What's on Katie's Mind? Katie: The artist, teacher, and social commentator.

How to Keep People From Stealing Your Food at Work

I was having lunch with a couple teachers in the teacher work room.  Another male teacher walked in took bottled water out of a bag in the bottom of the fridge and said, “I guess it’s unclaimed, so I claim it.”  This made me think about the differences between men and women.  There was another female teacher there and I said to her, “You would never take anything out of the fridge that didn’t belong to you, right?”  She said, “Of course not.”  So the other male teachers in the room pointed out that if something has been in there a long time and it’s unused, they would all eat it.  I told them, “So that’s why I was losing my bottled water a couple years ago.  I now drink it at room temperature and keep in my office.”  What this discussion meant for me was there is a vast difference between men and women and what they think about their place in the world.

The men felt entitled to take whatever was in the fridge as long as it had been unclaimed for awhile.  It almost sounded like they look in the fridge daily and make a mental note of what’s been in there for awhile.  Women on the other hand would never take somebody else’s food for several reasons.  One, they think it’s stealing.  They know it doesn’t belong to them and they don’t feel “entitled” to it.  Two, they don’t know what’s in it, who has touched it or how old it is and finally there is that whole germ phobia thing!

All of this made me think about men, women, politics and living.  Living with ten brothers I know the women in our family took second place at best.  The men always came first in everything.  When my oldest brother brought his future wife home she couldn’t believe all of the baked goods my mom had laid out on the counter tops.  She wondered what they were all for.  She thought maybe a bake sale or something.  By the end of the night she knew it was for all those boys.  They ate until the cows came home, all kinds of pies, bread, kolaches, all of it was gone.  My mother was a saint cooking for them.  When the boys were young we lived on a farm and they worked out in the barn.  My older sisters worked in the house trying to keep it clean with all those boys.  One day my parents were gone and my older sister Colleen was in charge.  She had just washed the kitchen floor and Paul, who was younger than my sister came in with his dirty boots from the barn.  She told him not to walk on her drying kitchen floor as she had just mopped it.  He ignored her as men are apt to do and walked on it any way.  Colleen took a broom and cracked him on the head with it.  I think she thought that was the only way to knock some sense into him.  I think the broom broke but that defiance that my brother showed came out in many ways from the males in our household.  One of the boys was five, who will remain nameless to protect him from adult embarrassment, just in case he finds this blog, was too lazy to go inside to take off all of his snow equipment; you know the old snow suit, etc.  So, he would soil his pants so his older sisters would have to clean him up when he came in from playing.  Luckily for me I was the youngest in the family.  He also had the nerve to tell mom that he would kick in the china hutch glass if he couldn’t have his way.  He didn’t get his way and the glass was gone.  None of us girls would ever have acted that way.  Now plenty of those ten boys would never have done that either but it’s interesting that some boys grow into men that feel “entitled” to certain things that don’t necessarily belong to them.

My brothers as youngsters and even as adults have never shown great respect for their sisters.  I don’t know why.  I just know that I have been disrespected in many ways by them over the years, not all of them, but a lot of them.  I don’t think they are so different from most men.  Some men from a younger generation that are growing up today may be different.  They help out in the house and all of that but from my stand point I still see them as thinking certain things can belong to them after a certain amount of time.  You know if it’s unclaimed or something.  I think when boys are young the whole world revolves around them and they grow up thinking that the world is their oyster for them to pluck whatever they want from it.  Women on the other hand are usually brought up to nurture.  We don’t think about our needs like most men do so it affects our choices.  The effect of all of this is that women do not feel that they are entitled to anything that they don’t work for themselves.

If you think back to the 2008 election many of us saw the bullying of both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.  Both of these women seem to make men a little bit crazy.  I can’t quite figure out why.  Even though their basic politics are different, they are both strong women that carry themselves in a confident way.  They both are competent politicians that have proven records of that competency whether you agree with them or not.  So why were they able to be bullied by the press and the other politicians?  Why in this age was this allowed?  I’m still scratching my head over it but I have a better understanding after the male teachers were able to take what they wanted from the fridge and justify doing so.

I think that male politicians will take what they want from the election because they feel entitled to it.  Who is this woman, you know Hillary or Sarah, who so daringly tried to take what rightfully, belongs to them?  She’s just a woman.  Men know the difference because they have been entitled all of their lives.  When Hillary Clinton thought she could run for the office of the president she didn’t count on the male “club” of senators and congressmen that secretly went to Barack to get him to run.  She wasn’t part of that male club so no matter what kind of networking she was used to she could not possibly be part of that club.  The club allowed a few women in only because they could “control” them.  One that comes to mind is Claire McCaskill who openly admitted to supporting Barack because her teenage children wanted her to do so.  I remember my teenage son wanting me to do a lot of stuff, you know because everyone else is doing it.  I was a real spoil sport as a parent!  This boy’s “club” used their powerful influence to make Barack president.  They didn’t want a woman and they surely didn’t want Hillary Clinton.  They allowed Barack Obama and his cohorts to treat Hillary with much disrespect by using everything from music to racism.  Nobody screamed, “Foul!”  On the other hand Barack could do anything he wanted from playing foul music about “bitches”; you know that was secretly Hillary, to hanging out with Reverend Wright to having Bill Ayers host his first fund raiser for getting into politics.  Nobody cared because “boys will be boys”.  That attitude has let many men stay in politics when women can’t even get their shoe through the door.

After the primary and Sarah Palin was brought on the scene much energy was spent trying destroy her character.  Men were scared of this woman that could draw crowds bigger than Obama.  She was made into a cartoon figure.  Men acted like they would like sleeping with her but wouldn’t want to have her as Vice President.  She was totally disrespected by the media and the other male politicians and even the people John McCain supplied on her staff.  Is there any wonder why more women aren’t in this dirty game of politics?  Personally, I think our country is sick of the same old politicians and maybe it’s time to get some women in that don’t necessarily feel like they are entitled to everything they see.  Maybe more women of the caliber of Hillary and Sarah would think twice about spending my money because they wouldn’t feel entitled to it.  I’m just thinking out loud here.  The men have been running the show for years whether they be Democrats or Republicans and frankly I don’t think they’re doing all that well.  I would love to see more women in politics.  I know they will think twice before they get us into some stupid war and they’ll think twice before they send my kid to war or your kid to war.  They will also think twice before they waste my money on some stupid program that some lobbyist dreamed up.  They will do this because they don’t feel entitled to anything they see in the fridge.  No, women will think twice before they grab anything free out of our fridge.  That’s the kind of person I want to see in politics!