The Problem with Women

The other day a friend asked me what I thought of someone he was thinking of hiring. I’d worked briefly with this guy, whom I’ll call P, and—unusually, since I’ve really liked just about everyone I’ve ever worked with—I had a low opinion of him. 

When P was a junior editor in a remote office at a place I worked, he had once torn a piece I published to shreds in a long, barbed memo to the editor-in-chief. The piece was already published; to change it we’d have to issue corrections. When researchers, editors, and I worked overtime to respond to his complaints, we discovered that none of them had merit. He hadn’t found so much as a typo. The memo had been written not to help the collective enterprise, but as an elaborate performance of authority; it came off as condescension, bitterness, and gratuitous character assassination. He had alienated his colleagues and wasted our time in a way that threw his professionalism and integrity into question. 

My friend groaned while I told the story. But he had evidently liked P when they’d met in person. “Do you think he has a problem with women?” my friend wondered.

Now I was quiet. The dread problem with women.