We had a morning tea at work today, new and don’t know a lot of people outside of my work. It was someone’s birthday and the executive bought a cake. He was talking about how his wife was coeliac and he’d brought a cake.
After the formalities I introduced myself to the executive, to meet a new face and say thanks for the cake as a fellow coeliac. I said it was nice of his wife to make a cake. It came from him talking about his wife and the cake in the same sentence and some silly assumption on my part….BUT
He made the cake, not his wife and he instantly called me out for gender stereotyping. I apologised and I think we laughed it off but it’s a bit of a blur. I do have a feeling he was genuinely offended. We changed the subject and chatted for a few minutes.
All day I have been feeling bad. Please tell me how bad this was – like mildly bad or like holy bageezus bad? Also, is my apology sufficient or should I make an effort to apologize again when I next see him?
For context, my household has almost no gender stereotyping roles – my husband is home 3 days a week with our child while I work, hours we share the cooking, washing and cleaning. Adding the context to say that I acknowledge my comment was bad, but definitely wasn’t intended from a place of assuming his wife cooks all their food.
TL;DR an executive brought a cake that he made and I assumed his wife made it because of her allergy (not because she’s a woman). He was offended.
Comments
Sounds like a him problem. People get offended to easily nowadays.
He has to get over himself.
Have your husband bake something and bring it in. Then if the exec assumes you made it you’ll be tit for tat. Checkmate.
I wouldn’t bring it up again. Just move on now. But I’d also take the lesson and try to ensure I didn’t do that in future.
seems like a pretty reasonable mixup based on his mention of his wife and her condition. the fact that the mistake happened to come across as gender stereotyping is an unfortunate coincidence, but i don’t think you should feel bad about it. if that was enough to offend him, then he might already have some underlying insecurity or a past negative experience influencing his reaction, which is not your fault.
you didn’t fuck up..you made a tiny mistake that was blown waaaaay outta proportion. that’s all. don’t stress it too much, he’s already losing sleep over it lol.
I think it’s more of an issue that you seem to assume his wife was female.
But, seriously, if he’s really offended he probably needs to get over himself. Perhaps you could recommend a therapist to him…
There should be no special feelings about this from either party. It was just a misunderstanding that got cleared up in the next sentence
If he got genuinely offended, that’s on him in my opinion.
Are you sure he wasn’t just teasing you for your assumption? I am a guy who knits and have had some funny reaction. I usually just laugh it off and joke about it. Like, if someone assumes the supplies I am buying are for my wife, I will go on about her being an awful knitter and completely unwilling to learn despite my efforts or something to that effect.
He overreacted, and you are thinking about it too hard. It will be fine. It’s really not a big deal.
I’m sorry, I’ll get called a horrible person, but I just do not want the added stress of having to ensure I remember everyone’s preferred pronoun that day. I have enough awful and I don’t need any extra added to my prison sentence called work.
Was he offended or did he think it was funny you assumed and was just ribbing you? Either way i guarantee he doesn’t remember the interaction anymore so neither should you
I doubt he really thought it was a big deal.
For context , given he is an exec, he’s probably doing the “visibly using my position to help create a diverse company culture” thing by calling anyone’s assumptions out, in front of other people.
He probably wasn’t truly offended but was using it as an opportunity to model diversity.
I wouldn’t apologise. If anything, if the moment comes up, id go with something like “hey you were so right to call me out for that dumb assumption, thanks for doing that! It’s actually funny because my husband stays home with the kids, out of everyone you’d think I would be able to not fall into those kinds of assumptions but it just goes to show how deep things lie…”
I can see how he would be bothered by someone assuming that, if he is quite successful and is now under the impression that people think his wife isn’t capable of the same success, and has just been relegated to “wifely” duties instead. Especially if there’s been a history of people making actually sexist comments to him about her before, it might be a sensitive issue. I don’t think it has to be a huge deal though.
I’m going to go against the comments here and say another quick apology and a compliment on the cake when you have the chance to see him wouldnt hurt. Even if he’s not that upset by it, there’s no harm in it if it will ease your anxiety.
If it were me I’d be slightly upset that you assumed i couldn’t have made the cake myself, he might have been extremely proud and excited to share a new skill with people! Your comment might have taken the wind out of his sails a little bit, not so much offended at the gender stereotyping.
But overall I think you are probably thinking about this way more than he is.
Ask him for the recipe and tell him the cake was amazing 😅
It’s not bad at all. At most, mildly bad. You’re overthinking it.
He didn’t specifically say he baked it, did he? I really don’t get this “getting offended by someone’s assumptions”. Our minds constantly assume stuff, it’s how we operate. As long as you don’t mean to be rude, there’s no reason to get offended.
Are you a woman?
IMO his reaction was defensive, he wanted it to be known he can bake.
It’s not a problem, forget about it, we all make faux pas, it no big deal.
You didn’t FU, imo. Dude might not have even made the cake. Some people just like messing with people to watch them squirm. Just be PC with this guy from now on, but I wouldn’t worry about it
unless he was messing with you , he seems to have a chip on his shoulder that needs to get over
Seems like an honest mistake to me. Almost everyone makes them. They probably encounter stuff that’s far worse, constantly.
Maybe best to have a follow up apology given his position over you, but I don’t think you should feel like a bad person.
Sucks it was an executive, but honest mistake right? Dont beat yourself up. Im sure you arent the first.