Women, you and the office:
facing the truth. And

what to do about it.

By Judylaine Fine

ngrateful bitch! You’d gone out of your way to be decent

to her—turned a blind eye to all those one-and-a-half-hour

lunches, the endless telephone calls from the boyfriend,
the long absences while she chatted with the girls down the
corridor. And now! This is the thanks you get—a letter of resigna-
tion slammed on your desk. Even then, you’d done the honorable
thing—offered her more money. She’d grinned—or was it a
triumphant sneer?—and said no thanks, she was going anyway.

Five months. The one before had stayed seven. And the one
before that only two. You can’t win. They come, they go. And
you have to start again.

Well, maybe it’s time you faced the truth. You are the reason
the women who work for you quit on you. They walk out because.
they don’t respect you and they’re not satisfied with their jobs.
And they'll continue to walk out on you again and again and
again—unless you wake up to what’s really going on. It’s a whole
new ball game, and if you want to get on with the women who
work for—and with—you, you’d better learn the rules.

Most men in business today haven’t a clue what the women
who work for them want. “There’s a whole new wave of women
in business today,” says Herman Smith, a Toronto management
recruiting consultant. “They no longer pride themselves exclusively
on working for an individual boss. Women today are interested
in the goals of the corporation. It’s not just money that they are
demanding; they want to stand up and be counted. Most employers
don’t realize this.”

But they do realize one thing. High annual turnover costs a
lot of time and money. Paying for ads, interviewing applicants
and teaching new girls the old ropes isn’t the best way to fill your
day. Unless you happen to be running a job placement service.

Honey Davis owns a female Saga agency in downtown
Toronto. Like many women, she has returned to (continued 9)