Can You Bring Homemade Cookies for Your Boss?

We acquired a candy and easy reader query: Is it okay to herald selfmade cookies for the workplace when out-of-town boss is coming to city?

Let’s talk about — I’m curious what the readers should say right here.

The outdated recommendation right here can be NO. Periodt. DO NOT DO DOMESTIC THINGS FOR YOUR COWORKERS LIKE BRINGING COOKIES. At worst, it could make you appear to be you’re not “severe” about your profession since you would like to be at residence (“trad spouse,” as the children say); at finest it could recommend you’re the “office mom” of the group and subsequently an excellent candidate to do the entire menial, thankless, office housekeeping-type tasks across the workplace.

This can be altering, although, as new generations of bosses come into energy, and as gender stereotypes evolve. So, listed below are some parameters to consider this:

Can You Carry Home made Cookies For Your Boss?

Is baking and/or meals a part of your job? In that case, certain.

Are you recognized on your cookies? Is that this one thing that you simply’ve talked about with the boss prior to now, e.g., have you ever talked about how a lot you’re keen on baking in your free time? Have you ever baked them for office-related occasions prior to now and your coworkers hold occurring about your cookies? In that case, possibly convey cookies. (Alternately: Have you ever joked about Ted Lasso’s biscuits with the boss?)

Is everybody within the workplace bringing meals? My intestine right here says that that is nonetheless going to fall throughout very gendered strains, though sure, gender is a social assemble. If the boys aren’t bringing meals, you as a girl mustn’t (and definitely “the ladies of the workplace” ought to completely not convey meals if the boys aren’t).

Are your coworkers principally male? In that case, chances are you’ll already really feel such as you’re swimming in opposition to the present, and it could be most likely a foul thought to name consideration to the truth that you’re feminine.

Would your boss have introduced cookies in the event that they had been in your footwear? I’ve had the privilege to work with some superb ladies bosses, and plenty of female-heavy groups, and even then I don’t suppose I’d have introduced cookies, as a result of the overwhelming majority of my feminine bosses, having fought their method by the final informal misogyny of the workplace, would have adopted the earlier recommendation to not do home issues on the workplace. If I had completed it and introduced cookies for them, they’d have rolled their eyes and assumed I used to be midway on my option to quitting to be a stay-at-home mother. (At finest, I’d have gotten a stern lecture about how ladies can’t do these issues within the office.)

One in all my former bosses would possibly have introduced cookies for a superior, however my “sure” there may be extremely circumstantial: That boss was the editior-in-chief of Household Circle journal (which ran cookie contests!) and went on to turn out to be the president of the James Beard Basis — so food-related stuff was proper up her alley, and associated contextually to a lot of her work.

(This is identical boss who I as soon as remembered as one of the most stylish women I’ve known, professionally!)

Readers, I can’t wait to listen to what you say — ought to this reader convey selfmade cookies for her boss? In case your reply is that it relies upon, what elements can be most vital to your evaluation?

Inventory picture by way of Stencil.