Why I don't like most women.

Apparently a large portion of women are born with a gene where they like to bash each other behind their backs.

If you want a couple of  perfect examples, here they are.

Or these:

These ladies remind me I why I generally don't like working with women.

I found my elementary and junior high school years filled with girls that could not be friends with more than one person.  If there are three junior high girls together, I guarantee you two of them will gang up on the third.  It is a trait that seems exclusive to the female gender and one that alot of women never outgrow.

So I can say I "generally" don't like working with women.  I have to stress the "generally" because the field I am in is mainly dominated by men, so most of the women that I do and have worked with over several years outgrew that junior high mentality and behave more like men do.  They can be good friends with lots of people and they don't go get their feelings hurt and try to get the other women to on "their side" in an argument. 

I hate to admit it, but I'm hooked on Real Housewives, which seems weird to me since I hate women who nitpick behind other women's backs. I don't know, maybe it makes me feel superior to them even with all their money and glamour because I have long outgrown the need to take sides on stupid women arguments.

One of my very best friends for over 25 years now started like this.  We would go on break and there was a third girl who was friends with Debbie.  I could tell this third girl didn't like it that Debbie and I were friends, it was subtle at first.

One day I sat down in the breakroom at our normal time and in walked Maggie.  Instead of sitting at the same table like we normally did, she sat at the other table.  I could see what was happening.  When Debbie came down, she would be forced to "choose" which was her better friend.  I remember thinking how ridiculous it was given that jr.high was years before.  I could see Debbie's confusion when she came down and she finally sat down with Maggie.  Did I interpret that as Debbie being Maggie's friend over me?  Nope, I thought Debbie assessed which friend would deal with it as an adult and not a teenager.

I made up my mind to not ever say anything to Debbie about how ridiculous this jr. high girl mentality was.  She was a smart lady, she could figure it out eventually.

A couple weeks later, Debbie was ordering something from a Hanes Catalog.  All the women normally made it one order so we could get a better discount.  Since Debbie worked close to me, we had our orders ready and Maggie came by with the catalog.  When Debbie told her she could add to the order so we could get a larger discount, Maggie decided she didn't want to place her order with mine.  OK, we were only in our 20's, but geez, how immature can you get?

It wasn't long afterward that Maggie and Debbie's friendship cooled significantly when they went out with their husbands and Maggie thought it was her opportunity to bash on me.  Now remember, I had not said one word to Debbie what I saw was going on with this jr. high girl rivalry that I refused to participate in.  Debbie told me later that after listening to Maggie drone on about me for 15 minutes, Debbie told her that I was her friend and that she would not listen to anything else.  Maggie wasn't very happy.

It was only after that night that Debbie ever mentioned to me how she felt she was being pushed by Maggie to not be friends with me and I finally told her that I realized it was going on for months.

So,  that's why I would prefer to work with men.  By and large, men don't play those stupid jr high girl games and more than a majority of the women do.  Any women I encounter that play that game are quickly eliminated from my list of people I associate with.    Debbie and I are like sisters over 25 years later.  And I have a number of women I have worked with over the years that I dearly love and will remain friends with forever.   All of them left jr high school behind them years ago. 

I choose my friends wisely.