“Would you mind stocking the breakroom?”
“Could you take notes during the meeting?”
“We need someone to onboard the new hire – could you do that?”
Whether you’ve just started as a clerk or are the CEO of the company, if you’re a woman – especially a black woman – people expect you to do routine, time-consuming tasks that no one else wants to do – most often without reward.
I know this firsthand. About a month after I started work at a non-profit, my boss frequently began to pass extra assignments to me. Initially, I felt flattered that he trusted my judgement and assumed the opportunities would speak well for me in future promotion considerations and during potential negotiations for a bump in salary.
It wasn’t until the second quarterly employee performance review that I received a rude wake-up call – I got a slight pay increase but was passed over for a promotion. Yes, I was pitching in. Yes, my superiors saw all that I was doing and they thought it was cool. But I was slacking significantly in my core job requirements because I had been saddled with so many other (unvalued) additional responsibilities – a situation that would cause me to drown in work and finally quit the job.