We’ve still got a couple of gaps in the switchboard schedule and so on Friday mornings I grab my laptop and answer the main phone for the university. I usually work on my emails while I’m on the calls – they don’t take a lot of brain power usually and I can switch gears pretty easily.
On one recent Friday, I answered the phone with my usual “Good Morning, University of Akron, how may I help you?”
An older woman – I could hear it in her voice – responded with, “It’s nice to hear a man answering the phones,”
She went on to ask for a department and I transferred her over.
And… I wasn’t quite sure how to take that.
I guess, yea for me in bucking traditional gender roles in the workplace?
But, why does it matter?
My female student operators would have done just as well answering the phones – my only advantage over them is that I’m so freaking old that I know everything about the University. I’ve been told I have a pleasant voice and it kicks into a deeper range in the early morning. My female operators have ‘brighter’ voices, but either gets the job done.
It seems so weird to me that there are gender traditional jobs – when gender is so irrelevant. Plant a tree, pilot a rocket, stock a shelf, design a building – gender doesn’t matter in the least. I’m happy being a guy and being able to pee standing up is pretty awesome – but there’s not much of a job market for that skill.
For my part, I hired one female and one male operator to add to the schedule. He had experience and a pleasant voice – and that was good enough for me. As we have turn-over in the schedule, I’ll do my part to hire a better gender balance for that role. Maybe, in a small way, I can do a little bit to bring some gender equality to our workforce.