Hot for Hobbies
If I’ve learnt one thing from Love On The Spectrum, it’s that building connections comes from finding common interests. In a work environment that has few people who look and act like you, how do you build the bonds that can help advance your career? Are there hobbies that are more valuable than others, and at what point do you subject yourself to golf for the greater good of having friends during lunch hour?
Fitting in at work can be reminiscent of a high school comedy: the preps sit here, the goths are in the smokers pit, and the band geeks are all fucking in the music room. As a young woman working in sport media sales, I often feel like the I’m the nerdy girl walking into the jock’s liar. I didn’t even grow up watching sports. My frame of reference for fandom is anything I’ve learnt in the last year coupled with a patriotic bias to the Ottawa Senators who, in my opinion, have the worst jerseys of any team ever. They are an affront to my aesthetic, but I guess you can’t choose your family…
When your background is so jarringly different to that of your coworkers, finding points of commonality can be tricky. Luckily, I also come with a slew of weird interests in my arsenal. This newsletter is evidence enough that my pool of potential conversation topics is vast.
Having hobbies is undeniably great. There are studies that show maintaining extracurricular activities can help your overall mood, stress-levels, and heart rate. Moreover, hobbies help foster a healthy work-life balance. By investing time into passion projects, people are able to better handle job stress and build skills needed to advance in their careers. One article even suggests companies like Google are encouraged to hire candidates with extremely niche hobbies. Love to glass blow? Perfect! Building a city model out of lego? Cool! The more specific and the more passionate the better.
Showcasing a wide array of knowledge and skills makes candidates stand out. I, for one, would rather hire someone with a pension for bird watching than someone who sits around on their phone all day. Having passions makes people more human, and, by extension, more relatable.
"A Friend In Need" - C.M. Coolidge
Six Pack of One, Half a Dozen of Another
That said, there are hobbies that are more valuable than others in the context of office bonding. Most of my coworkers, for example, bond over four things: beer, poker, golf, and going to the cottage.
Beer and poker are interesting hobbies for one main reason: they are also serious vices. In a corporate setting, being able to talk shop about your breweries and big blinds is a huge upside. In fact, it’s the main way I’m able to get in with the boys outside of work. What always boggles my mind though is that in another context these “interests” are problematic.
In my spare time I’m part of a dance club that does sexy high heel classes. It’s fun, empowering, challenging, and makes me look hot as hell, but it also seems taboo to bring up in an office filled with predominantly men. It’s too racy, too sexy, to not-the-norm to talk about around the water cooler. Instead, we talk about our drunk nights and major L’s on PokerStars.
Why is it that I’m more comfortable chatting about gambling than I am about my dancing? As far as I know dance is the only one of these hobbies that doesn't have an addiction group associated with it. Shouldn't it be more shameful to brag about your financial loses than my banging body rolls?
Old Ladies Club
Wouldn’t it be nice if that existed? Maybe then my female empowerment hobbies would seem more kosher. Alas, the Old Boys Club is still driving our corporate environments. It may not seem like a big deal that I can’t talk about my twerking prowess with Brad from accounting, but sharing interests could be the difference between a fast-tracked career and having Chad from sales take your next promotion.
While I'm agonizing over whether or not my #FreeBritney shirt is appropriate casual Friday wear, men are leap-frogging positions based on jersey collections. It was actually found that men assigned to male managers are promoted faster due to fraternizing that happens outside of work. It seems like men have this 'bro promo code' that helps them launch each other into success, whether intentionally or not. By bonding over basic hobbies like sports and booze, men create stronger relationships that help them land the next job while us ladies are still trying to figure out the rules of fantasy hockey.
This accelerated promotion schedule also accounts for some of the gender pay gap. One Asian bank investigation found that one third of their pay discrepancy is caused by the “informal male-to-male face time" that while breaking down last nights game. To that end, dudes who smoke and had male managers who also smoked were promoted even quicker. Nothing like nicotine to bring people together.
