It is a fact of life or work that women do more menial jobs at offices. In many cases this is because they naturally volunteer to take on these jobs whether it is the organisation of the Christmas party, birthday cards, taking notes or the tidying up of the kitchen in the office. And although it is because of an entrenched system of expectations; it is also because many of us just like to take care of things or because we think that many men are quite useless at these jobs or could it be; pretend to be useless at these jobs? In South African offices, women in more senior positions are less likely to do this, because there are clear hierarchies from the cleaners to the secretaries to management. But in other offices around the world, the cleaners come like silent fairies when nobody is around in the evenings and not many managers have the luxury of a secretary or assistant; so these jobs are more often done by women. I regularly took on the role of mommy on overseas trips with broadcast colleagues; I gave them a wake-up call, arranged transport, interviews, even kept the money of some of my colleagues and provided them with scripts until one day when one of them dumped his receipts on my table and asked me to do the calculations for his trip. This was the cue that the mommy role has gone too far and  from then on I left everybody to their own devices even though I found the lack of control over events challenging. Rachel Feintzeig's suggestion to women like me is to consider, "How would a male version of me behave?". – Linda van Tilburg

Don't ask me to do office housework!