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You know the drill. You’re at a meeting and everyone else just assumes you’ll take notes. You’re asked to arrange lunch for a team meeting. Managers ask you to fetch them coffee, water, even their papers from the printer. There’s a birthday cake in the office, and the task of slicing it up falls on you. Your name appears on the list of the send-forth party planning committee. These are all examples of “office housework”, non-promotable tasks that won’t make it to your performance appraisal and yet take up time that could be better spent.

In some cases, it’s inevitable. Someone has to do it, right? And if you’re the most junior on the team, then a case can be made for being the “jacky”; the one who gets sent on all the errands. This is Nigeria after all, where age matters.

Sometimes, We Make Things Worse for Ourselves

Sometimes, it’s that you’ve volunteered your way into the errand. Maybe in a bid to be “authentic” and “bring your whole self to work”, you previously shared how you love event-planning and so now you’re the default send-forth planner for the office.

Other times, it’s that a manager or a colleague has preyed on our tendencies as women to be helpful and not say No. Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Amaka is less likely to disappoint so let Amaka take the notes at the meeting.” Before you know it, Amaka is always taking notes at the meeting and that just reinforces in everyone’s minds that she’s less likely to disappoint.

And it’s not like you can just say No. Depending on who you say No to, you could end up being penalized. Women are expected to be likeable and when a woman rebels, she’s punished harder (Serena Williams, anyone?) The penalty could be anything from being labelled non-cooperative and not a team player to being queried for actual insubordination. For some reason, this penalty hardly ever applies to men who turn down office housework even though they get more credit when they take up the tasks. Think about it. When a guy volunteers to take notes at a meeting, isn’t he seen as “so helpful”?

So what’s a woman at work to do?

It was a valid question when we discussed it on the Circle a few weeks back. The first thing to do is to appreciate that in Nigeria, gender norms are very much encoded into everyone’s DNA, male and female. Very few people appreciate the damaging effect of gender discrimination in the workplace, especially when it’s via things as seemingly innocent as slicing cake.

Simply don’t volunteer for office housework.

This one is hard, I know. I led a teleconference recently where I mentioned that we needed someone to volunteer for something. The line went deadly silent. We were six on the call, 4 men and 2 women. I closed my eyes and prayed she wouldn’t volunteer. The silence stretched. And stretched. I repeated the request. More silence. And then one of the guys reluctantly agreed to do it. We women are uncomfortable with uncomfortable silences and we rush to fill it. Men often expect that women will volunteer to do things.

See Also: Amplify Your Work Performance in 6 Resolutions

Say No to office housework with tact.

Don’t ever refuse your boss in public, for instance. When you have a private moment, point out how you took the notes in the last meeting and how it would be a good idea to rotate note-taking duty among team members so they can build the skill. If it’s a peer asking you, turn down the request in a way that doesn’t burn bridges. You never know when you’ll need their support later. If it’s something you really don’t want to do, offer them options. For instance, if it’s a request to join a send forth committee, you could say, “Gosh, I have a pretty tight schedule on Project XX and I don’t want to miss any milestones. I think you guys would do a great job. Do you want me to ask Deji if he’d like to join you?”

Reinvent the task.

Sometimes, you just can’t escape the request. So find a way use it as a springboard for something more profitable. Someone is away on leave and you have to handle his contracts with other suppliers? Use it as an opportunity to build your network, learn about contracts, and the suppliers’ businesses. Someone asks you to build a slide deck for a presentation to management? Ask if you can tag along to the meeting as an observer. You have to take notes at a meeting? Everyone knows it’s tough to analyse what’s being said and come up with insightful ideas when you’re trying to minute properly. So make sure you summarize what was said at the end and then volunteer to solve a business issue that was thrown up.

Ultimately, the best way to serve your company is to do your best work and you can’t do that if you are stuck doing tasks that do not help you grow.

Have you found yourself stuck with office housework? How do you deal with it?

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