The Silent Assassins

...of course I wouldn't know. I'm a nice guy. I'm the quiet intellectual type. I try not to interact too much on a social level with coworkers.

Don't crap where you eat, that's what I say.

But I do like to secretly stay in touch with the stirrings at the office, being the keen student of Feminology that I am, and I've picked up a few clues on how women typically execute power and influence when it comes to dealing with guys they don't like at work.

Women are smaller than men, so most of the time they avoid face to face verbal confrontations for fear of their safety. (Makes perfect sense). So here's a few things they do at the sneaky subversive level.

Encircle you with neatness: If things are silent for an extended period between you and the gals at work, watch out for this one. It's often quite subtle. First you'll notice desks, trash cans, stacks of paper that are within close range of your desk become suddenly super neat. The neatness eventually migrates it's way to your corner, and you may even find your desk straightened up when you come in late one morning. What's the message here? Easy. The gals consider you to be such an obnoxious mess, they encircle you with order, kinda like the way white blood cells surround invading bacteria in the human body. Sounds crazy but it's true. Once they hit your part of the shop, it's like the marines hitting Okinawa beach...the end is near, and not even a well coordinated Banzai charge will save your sorry ass.

Policies and practices change to inconvenience you: This one's a lot easier to spot, but is done, again, in complete silence. The gals will usually huddle outside or in the back for a short time, like John Elway calling a quarterback sneak. What you'll immediately notice is new office rules designed to make your work day miserable. They'll move the fax machine over to their part of the office to make it clear they're never far away, they'll make you fill out forms in triplicate once they find out that hand writing is your weakness, -like a defensive lineman going deliberately for an injured players groin muscle in a designed-to-destroy premeditated tackle.

The strategy here is to create so many rules that you'll eventually trip up and get fired for non-compliance. Shhhhh!! You won't hear a sound even when the door is whackin' your backside on the way to the unemployment office!

Bring in the boyfriend: This one's done to death, and it ain't silent, neither. If a gal finds you intimidating they flash a little hubby muscle to make it clear they have armed backup to take you out if you push them too far.

If a guy is overly aggressive at work, who can blame them?

But if you're truly innocent, the best way to deal with this intimidation (which is what it can often turn into) is to use the word 'lawyer' and 'sue for workplace intimidation' in your phone conversations loud enough so they can hear you. It works. Mr. Tough Guy will back off.

Truthfully, it never happened to me, but I saw a gal get fired for having her beau threaten another guy for challenging her authority. Truth.

But the big question is, how does it get to this point?

The biggest reason is in power, or the lack of it, or you being dumb enough to challenge it. Women scare easy. They have fought long and hard to get their share of the juice, and they don't want to lose it to Tommy Lee Testosterone.

Again, understood.

The other reason ain't so easy to swallow. A gal might have a thing for you, and woe to the hapless stiff who rejects her. As many orange-jump-suited-luke-warm-Romeos have found out, there be no fury like a women spurned. I can't tell you how many times I have observed this phenomena, as often among married gals as single! Delicious, scandalous, crying shame!

Now that I've given these big secrets away, I probably set up my own demise...Shhh!...waitaminit! I just got a memo from the gals to move my car to the way, way back gravel part of the parking lot...

...did I mention that none of this stuff ever happened to me?