Work Etiquette Question

A female co-worker refers to her client contacts, especially the admin assts, as “my gal” or even “my little girl” if the contact is young. Do you find this condescending and demeaning? Am I being overly sensitive?

This co-worker would never refer to a male admin asst as “my boy” yet doesn’t seem to understand the difference. These terms indicate to me a romantic girl friend, a young daughter, or a subservient employee, as in the old fashioned “my gal Friday.” I’ve even heard her refer to the client attorney as “my gal” and I just cringe. I can’t imagine using these terms to refer to a professional contact, client or co-worker. My 59 yr old husband thinks he’d be hauled off to HR if he used those terms.

What do you think?

Anyone have a website with professional etiquette guidelines that might address this?

I’m in a quandary about what to do but I hate being on the phone with her and a client and have her referral to her own co-workers this way. I feel tarnished.

Could it be a regional thing ? She might not even realize it.

But yes, I'd be taken aback by that too. It's too bad you can't speak to her one-on-one about it - email and even telephone could be risky, you can't read how she's reacting.

I suppose you need to decide if it's worth bringing it up to her, and if it's worth the consequences if she takes it badly.

Rotsa ruck.

Does your HR have anything? Like you said, if you wouldn't use "my office boy" then you shouldn't use "my office girl". What about: "My admin assistant"? Heck, I'd even settle for "my secretary".

As an outsider, it indicates lack of professional courtesy for her colleagues to refer to them in such a manner. It sounds like she wants to make a point that she's on a higher rung of the ladder, by stomping on the heads of those "below" her. Obviously she hasn't learned that to keep things running smoothly the golden rule - "Thou shalt not make an enemy of thine Administrative Assistant."

Either that or she's trying to be cute, which again, isn't very professional.

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Originally Posted by bmccasland

Does your HR have anything? Like you said, if you wouldn't use "my office boy" then you shouldn't use "my office girl". What about: "My admin assistant"? Heck, I'd even settle for "my secretary".

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Since no one reports to her she shouldn't even be saying "my" anything. The much older male person who holds the same position as she manages to refer to the rest of us as "our project manager" or "our contracts manager", etc.

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Originally Posted by bmccasland

As an outsider, it indicates lack of professional courtesy for her colleagues to refer to them in such a manner. It sounds like she wants to make a point that she's on a higher rung of the ladder, by stomping on the heads of those "below" her. Obviously she hasn't learned that to keep things running smoothly the golden rule - "Thou shalt not make an enemy of thine Administrative Assistant."

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You are soooo perceptive! She's pretty much making enemies of everyone in the company but we seem to have another standard of behavior for our sales staff.

According to my company's guidelines on the subject, this is insensitive but not considered harassment or illegal and someone (you?) might tell her how bad it sounds.

I find this often occurs with women I deal with. I find that often I am the one pointing out that they are "women". I also find that these same female managers tend to have higher employee turnover rates:rolleyes:

Neither I nor my company would culturally tolerate this.

Here is something from..no less than the American Bar Assoc. I couldn't find anything on gal /girl word use.

http://www.abanet.org/media/youraba/...article12.html

Yes, +1 to previous posters that old term of gal is just wrong in the workplace for any adult woman.

Where I work, it is the first place where I've heard it way more often than previous organizations...in some previous places, I never heard it.

The employee who works beside me and she reports to me, used it several times in conversation on referring to other women employees in our organization. I stopped her gently: "Aren't they women? Aren't you a woman? You're a mother of 2 grown boys."

I hate to say this ...but these women who use "girls", "gals" alot among themselves were full-time moms for at least a decade before they returned to work. Any woman really needs to acculturate herself when she returns to the workplace.

And my boss initially used girl in his conversation when he joined our organization..it was a carryover probably from overseas where among the ex-patriate community in the firm that I work for, it's predominantly ...male engineers who land the plum international engineering assignments worldwide.

Then few months later, I noticed he was dropping use of this word. Good. He's remembering his Canadian roots. And he's 10 yrs. younger than I...if that indicates how easy it is for younger males and females to go backwards in their workplace terminology.

It grates me on the in-chick use of "girl" "gal" in workplace ..because where I work, only 2 out of 15 managers are female (I'm one of them)...in an organization of over 200 employees with additonal 300 from unionized trades. It is workplace that is over 80% male.

