Working Girl Wednesdays: "Don't Reach for the Check with Your Limp Little Arm"

Welcome to Working Girl Wednesdays! Need advice on handling the complexities of the modern workplace? Well, fret no more! Whether it’s a senior partner making a move or a catty co-worker plotting for your plum position, Helen Gurley Brown’s 1964 book Sex and the Office has a solution. Every Wednesday on Glossed Over, I’ll present a new tip from the legendary editor of Cosmopolitan. Is her advice utterly ridiculous or startlingly prescient? You decide!

Whether you’re looking to steal from your employer for fun, profit, or revenge, Helen Gurley Brown has some advice for you! But first, some scolding:

If you don’t overreach a little bit, you are probably a silly and a sucker—yet stealing is stealing. If you say that the lunch cost ten-seventy-five when it actually cost five-fifty you are lying, and lying is bad for you. When you operate like a South American dictator, it hurts inside, and that takes some of the fun out of it. Yes it does!...(Never mind what the company can live with. They can live with just about anything, I’ve decided. They’re miserable paranoids about raises and indulgent sugar daddies about expenses.)

Speaking of expenses:

In taking a man to lunch, I suggest you not reach for the check with your limp little arm in his presence—unless you never had any intention of paying. Even if he’s deserving, there’s just hardly a man alive who feels comfortable while a lady hassles with money or even hassles the check.

Next week: The advice about paying for lunch might come in handy. HGB tackles “what happens when lightning strikes”—the office affair!

Comments

[Athena]

Men who are uncomfortable with women who are more than capable with money are chumps.

[Becca]

it's like I'm reading a foreign language when I read HGB.

[Erika]

If I really did have such a limp little arm - presumably from eating delicate mouthfuls of salad recommended by HGB at some point - I suspect I couldn't manage to reach for anything.

If ya don't like me paying for a meal don't eat with me!

[Rathbone]

She's writing in the 60s. But I think she's got a point about the lunch check. Just arrange to take care of it before, so you don't have to have that awkward tussle. HGB was an absolute pioneer in the world of women who worked at real jobs. Show some respect.

[Athena]

"HGB was an absolute pioneer in the world of women who worked at real jobs. Show some respect."

Oh, that's rich! There can't really be people out there who believe HGB and her fluffy "advice" should be taken seriously, right? I don't care if this was written in the 60s, it is still absurd. A pioneer would be encouraging working women to do more than stroke a mens egos while eating dainty, lady-like salads.

[Erika]

Nope, sorry, I'm not buying the idea that HGB needs to be respected for such abysmal advice. She may well have been a pioneer - I'm not going to debate that here - but her views with respect to office conduct for women are nothing other than excruciatingly dated, patronizing, and downright funny!