‘I’m so over being asked to do office housework just because I’m a woman’

An office worker shared her epic response to a male colleague asking her "to organise an event for the management team" in a viral TikTok. 

Years ago when I was a content strategist, (a job that has nothing to do with cleaning), my boss handed me a written list of tasks that I might want to complete.

Notable was, “Clean [boss’] desk”.

And even more years ago, when I was a new financial analyst (I’ve had a few career changes), I was often asked to make coffee for everyone in meetings.

Then I had to sit down in the meeting with everyone else and expect them to take me seriously as an equal.

In these situations, I formed a multi-pronged attack: sometimes I employed weaponised incompetence and made really bad coffee; sometimes I flat out asked, “If I was a man, would you ask me to clean your desk?”

I’m sure there are studies on this phenomenon of women being asked to do “office housework”, but I won’t bother looking since it’s my lived experience that this is absolutely a thing.

Alex Schudy gets it.

Alex posted a video to TikTok about the issue, sharing the audio from a call where she was asked to organise a management team breakfast.

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Woman shuts down office housework request

In the video, Alex is sitting at her computer, dialed in to a call on speaker phone.

“Could you organise the breakfast for the manager team onsite?” the man on the phone asks.

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“I know he’s not asking me to do this with NO advance notice,” Alex added in the text.

“When is that again?” Alex asks and the man replies, “This week.”

“Even though it’s this week, I don’t think I’m the best person to handle it,” Alex replies, explaining that she has a big workload.

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The man asks her to explain what she has on, and Alex takes it in her stride, saying she can send him her to-do list or refer him to a colleague to talk to him about it.

“Non-promotable work (like office housework) is something I try VERY hard to avoid!” Alex captioned the video. “Too bad it’s so hard to say no. How do you think I did.”

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Alex Shudy shares tips for women climbing the corporate ladder. Photo: TikTok

Woman sets boundaries when asked to do office housework

Alex posts content for “ambitious girls”, and regularly gives advice on how to get level up at work, and handle difficult situations. Her followers loved her boundary-setting example.

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“I love the term office housework!” one person said. “I am not the admin. I am not the assistant. I’m not the team event planner. I am a manager with an endless to do list.”

“’What do you have going on?’ My job,” said another person.

“Why we can’t just say ‘no’,” a third person said. “The corporate BS talk is exhausting.”

Originally published as ‘I’m so over being asked to do office housework just because I’m a woman’