Interestingly, women “were promoted at the same rate regardless of whether their manager was male or female.” Why is this? Well on one hand these male hobbies are pretty common and expected in the workplace. No one has qualms about talking sports, cigarettes, and gambling. Maybe women with female managers would have the same rate of promotion if it was common place to talk about makeup tutorials in between meetings. On that note, how many female managers are there? Obviously the tides have been turning for some time, but this is a cycle of promotions and male-bonds that doesn’t go away because you vibe with one lady boss about the new Fashion Nova collection. People like to promote people they like, and dudes like dudes who like sports.
Ridin’ Solo
We can't talk about office culture without digging into golf. Golf is commonly cited as the corporate hobby. Deals happen on the golf course, right? In fact, executives who play golf make 17% more than those who don’t and 90% of Fortune 500 CEOs frequent courses. I can't say I'm surprised by those stats, but they are pretty staggering.
Golf is also pricy.
Imagine, if you will, that the sport of the office was polo. I know this is a stretch, but for someone who grew up middle class, golf seems almost as unattainable. Polo is an amazingly expensive and ridiculous hobby that is entirely out of reach for the majority of people. You need MULTIPLE horses for Christs sake. You bring your main pony (mane pony?) and up to three “spares”. Insane.
This is an extreme example, but we can’t forget that a lot of the tried-and-true workplace hobbies cost money, which not everyone has early on in their careers. I, for example, survived university exclusively on white rice with sriracha.*** How on earth would I have had the time or money to gain confidence on the green?
I don’t even want to talk about cottages, but I’m going to say one thing: Cottaging isn’t a hobby, it’s just something you can afford to do.
There, I said it. Don’t @ me.
The sad reality is that my inability to whack a ball with a stick and own a dock might actually effect the trajectory of my career. While my peers organize golf tournaments and team t-times, I scramble to come up with equally fun ideas that would give me the same face time. Karaoke only goes so far, so what's a girl to do? Laser tag? Soul cycle? Good luck forcing the Chad's and Brad's to step away from the course for a paint night, but don't think I'm not trying.
***I called that meal “spicy rice” and ate it over the stove top to avoid having to turn on the heat. She’s a cheap queen.
Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve & Talent
Obviously it’s difficult for anyone to bring their whole selves to work, but blending your private and professional life is extra challenging when you feel like they are juxtaposed.
It often seems to me like the 'whole selves' of my peers are comprised of snapbacks and fishing trips, and I’m not sure how well they handle my Britney t-shirts and princess crowns. With that in mind, it’s often easier to sugar coat who you are at work. This is why it’s common for women in male-dominated spaces to act like “one of the boys” or distance themselves from colleagues entirely.
Being yourself in a space where you're an outlier can be scary, and yet I think the authenticity and bonds you can build are worth the risk. Do I occasionally lament that I’m not a basic Oakville boy who spends my free time drinking and boating? Maybe.The fact is that I'm not, and I have to spend more time digging out common interests from my peers.
And, as far as I can tell, the trick is this: fuck it.
You like what you like, and having passions beyond your day-to-day is important. If we want to exist in a world where people truly feel free to be their individualized selves at work, we have to be willing to hear that painful silence when you tell your peers that you pole dance on Thursday nights.
Representation is proven to be important time and time again. I’m tired of pretending that the badass corporate women of the world have never worn a sex toy around their neck at a bachelorette party or taken up needlepoint. Women at work are allowed to have interests and lives that extend beyond what we’ve come to know as acceptable office activities.
So, in summation, fuck golf. I like to dance in heels, read true crime, write children’s stories, and sends out blogs about the female orgasm. If that’s more problematic than having a gambling and alcohol addictions for building bonds at work, then maybe we’re emphasizing the wrong hobbies and rewarding mediocrity as a confirmation bias. Let's celebrate our stranger hobbies, because we'll never fully feel comfortable in the office if we think we have to conform to what the masses are interested in.
