Time to crack the corporate champagne and have a pillow fight! Haven’t you heard? It’s Single Working Woman’s Week!
Yeah, right. Let’s get real, girls—every week is Single Working Woman’s Week. I mean, unless you are an heiress, princess or actress, most of us singletons don’t really have an option at the end of the day. Single slave or single starve.
Not that I’m complaining (honestly, I’d be too afraid to complain lest one of my working mother friends hear me—I’d never hear the end of how little I understand about REAL pressure and REAL responsibility). I actually enjoy ruling over my own little corporate kingdom, but I think it’s about time the work force recognizes that just because I’m not a mother or wife, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a life. Of course, I have loads of friends in the family-way, but since it’s my week and all, I thought I’d celebrate with a good, old fashion bitch session.
It seems every time someone needs to stay late or work weekends, we singles get the short end of the stick. There is this automatic assumption that Miss Childfree will step her stylish stiletto in to save the rest of the team, burdened as they are with more IMPORTANT commitments. Because of course anything we old maids have going on after hours couldn’t possibly be as pressing as picking up little Lizzie from her play date, tossing back a few at the PTA party, or catching the hubby’s softball game.
And how many times have I found myself riding the redeye solo because I don’t have a “better” half? Always safe to send the single girl—she obviously doesn’t have anything else to do. “We would love to travel on our day off and spend yet another sleepless night on a plane and handle the whole presentation without any support, but you see we have families (and you don’t!).”
Then there is the unwritten rule that the single working girl’s private life is fair game for public consumption around the office. Intrusive inquiries about your dating and/or sex habits are deemed appropriate unofficial agenda items at meetings, and regardless of work factors, everyone reads your man into your moods. Under stress from a deadline? Word spreads that there is trouble in paradise. On top of the world after a successful review? Everyone assumes you are getting some serious action.
So you see, it’s time to stop blaming The Man—it’s the married mob that’s trying to keep us work-a-day singletons down. It’s our week to rise up and celebrate our unburdened, unwedded bliss and remind our colleagues about all the things we bring to the conference table.
Remember, if you don’t have anything nice to say, my door is always open …
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