A women's place is in the ... bla bla bla

I wrote this column for our local newspaper .. and it got some of my friends laughing and others wondering: one day you are all for women and the next day trashing them.

Well, the truth is that I am supportive of the 'right' type of woman and not the type who will make a fool of us all..

Here's the article, which appeared in today's GDN:

Cooking up a stink in the workplace...

A friend of mine called me yesterday wailing and crying.

I had thought that there was a catastrophe, or perhaps someone had died.

But no. Her problem was with a colleague of hers…who was cooking her lunch in the office during lunch break.

Before my friend knew it, she was gasping for fresh air. The entire office reeked with the smell of cooking fish. There was smoke everywhere. And the fire sirens didn’t go off, because there simply wasn’t a fire siren in the building! But we will not go on about safety in the work place now because it was no longer an office. It was a dirty old kitchen with very bad ventilation.

And what was worse, was that my friend had a business meeting scheduled in 10 minutes.

She had to cancel the appointment and evacuate the office and was still angry about the situation way into the night.

When she told me about her ‘situation’ I was simply speechless.

It took me back to the days when I was at university and had to teach in a government school for three months as part of the requirements for my Bachelors degree in English and Education.

Do you know what I saw in the teacher’s room everyday? No. This isn’t a scene from an Egyptian sit-com. It was real. The honourable teachers had their vegetables sprawled all over their tables and were busy chopping cucumbers, aubergines and lady’s fingers to name a few. Of course, they were also peeling potatoes and carrots and exchanging recipes, among other things!

What is it with people who have ZERO respect for their workplace? If the aforementioned woman was mad keen to fry her fish and eat it, why didn’t she go home to cook her offensive meal? And if those teachers were so torn between wifely duties and their teaching profession as teachers, why did they find it so difficult to make a choice?

A woman’s place is in the kitchen indeed but this is no excuse to bring the kitchen to the office.

Make up your mind woman…there are a lot of jobless people out there! Who says you are indispensable?

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