Thursday, June 08, 2006
Why I'm not so bolshy anymore
I am by nature a bolshy person, not politically, but in the way I always find myself getting indignant about any kind of injustice. Translated into a professional, office-bound middle-class life in London, this meant I spent my first working years in a state of perpetual fury with my employers at the kind of rubbish their workers were having to put up with. Fury at Human Resources dictating how people dressed, fury at bosses who wouldn't let people talk or eat at their desks, fury at the absurd hierarchies that meant if a graduate trainee dared to smile at an editor, they would be met with blank, frosty indifference.
It took about four years of working life to stamp my bolshiness out of me. Years in which I learnt the hard way that the employee at the bottom of the ladder can never win against a mean boss. And years in which I found journalism was the ideal profession for someone as indignant as me. By the time I took my last office-based job in 2005, on a women's magazine, I had moved up the ladder enough to be working for a decent employer who treated their staff in a relaxed and mutually respectful way. And by that time, I was a mild-mannered, accommodating employee, so much so the managing director once told me off for being not assertive enough, which shocked me.
These days as a freelance, relationships with editors are paramount and I always do my best to be totally accommodating of their occasional whims (though, to date, the vast majority of editors I've worked with freelance have been truly lovely, and I have never had a serious problem with receiving payment due to me). I would draw the line at not being paid, but I don't think it's worth losing the relationship I have with an editor over a small irritation every now and then - I am sure I make oversights that annoy them, after all.
But I do feel sad that freelancers - and all employees who are as powerless as freelancers - are in this position where they are at an employer's mercy, however nice most of those employers are. As a freelance, you can feel very vulnerable.
And I guess even posting here about all this shows I do actually still have a bolshy streak somewhere.
It took about four years of working life to stamp my bolshiness out of me. Years in which I learnt the hard way that the employee at the bottom of the ladder can never win against a mean boss. And years in which I found journalism was the ideal profession for someone as indignant as me. By the time I took my last office-based job in 2005, on a women's magazine, I had moved up the ladder enough to be working for a decent employer who treated their staff in a relaxed and mutually respectful way. And by that time, I was a mild-mannered, accommodating employee, so much so the managing director once told me off for being not assertive enough, which shocked me.
These days as a freelance, relationships with editors are paramount and I always do my best to be totally accommodating of their occasional whims (though, to date, the vast majority of editors I've worked with freelance have been truly lovely, and I have never had a serious problem with receiving payment due to me). I would draw the line at not being paid, but I don't think it's worth losing the relationship I have with an editor over a small irritation every now and then - I am sure I make oversights that annoy them, after all.
But I do feel sad that freelancers - and all employees who are as powerless as freelancers - are in this position where they are at an employer's mercy, however nice most of those employers are. As a freelance, you can feel very vulnerable.
And I guess even posting here about all this shows I do actually still have a bolshy streak somewhere.
# posted by Olivia @ 10:44 am 
Comments:
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Never lose your bolshy streak m'dear. It's funny how confidence and ambition in a woman may be described as 'pushy' where in a bloke, it could be argued that they add up to "drive".
# posted by 
: 6:33 pm
: 6:33 pm
No, I couldn't lose that last bit of bolshiness if I tried. For better or worse, it's the way I am.
I agree that women being persistent and assertive is often cause for tutting comments like 'Oh dear, she's on the warpath,' 'And you look like such a little lamb' or 'I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of you'. I endured jibes like these made repeatedly by a male colleague years ago who overheard me complaining to Ikea about their atrocious customer service. There was such spite in his comments (he bulled me on a more personal level too) that I ended up making a formal complaint about him to HR and then all these other female colleagues came out of the woodwork saying he'd bullied them..That was one of the experiences that ground my bolshiness down. These days I keep it all inside, much as a passive aggressive anorexic fights by pretending everything is hunky dory.
I agree that women being persistent and assertive is often cause for tutting comments like 'Oh dear, she's on the warpath,' 'And you look like such a little lamb' or 'I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of you'. I endured jibes like these made repeatedly by a male colleague years ago who overheard me complaining to Ikea about their atrocious customer service. There was such spite in his comments (he bulled me on a more personal level too) that I ended up making a formal complaint about him to HR and then all these other female colleagues came out of the woodwork saying he'd bullied them..That was one of the experiences that ground my bolshiness down. These days I keep it all inside, much as a passive aggressive anorexic fights by pretending everything is hunky dory.
Another comment I had at that time was 'You're very persistent, aren't you?' said in a tone that made clear that persistence was a very bad thing in a 22 year old young woman.
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