mean, I got promoted far beyond my competence and experience level. I went from having one person reporting to me to being in charge of a site that employs 300 people. The thing is, being the boss is actually a lot of fun (here, that is; USian employment may be a different kettle of fish.) It’s not at all what I was expecting. The biggest stressor is the constant knowledge that I am ultimately responsible for making sure my lab brings in enough money to keep these 300 people employed and busy. That’s always in the back of my mind but I’ve made my peace with it. I have always been a hands-on person, and the hardest thing for me to do has been to step back and let other people handle the details and only give me an executive summary.
I’ve been in a supervisory position in the past. It really doesn’t suit me.
I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and when I was in the supervisory position, my perfectionism extended past my own work into all of the work that I supervised. I alternated between being an unrelenting taskmaster and being paralysed by the sheer amount of stuff that I had to fix.
My personality works best when I have explicit deadlines, a well-defined area of responsibility, a clear understanding of my priorities, and as much control over the stuff that constitutes my responsibility as is feasible. Oh, and enough work (and interesting work) to keep my mind focused.
…It’s not a personality well suited to management.
Until they gamify the whole damn thing. It’ll be much easier to give constant little strokes of attention with an algorithm…and then they start charging. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until the first freemium sexbot.
To be a successful manager, I think you need to feel a bit that you are pretending to do your job while everybody around you is very competent. However it is not enough because some people in that position go in for management by coverup. The successes are the ones who think “…so I’m not going to pretend to be omniscient and I’m going to encourage people to be proactive.”
On my first day in a school vacation job my new boss - a man who, by the way, wore a bespoke suit and would never dream of going out into the City of London without a bowler hat - explained what needed doing and then said “Mind you, that’s just what I think. If you’ve got a better idea, tell me.” I am a 16 year old kid, I have maths, English and French O level. I am now willing to follow this man to the end of the Earth (and he rose incredibly fast in the company, by the way).
I’ve encountered other people like this and I later realised that most of them had been commissioned in WW2, which meant that as inexperienced lieutenants they had to rely on experienced NCOs a great deal.
I think a definite factor in entitled white male culture is that this generation has never been in that position - of having to learn from and rely on older more experienced people from very different backgrounds.
You and me both. I was in that situation, and I felt like everybody hated me because I couldn’t handhold them through their work, or thought I was incompetent because I didn’t know all the nuts and bolts of some very specialized task. Apparently only a few people thought that, and they were the ones who were unpleasant to work with… But still, the idea that I was letting people down by not doing the lions share of the work had caused me so much stress.
Cinnamon Rolls
Because I’ve rolled them too tightly, the middle pops up and out of one of the rolls.
So that’s why that happens!
Scribbles furiously on his cinnamon roll recipe
Seriously, though, if you’re going to include a cinnamon roll recipe (or any recipe) as part of an apology, it’d better be a damned good recipe. As opposed to using pizza dough as part of a cinnamon roll.
I agree with the author on all but one point:
The recipe calls for too much icing, and the result is that the rolls are drenched in it.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AND THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANY SUCH THING AS “TOO MUCH ICING.”
(ETA: Wait, his icing is just water, icing sugar, and vanilla?! Cinnamon roll icing requires cream cheese! And lemon juice! If I had cause to doubt accusations that Mario Batali is a monster, this recipe would dispel them all)
This article is genius. Wow. He could not even give a proper recipe with his apology. Or an appropriate one. Could have been for Gingerbread Women that are cut into shapes showing they are super awesome, or aggressively getting out their anger on menz, or into Goddesses. Or perhaps some kind of woke comfort soup.
Cross posted:
Donald Trump is President, so I’m making the goddamn dough by scratch.
Followed by a photo of punching down the dough.
OMG, my sides are splitting!
Ooh. Gingerbread cookies shaped like the Willendorf Goddess. Surely someone has already done this.
Did you actually get any management training?
I was sent on courses, was mentored, but this seems to be unusual.
Some, yes, but it was perfunctory. Even if it wasn’t, it couldn’t cure impostor syndrome, which was mostly what I was experiencing.
That was a great article all around. Hilarious and thought provoking at the same time. My only quibble is that paragraph where she called Trump a “sexual deviant” and went on about how great Hillary Clinton was. But I’ll let it slide.
I kinda get what that is. When I have extra pizza dough (is that a thing?) I coat the scraps in cinnamon and sugar, and pan fry in butter. However, this is not that, and anyone who has eaten either of those things knows it clearly. This is more a one trick pony type of thing. Like, someone who knows how to make pizza dough but didn’t want to learn a second kind of dough That, or the equally lazy, “we’re making A but with B instead, look how innovative!”
It’s something that looks like an erection, coated with insane amounts of sticky white stuff. Basically the opposite of:
We have these in Ottawa (except the dough gets deep-fried before the cinnamon is added).
However, they’re not cinnamon rolls, any more than the pretzels they sell at the mall food court coated in cinnamon and sugar are.
Apparently, his profession is “celebrity chef.”
Point taken.