"Holding Firm on My Boundary": Female Employee Says No After Being Asked to Do "Office Housework"

Sick of being asked to do "office housework," a woman on TikTok named Alex Schduy ( @alexschudy ) — who regularly posts content for "pretty and ambitious girls" — shared a video where she records herself putting her foot down at her job and refusing to put together an office breakfast for a manager on-site meeting when asked.

"POV: You have to set a boundary at work bc they keep asking you to do office housework," she writes in a text overlay of her video.

Someone at her job could be heard asking off camera, presumably over the conference call: "Could you organize the breakfast for the manager team onsite?"

Another overlay highlights how she feels about the request: "I know he's not asking me to do this with NO advance notice."

She immediately counters by asking them when the breakfast is supposed to happen.

"It's this week," the person on the call states.

"OK," she muses, before launching into her reasoning for why she's not able to organize the "housekeeping" task that was put forward to her.

"Given that it's this week I don't think I'm the best person to handle it just because of my current priorities and workload," she says, before the person on the call asks, "What do you have going on?"

"I can definitely send you more about my current to-do list and I'm sure Shannon could also shed some insight if you have more questions but I just don't really have the bandwidth to take something like that on right now," she tells the person in her company, adding in a text overlay that she was "holding firm on [her] boundary."

"Maybe you could do something like DoorDash delivery or maybe make it a team outing," she says, adding in another text overlay: "trying to be helpful still."

He simply responds back by stating "I'll look into those options," before the video cuts out and she picks up her phone, grimacing into the camera.

Alex further explained in a caption for her video why she wasn't willing to jump at the opportunity to just go and handle the breakfast between her and her co-workers: "Non-promotable work (like office housework) is something I try VERY hard to avoid!! Too bad it’s so hard to say no to 😩."

At the end of the caption she asked her followers: "How do you think I did?"

It seems like there were a lot of folks who applauded the way she handled herself given the circumstances: "Good job, babe. We’re not their effing personal assistants," one person penned.

Another seemed to take issue with the fact that the guy went out of his way to ask her what she has "going on" to which they had a terse rejoinder prepped: "'What do you have going on?' My job."

One person in the comments section remarked how they were able to get out of being asked to do "office housework" at their own job, and it sounds like it would be pretty effective: "I used to point out directly that they did seem to only ask women to do these tasks. They stopped asking me lolllll."

And then someone else mentioned that there are official job titles that deal precisely with this kind of work: "Unless you’re the office manager/coordinator — it’s not your job. If you are, it’s time to stress the importance of proper notice," they wrote.

Others thought that he wasn't too happy to hear Alex queue up her rejection of his request: "Even the way he said 'it’s this week' was full of attitude. He didn’t expect you to say no lol."

One TikToker said that they are a bit more on the confrontational side whenever they're asked to perform tasks like this: "I’m so direct, welcome confrontation and I always say, 'I’m not doing that.' I don’t explain why. I don’t care if I’m called into HR 🤣 I always keep my job."

And someone else remarked that they felt Alex could've been a bit stronger in her reply: "No, firmer! 'Why did you decide to ask me rather than another member of the team?'" they wrote.

Forbes has also reported that women are almost always asked to perform "office housework" tasks in the workplace over their male counterparts: "Planning parties, ordering food and taking notes in meetings are just a few of the thankless tasks that women more often shoulder at work. Often called 'office housework,' these responsibilities contribute to the smooth operation of the workplace but go unnoticed when it comes to promotions or pay raises."

This LinkedIn post also highlighted how "women of color" are also asked to perform "office housework," and just like the Forbes piece, it mentions that all of this extra work rarely culminates in a raise or a promotion because it isn't directly "tied to revenue goals."