You can weep over Peppa Pig, ladies, but not PowerPoint

This is a nice idea but it isn’t really true, is it, at any level? The voice I’m writing this with is my real-life voice, obviously, but beyond that the private/professional demarcation is fairly emphatic. For instance, I wouldn’t saunter into The Sunday Times’s offices bedecked in my usual writing garb of ancient T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, greeting people cheerily while dragging on a Marlboro Light — “What’s with the staring, you squares? There’s no difference between my professional and private selves, actually.”

And that’s merely the sartorial tip of the whole massive iceberg.

My private self laughs like a drain at poo jokes, because of tragic arrested development, but I wouldn’t necessarily volunteer them at meetings and then elbow colleagues in the ribs while going, “Huh? Funny, huh? Huh?” My private self likes a catnap when it feels it has produced enough words and it absolutely can’t work late because it often has to get changed out of its tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt and go out to dinner.

It is not averse to watching Pointless in the afternoons or to working while making various bits of supper, or to dancing about to BBC Radio 6 Music as the mood takes it. It likes staring into space for half an hour at a time. I think we can safely conclude that it’s just as well I work from home — and that I am able to tell the difference between home and office.

I cry at everything, from Rebecca Rabbit feeling left out at Peppa Pig’s house to things I read in newspapers The worst thing about Sandberg’s tips, though, is the crying. As I’ve said before, I love crying. I cry loads. Having hardly shed a tear for the first four decades of my life, I now cry at everything, from Rebecca Rabbit feeling a bit left out when she goes to Peppa Pig’s house to play, to things I read in newspapers (incredibly, I used to be a reporter, something that would simply be impossible now. “No, sorry, I can’t write about that. I can’t even read about it because ...” — cue tear-stained face and ululations — “it is just too sad. Yeah, I know, but you see there is no difference between my private and professional selves, so ...”).

It’s all very well for Sandberg to advocate crying at work, but she’s only doing it because she can: she is the chief operating officer and no one’s going to tell her that she is freaking them out.

Crying at work if you’re a woman — and possibly if you’re a man, although I’ve never come across that particular scenario, thank God, for there is nothing on earth more unattractive than a crying man, unless someone has actually died — places you firmly into the “madwoman with cats” category.

This is just a fact. It is variously needy, incontinent, attention-seeking, egocentric and just plain embarrassing. This has reminded me that I once met someone — not in an office, but still — who burst into tears shortly after arriving because her goldfish had been swimming upside down when she’d left for work that morning; a) we’d never met before and b) if she was so worried, why didn’t she stay at home?

This is the problem with public criers: so often the tears are a passive-aggressive act, one that demands an emotional response from you and wills you to be on the crier’s side.

Some female criers also sob because they know that men are likely to soften when confronted with tears. These women are the pits. Nobody above the age of six should be allowed to cry to get their own way and, frankly, six is pushing it. I would admire someone who started performing a robust striptease much more than some weedy, manipulative crier: if you’re going to use your gender in a conniving way, at least that’s honest.

Anyway, back to Sandberg. I’m afraid it just gets worse. She also said: “I talk about my hopes and fears and ask people about theirs. I’m honest about my strengths and weaknesses and I encourage others to do the same.”

This is a nightmare, no? There you are, quietly getting on with it, when your boss of bosses stops by and volunteers her “hopes and fears”, and then stares at you expectantly because she wants to hear yours. I don’t think any Facebook share option in the world would prevent me from running.

Still, you need tactics as a woman at the top. A couple of weeks ago research carried out by a linguistics expert called Judith Baxter emerged showing that a woman making a joke in the boardroom is likely to be met with complete silence, whereas a man doing the same is more or less guaranteed hearty chuckles. This is partly because “women’s attempts at humour are often seen as contrived, defensive or just mean” and partly, horribly, because not laughing at your female boss’s joke is an effective way of undermining her.

I have never set foot in a boardroom, and the more I learn about them, the gladder I am about that. Obviously boardrooms should be stuffed to the gills with women and obviously it’s lamentable that they aren’t, but really — one ought to be careful about what one wishes for.

To judge by these two stories, the way to get there is by weeping and emoting on the one hand and making jokes that nobody laughs at on the other, all while wearing horrible clothes that are carefully calibrated to indicate a degree of no-nonsense manliness that stops just short of “butch”.

I am writing this at the kitchen table, surrounded by an insane amount of bunting, and I may not be a master of the universe, but I know which option I prefer.

The third word war

The Hay literary festival started last week and on its opening day a local bookseller called Derek Addyman called for a ban on Kindles and other e-readers. “Kindles have no place at this festival, which is supposed to be a celebration of the written word — and books. Booksellers here definitely want them banned. You see people walking around with Kindles and they are like robots in another world. Books are sociable and people stop and talk to each other about them. Kindles are just a phase and they won’t last. They are our enemy.”

I take his point, particularly given that five bookshops have recently closed in Hay-on-Wye. But given that Kindles aren’t going anywhere, despite what booksellers might hope, I do wish people such as Addyman would see that physical books and e-books aren’t mutually exclusive.

I have an account at my local independent bookshop and the acquisition of a Kindle hasn’t remotely put a dent in it: as a consumer I buy fun, disposable stuff (holiday reads and thrillers, for example) on Kindle, and books that I want to own and keep from the bookshop, and as an author I am pleased to have revenue from both.

It’s not a war, which means there is no point in calling e-readers names.