My time of the month = memory loss, short fuse, need for chocolate, need for sleep, and need for husband to help around the house. For some reason, when he tries to help, the house looks worse than when he started. I'm sure he does it deliberately, so I don't ask him to do it again.

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After eating a large bar of smooth and creamy Galaxy, I came up with a creative idea for my female clients, ‘comfort knickers’ for the ‘time of the month’. The idea had come to me as I sat curled up over my desk with the monthly cramps from hell. My bright idea was, we could send a pair of comfort knickers of a generous size to all our female clients. Our logo could be on the front, and on the back, a list of our services and contact details. 

 

I intended to show our clients that we valued them and wanted to demonstrate our caring, creativity and sympathy for their monthly suffering. However, after further reflection, I recognised that the comfort knickers idea could be viewed as perpetuating stereotypes and was not a professional approach. Women are fully capable at any time of the month to be successful. The great idea was now a stupid one; my hormones were all over the place, and I wanted to solve my problems with violence. I know that's not normal - I would only think violent, I wouldn't act on it. 

 

At a recent heated business meeting with my boss Bernie, Peter and Miranda, it was suggested by our arrogant sales director, Peter, that I was from a parallel universe and my sales figures were influenced by my menstrual cycle. He's living life on the edge at the moment. He is discriminatory, sexist, and unprofessional, and there are grounds for dismissal, but I have no proof of his inappropriate behaviour due to the incompetence of ‘Miranda the fake’, who is my boss’s secretary. Her version of taking minutes of a meeting is writing down the time it started and when it finished. In the meantime, she just doodles. Bernie plays deaf when Peter gets wound up and loses his cool. I can see his little brain shutting down like an exhausted toddler.

 

According to Peter, Miranda, the fake, is the office eye candy. He's a blind idiot, she smells of fake tan and collects dust on her fake eyelashes, and her fake fingernails are the reason I have no proof of Peter’s discrimination. “My nails are too long to take lots of notes,” she told me.

Perhaps I should be grateful because I do remember, in my frustration in the meeting, that I called him something that shouldn’t be put on record due to it being discriminatory, sexist, and unprofessional.

 

His suggestion bugged me, so I decided to do a study on sales figures in conjunction with a saleswoman’s menstrual cycle, and then I decided to do the same for men. Could their performance be affected by a monthly cycle?

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It was impossible to come to a fair conclusion; however, I made some interesting observations, for example, Miranda cried a lot on day 26, and Peter cried a lot on payday. Miranda ate a whole packet of chocolate biscuits on day 28, and Peter had a bitch fit at our monthly sales meeting.

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This made me consider how office performance might change if men experienced the challenges women face, such as PMT, HRT, and DSU (discriminatory, sexist, and unprofessional comments).

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Maybe Peter is right and I am from a parallel universe, but at least I can think outside of the box and be successful even if it is ‘the time of the month’.

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As for my boss’s secretary, Miranda the fake, she makes me laugh with her fake identity. She claims to be a touch typist and specialist PA, but she types fifteen words a minute and couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. I really shouldn't be so negative and just eat more chocolate because it makes me happy.

 

When I got home after a hard day at the office, my fair-weather husband Andy had cooked dinner for the children and even done half a day of building work.

 

I got into my pyjamas and went into the bathroom to find Jessica had emptied my Tampax box and drawn faces on what she thought were little white toy mice without ears.

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I had to explain to Jessica that they weren’t items from an art set, and the white things were for big girls over the age of twelve. Jessica was obviously confused because when my seventy-year-old mother came to visit, Jessica asked her if she would like one of Mummy’s earless mice to block one of her holes.

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I leave you with a word of advice. Never teach a five-year-old how to use an iPhone, and I will tell you why next time I get five minutes spare.

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Samantha. xx

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Written by Rachel Roussell