The use of "my" grates much more than the use of "girl". Some people use "girl" all the time. I consider it a diminutive or casual term, fine for friends or in a very casual sense, but not really appropriate in a lot of settings.

I have a personal crusade to get people to use the term "woman" in all settings where they would use "man" to describe a male ;) Especially in Norwegian, a female stranger is usually described as either a "girl" or a "lady", whereas a male stranger would just be a "man". I'd really like to see the neutral term "woman" be used more, because it doesn't hold any connotations.

No, I don't get miffed if a male colleague calls me a girl, or us female colleagues collectively as "the girls". But I'll respond by calling them "boys" :D

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The use of "my" grates much more than the use of "girl". Some people use "girl" all the time. I consider it a diminutive or casual term, fine for friends or in a very casual sense, but not really appropriate in a lot of settings.

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Yes. I belong to NO one. For a man to use it to refer to a coworker smacks of women-as-property, and I'm just not tolerating that.

Girl, gal, I don't care, until you put the word "my" in front of it.

Karen

Thanks, all, you've been giving me some ammo.

Mimi, are you able to quote your company's guidelines?

I don't mind the term gal. I would not be offended if a (female) friend referred to me as one of her gals.

But--I think it's totally inappropriate for a supervisor to be referring to a supervisee or someone lower on the work totem pole that way.

What about a sales person referring to a customer's attorney that way? What does rank have to do with it? Just curious.

Or talking about the assigned judge in a case as "my gal." Oh yeah, you bet. :p

I don't think the use is great in any professional situation, but I do think that a rank differential multiplies the condescension factor quite a bit and adds an unpleasant sort of power "squish". "Power squish" cannot be found in any HR guidelines that I know of, since I just made it up this minute. :)

Whether and how to raise this issue with the person using the insenstive language could be a tough judgment call. It depends on the culture of your company, and whether or not this person has power within that culture. And how much power the person or people raising the issue have.

Whether or not you get a positive outcome may have very little to do with whether you are right or not.

Tread carefully, and good luck!

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Originally Posted by salsabike

I don't think the use is great in any professional situation, but I do think that a rank differential multiplies the condescension factor quite a bit and adds an unpleasant sort of power "squish". "Power squish" cannot be found in any HR guidelines that I know of, since I just made it up this minute. :)

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Such an appropriate term, though!

Ugh. When I first passed the bar I worked as a legal research assistant for a defense attorney in the foothills. It was not a terrible job, but I was in his office one day when he was on the phone with someone at the district attorney's office, and he said to the person, "I'll have my girl come pick it up." Meaning me.

When he got off the phone I raised my eyebrows and said, "Would you like me to pick up your dry cleaning while I'm out?" If he'd had an ounce of shame he'd have gotten the point, but he was so dumb that he just went, "Huh? What? Of course not, my wife takes care of that."

(The happy ending is that I later wound up supervising him on a couple of cases. I did not refer to him as "my boy.")

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Originally Posted by salsabike

"Power squish" cannot be found in any HR guidelines that I know of, since I just made it up this minute. :)

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It's perfect!

I just sent an email to her director about lack of cooperation, respect, blah-blah-blah. I have not said anything about this term, but am hoping to slip it into a personal conversation with him. This isn't her only power squishing behavior. I'm tired of this crap.

I voted the term "gal" doesn't bother me. Been called worse:rolleyes:. A word doesn't define me, or our relationship. It's how you treat me. Actions speak louder than words...

It sound like it's way more that just the term "gal" that's the problem. Even if this person didn't use the term "gal", it's the other behaviors that are really frustrating.

I think it's unprofessional. Hope your client discontinues the usage.

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Originally Posted by ilima

I don't mind the term gal. I would not be offended if a (female) friend referred to me as one of her gals.

But--I think it's totally inappropriate for a supervisor to be referring to a supervisee or someone lower on the work totem pole that way.

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I respect your position...but I grew up in Alabama...and frankly, even that context would have cultural overtones to slavery and derogatory racial and social stereotyping.

As I see it, in the workplace, rank may exist, but it does not have to be exaggerated.

In a meeting, one of our property managers referred to her assistant as "her girl" and I felt compelled to correct her (and it gave me insight into why she is on her 7th assistant in three years...).

I also hate it when women call me "hun" as well...although I'm not offended by it in the proper context.