We got a sweet and simple reader question: Is it okay to bring in homemade cookies for the office when out-of-town boss is coming to town?
Let’s discuss — I’m curious what the readers have to say here.
The old advice here would be NO. Periodt. DO NOT DO DOMESTIC THINGS FOR YOUR COWORKERS LIKE BRINGING COOKIES. At worst, it may make you seem like you’re not “serious” about your career because you would prefer to be at home (“trad wife,” as the kids say); at best it may suggest you’re the “office mom” of the group and therefore a super candidate to do all of the menial, thankless, office housekeeping-type tasks around the office.
This may be changing, though, as new generations of bosses come into power, and as gender stereotypes evolve. So, here are some parameters to think about this:
Can You Bring Homemade Cookies For Your Boss?
Is baking and/or food part of your job? If so, sure.
Are you known for your cookies? Is this something that you’ve talked about with the boss in the past, e.g., have you mentioned how much you love baking in your free time? Have you baked them for office-related events in the past and your coworkers keep going on about your cookies? In that case, maybe bring cookies. (Alternately: Have you joked about Ted Lasso’s biscuits with the boss?)
Is everyone in the office bringing food? My gut here says that this is still going to fall across very gendered lines, even though yes, gender is a social construct. If the men aren’t bringing food, you as a woman should not (and certainly “the women of the office” should absolutely not bring food if the men aren’t).
Are your coworkers mostly male? If so, you may already feel like you’re swimming against the current, and it would be probably a bad idea to call attention to the fact that you’re female.
Would your boss have brought cookies if they were in your shoes? I’ve had the privilege to work with some amazing women bosses, and lots of female-heavy teams, and even then I don’t think I would have brought cookies, because the vast majority of my female bosses, having fought their way through the general casual misogyny of the office, would have followed the previous advice to not do domestic things at the office. If I had done it and brought cookies for them, they’d have rolled their eyes and assumed I was halfway on my way to quitting to be a stay-at-home mom. (At best, I would have gotten a stern lecture about how women cannot do those things in the workplace.)
One of my former bosses might have brought cookies for a superior, but my “yes” there is highly circumstantial: That boss was the editior-in-chief of Family Circle magazine (which ran cookie contests!) and went on to become the president of the James Beard Foundation — so food-related stuff was right up her alley, and related contextually to much of her work.
(This is the same boss who I once remembered as one of the most stylish women I’ve known, professionally!)
Readers, I can’t wait to hear what you say — should this reader bring homemade cookies for her boss? If your answer is that it depends, what factors would be most important to your analysis?
Stock photo via Stencil.