Looking at the Grumpy Guest Book recently, one might be forgiven for thinking that Grumpy Old Sod is a website for political dissidents. Well, it is, actually. But there are lots of other things to be grumpy about, and we should not allow ourselves to be distracted from our true purpose, which is to expose and excoriate the foolish, unnecessary and annoying in every facet of modern life.
Therefore the GOS has asked me to inform you that if anyone else tells him "women are better than men at multi-tasking", they'll get a punch in the ear.
It really is a load of unmitigated b*ll*cks.
The fact is that "multi-tasking" is just another way of saying "can't concentrate on one thing for more than five seconds together". When did you last see a woman do a job properly in an ordered, methodical fashion? Faced with the task of, say, putting up some shelves in the utility room, do they …
1. think about the job and make some notes on the back of an envelope
2. get in the car and go down to B&Q to buy some timber, screws and wall-plugs
3. return home, go to the shed and collect together some tools
4. take tools, timber, screws and wall-plugs to utility room, drink cup of tea while consulting back of envelope
5. put up shelves
6. put tools back in shed
7. hoover sawdust from utility room floor and put spare bits of timber in shed
8. go and do something else?
Do they b*gg*ry. That's a man's way of doing a job, and altogether too simple for the average woman. Mrs.Woman, assuming she would even attempt such a task when there was a man who could be nagged into it, would do this …
1. talk about the job, consult several websites and a book on DIY but reject everything they have to say (because they're obviously wrong, having been written by men)
2. send someone else to B&Q. Failing that, go herself but also do some other shopping which takes the rest of the afternoon so the job has to be postponed to another day
3. go to shed, fail to find the correct tools, scream and shout because nothing's ever where she expects to find it, and demand that someone else search for them
4. return to utility room and drill hole in wall. Insert wall-plug. Make lunch.
5. phone mother-in-law. Clean downstairs toilet.
6. return to utility room. Measure timber, then remember she had promised to make an apple crumble for tea. Leave tools, materials etc. all over utility room floor ….
7. you can fill in the rest for yourself.
Of course, they say, this is all because women have so many and varied demands on them - the house to clean, the kids to rear, the husband to manage etc. Rubbish. It's just a matter of completing one task before embarking on the next, not losing interest halfway through and fluttering off to something else. There are millions of men all over the country who do a full-time job, travel to and from work, eat, drink, watch football, grope the secretary, argue with the wife, shout at the kids - and can still put the shelves up in the utility room, just not now. If that's not multi-tasking, I don't know what is.
Oh, and while we're at it: the reason men don't ask for directions is that they don't need to. Because men, unlike women, can read maps perfectly well if only the co-pilot would stop shouting and give them a moment to think.
So there. It needed saying.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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