It's Claire as mud

At my lovely friend’s birthday celebrations I found myself cornered by her friend Sara*, who had perhaps enjoyed a few too many shandies – evidenced by her shrieking loudly and tunelessly along to SingStar and admitting, without coercion, she loved Celine Dion (sorry, I just vomited in my mouth a little).  She had taken it upon herself to grill me as to when I was having children.  Despite sending out ‘save me’ signals to Mr C, he did not come to my rescue– what good are ya?!  I had met Sara about three or four times before this and I have friends I have known for a lot longer than even three or four years who wouldn’t ask this question.

Her heart might go on, but so will my upchucking if she’s doesn’t shut her trap.

Now, I understand that when a lady reaches the big 30, as Sara recently had, she might ask herself the question ‘do I want to have children?’, if she hasn’t done so already.  But just because you’re asking yourself that question, does not mean you get to ask EVERYONE that question.

Not entirely unfamiliar with this line of enquiry, I was quite pleased to have a good excuse to not give an actual answer.  It was exactly a week after some minor surgery on my stomach/womby bits, so I told Sara Stickybeak that it wasn’t really high on my priority list at the moment, and I was just concentrating on recovering.

‘You’re 32!  You don’t have time to think about it!  Your eggs are shrivelling as we speak.  Is there something wrong with you?  Why don’t you want to have children?  You’ll regret it if you don’t!  I know heaps of people who had the condition you had, and they had no trouble getting pregnant.’

Well thank you Dr Can’t-handle-my-grog, would you also like to find out how old I was when Aunt Flo first came to town and if I have an innie or an outtie?

I was rather taken aback by her interest in my reproductive plans, but also quite amazed at her ability to know how empty my life would be without children, considering she didn’t have any of her own.  I was also concerned that I must be presenting myself as a prize-winning nincompoop if she honestly thought I had no idea that a female’s fertility declines with age.  Thank you for alerting me to the fact I’m on the double black diamond ski run to barren-town, Captain Obvious.

It seems to me this type of questioning is becoming more common, but thought of as acceptable if it’s prefaced with ‘I don’t mean to pry…’ or ‘I know it’s none of my business, but…’ You’re right!  It is none of your business.  Why do you need to know how much I earn each year, how I voted or if I’m a devout Shintoist?  I will not give you that information unless you pay me $80 as part of a focus group or if I drink the better part of a bottle of Pinot Grigio and you don’t even ask.  It’s in the same ball park as: ‘No offense, but… you’re fat/you smell/ I hate you/ did you realise your hair-do resembles that of a person who ran through a bush backwards?’

Pinot grigio? Or truth serum?

It’s a slightly different category, but another ‘get your nose out’ scenario is when those bloody annoying men – yes, I’m generalising, but it is mainly men in my experience – who insist on directing you when you park your car.  I don’t believe that it is your trolley I am about to run into so please bugger off and annoy someone else with your ‘almost, almost, now turn right hard.’  I believe they just roam shopping centre car parks directing women on how to park – probably because they don’t have a woman at home directing them how to dress themselves.  Boardshorts are not appropriate to wear anywhere sand is not found.

Another example:  after hearing the lovely news that my boss gave birth to a little girl over the weekend, I began spreading the goss around work come Monday morning.  On the phone to IT officer, Abby, she proceeded to ask if my boss had her baby vaginally.  Ew.  I know how babies come out.  I have no issue with the word vagina (he he).  But seriously, we are not gynecologists, we don’t need to use that word in our work environment.  And I generally don’t like to spend any time thinking about my boss’s bajingo.   I told Abby I didn’t know and she then asked if I could find out.  No!  I will not be asking the person who keeps me in gainful employment how her hoo-ha is after pushing out a munchkin.  Bleccch.

So in the famous words of Kim, of Kath and Kim fame, you know your beeswax?  Why doncha mind it?  And in keeping with the reoccurring (sorry) Kath and Kim theme, what nosy parker questions really get up your goat?

