International Women's Day 2010
By 2010 I was working, and the eighth of March had become a workplace occasion with its own unwritten rules that nobody explains to a foreigner.
A greeting on the eighth of March.
By this point I was working rather than studying, and I had learned that the day has office rules. The men in a department organise something. Flowers are not optional. The quantity of stems must be odd, which I did not know the first time and was corrected on kindly but firmly.
There is a serious point underneath the tulips. In every Ukrainian company I have worked with, the accounting department, the customs documentation, the contract administration and a great deal of the actual operational competence sat with women who were rarely the loudest people in the room.
To all of them: a good day, and my thanks. The bouquet is a formality. The gratitude is not.
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