the times | Monday May 2 2022 3times2
writing job. And why did I walk out?
Partly because I had made myself
unpopular with both sexes by
behaving in what I considered to be
my authentic, slightly masculine self.
It included an awful lot of saying
“no”. Attend a union meeting? No,
thanks. Go to a birthday drinks? No,
thanks. Cover a piece of work for a
colleague as a favour? No, thanks.
I once had a ballsy confrontation in
a newsroom about changes to my
writing that I didn’t like. Did it win
me respect from anyone? Nope.
A few years later, I was asked to do
some freelance work for a magazine
and I said sure, but told them that I
would need to be paid more than
they were offering. “Wow,” came
the reply from the female
commissioning editor. I never
heard from them again.
Even though I have seen my
very successful husband
behaving in similar ways,
nobody liked this behaviour
from me and it didn’t get me
anywhere. I would argue
that it still wouldn’t.
So while it’s all very
well for women deep
into their successful
careers to tell other
women to say no to
things, those with
more emotional
smarts than me
see very
quickly, upon
entering the
workplace,
that to get
ahead at work
you do, in fact,
need to be agreeable
in a multifaceted way.
And is it really true
that NPTs have no value to
a career? Sure, they may
have no short-term reward
or promotable value. But just
as a man can leverage the
hell out of unloading a
dishwasher, he will, if pressed,
do the same if he has to
organise the Christmas party.
Don’t give him the chance,
I say.I
f you are a woman and you
work in an office, the chances
are you are doing a vast
number of NPTs. NPTs, or
non-promotable tasks, is an
umbrella term for all the
thankless jobs that are critical to
making an organisation run
smoothly but do nothing for your
career. And, like the woeful
gender divide when it comes to
class repping among parents and
domestic tasks in the home, the
lion’s share of this drudgery falls
to the ladies.
Why? Come on, we all know
why. It’s because men have a
higher tolerance for squalor than
women. It’s because society has,
since the start of time, regarded
this sort of thing as “women’s
work” and that’s a big tanker to
turn around. And it’s because
when it comes down to it, men
don’t care if Janet from HR gets
nothing more than a triple pack of
Stabilo Boss highlighters for her
leaving gift.
Four American female academics
disagree that the tanker can’t do a
U-turn and they have written a book,
called The No Club. It emerged from
meet-ups between Linda Babcock,
Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund and
Laurie Weingart — and trial lawyer
MJ Tocci, who sadly died in 2014
— where they discussed the extra
work they were expected to do,
coining “NPTs”.
In an interview yesterday, they
encouraged women not to fall prey to
the old “but you’re so good at
washing up!” flattery.
While I completely agree that
office “housekeeping” work falling to
women is as unfair as literal
housekeeping work falling to
women, I also know the
terrible truth that has got in
the way of change in the past
and may well in the future.
It is this: if you are a
woman, behaving in a
masculine way in the office
— be it refusing to take on
NPTs, speaking plainly,
asking for more money or
just being disagreeable
— is a high-risk
strategy. And it’s not
just because men
don’t like it.
When I was in my
twenties I took on
NPTs when I was the
lowliest person in the
office, so the
cafetière explosion
in the kitchenette or
the whip-round was
unequivocally my
job. As soon as I no
longer had to do this
stuff I stopped,
precisely because I
saw no men my age
putting up with it.
But my career
progression, in an
office at least, halted
in 2007 when I
walked out of myI’m Mr Bulk-buy
They are
the world’s
largest
seller of
toilet
paper and
diamonds
Harry Wallop stocks
up at CostcoThe large sizes of most things it sells
are both the secret to its low prices
and, equally, how it has become such a
money-making machine. If you want
maple syrup — and Costco’s is
excellent — you need to buy a litre of
it. True, it is about half the price of
Tesco per litre, but most people don’t
have storage for jugs that size. Tiptree
marmalade, again, is half the price of
Ocado, but comes in 908g jars. Tilda
basmati rice is sold only in 10kg sacks,
mince is sold in 2.2kg packs and loo
roll — its most famous product —
comes in crates of 40 rolls.
As Roberts says, you can only save
money if you have the cash to bulk-
buy; those in dire straits don’t have a
spare £14.74 to drop on two score of
loo rolls at a time. You also need, he
says, “a chest freezer, a massive fridge,
a garage or shed and a large family”. I
don’t have a chest freezer but I do
have a cellar and four children.
For Americans, of course, super-
sized boxes of breakfast cereal and
tubs of salted cashews larger than your
head are par for the course. Christina
Willson, 39, is an American expat who
came over here seven years ago as the
wife of an American church pastor.
She lives in Manchester and is a
regular Costco shopper. “We get a lot
of American fun things that we miss,
like those big jars of pretzels — which
I don’t even buy in America, but it
reminds me of home — red vine
candies, pancake mix. And in the
Manchester store, there’s a strange,
comforting smell that reminds me of
my childhood. Maybe it’s just the
hotdogs,” she laughs. “Most of the
Americans we know over here all have
Costco memberships.”
To get your hands on a precious
membership card, you have to be a
business owner, allowing you to signup to be a trade member, which is
cheaper at £22 plus VAT. Or you can
join as an individual, which is £28 plus
VAT, if you are a current or retired
civil servant, teacher, policeman,
airline worker, dentist, barrister,
solicitor, Post Office employee,
anyone working in the NHS,
finance or insurance. And,
oddly, members of the
media. Bingo.
The company, globally,
makes an astonishing
$3.8 billion from
membership fees; indeed,
analysts believe it makes
more profit from selling
memberships than
groceries. Partly as a result,
the company is worth an
astonishing $245 billion —
that’s nearly a quarter of a
trillion dollars, ten times
the value of Tesco.
Am I really saving money
by switching from Ocado?
It’s too early to say. Of
course, it’s impractical to do
your weekly shop there. It’s
not just the 500g packs of butter that
are too big for our butter dish, it’s the
fact that it doesn’t stock all sorts of
basics such as parsley, Nairn’s
oatcakes, deodorant or Campari (yes,
an essential in Wallop Towers).
But on the big dull items, the pasta,
rice, washing tablets and tinned goods,
I know we are saving serious amounts.
It does mean, however, that my cellar
resembles a warehouse run by the
Disasters Emergency Committee on
the Polish/Ukraine border. To get
my bike, I have to vault over sacks of
rice and industrial quantities of
kitchen roll. But, to stick one in the
eye of inflation-loving Rishi Sunak,
it’s worth it.KATIE WILSON FOR THE TIMES; ALAMYShould women say no to
office ‘housework’? I did
by Esther Walker
Esther Walker