*Sara is not her real name, but Nosy-Nelly-with-a-City Hall-sized-biological-clock doesn’t roll so trippingly off the tongue.

Nothing like a bit of Dutch courage in the pub to pull up a dirty pervert for gluing their eyes to your mammaries, but it’s slightly different in the workplace.

Hot damn, there are a lot of perverts wandering the halls of workplaces everywhere, but I can’t really go chucking my daily can of Diet Coke in an inappropriate boobwatcher’s face in the office, whereas I wouldn’t hesitate dumping my Corona on their head if we were at the Story Bridge Hotel.

I’m not exactly giving Pamela Anderson a run for her money, but far out, anyone would have thought I had that day’s footy scores tattooed on my boosies by the way a former workmate used to stare at them. I’m a gals’ gal, so wasn’t super comfortable about a secondment to a team full of men in the first place, but Pervy McStaresalot certainly did not help the situation.

In fact, his line of vision was so permanently stuck on my chest it became a rather large workplace health and safety issue, because I threw my back out from crossing my arms so much at work. Poohead. You owe me about $300 in physiotherapy fees.

Maybe she lost her keys in there?

I live a relatively quiet life with the ladies – they don’t get out much, and we all like it that way – so it wasn’t like I was flinging them around or leaning over his shoulder in low cut tops. I don’t even own a low cut top.

The poor fella acted like these were the first set he’d ever seen and all he had to do was look down or in a mirror to see a set not that dissimilar in size to mine. Also, there was a rather curvaceous lass on the same floor who defied the laws of physics by not falling over every time she stood up – so why oh why was he looking at my moderately sized and therefore not so fun bags every time I had to talk to him?

Even though we sat in the same cubicle, I rather lazily and cowardly resorted to sending him emails so I didn’t have to talk to him. I also avoided having to stand in front of him wherever I could lest I trip and inadvertently find myself in an accidental motorboating scenario – shudder.

But it’s still a fact that indirect sexual harassment is alive and well in the modern work place. My delightful friend Elisa relayed a story about a work trip interstate, where a rather uncomfortable work dinner scenario played itself out.

After a lovely main course and a couple of friendly glasses of wine with her interstate counterparts and their national manager, it came time to discuss the most important matter of business – dessert. Strangely, her boss insisted on sharing a dish with her, but Elisa tried not to think too much of it, until her boss defined his idea of sharing a plate meant prodding her mouth with the pudding on a spoon toddler aeroplane style.

Figuring it would be less embarrassing to choke the mousse down, rather than wear it home, Elisa did so, but losing all appetite in the process. She then endured ongoing uncomfortable comments from her boss for the rest of the evening and unrelenting teasing from her workmates for the rest of her visit to the national offices.

But how do you address these thinly veiled crack-ons without looking like a whinging woman or drawing other workmates’ attention to the situation? (Aside… why is it women only being defined as whingers?  Grrrr.)

…except if you’re Elisa’s boss, then absolutely not!

Well, you don’t. I’m sure my boss would have appreciated me storming into his office and saying ‘Alan*, unless you start paying Stuart* in $5 notes, so he can start shoving them into my clothing, I cannot continue to work here – my boosies and I cannot work under these conditions.’Because the fact of the matter is, apart from feeling quite embarrassed and finding it necessary to wear a sports bra and a skivvy to work every day, despite it being the middle of summer, it wasn’t really stopping me from doing my job.

So I am ashamed to say I let down the sisterhood by doing nothing.  I just let good old Pervy burn holes into my Hooty McBoobs and silently willed him to go blind in the process.  My secondment finally ended and I gratefully went back to my usual workplace, where 95% of my team carried the same booby burden as I did.

So, have you ever been on the receiving end of a slimy workplace mofo’s advances?  Or, more interestingly, have you ever been the instigator?