My understanding(least) about the opposite gender.

predict that I’m going to get a lot of flak for this, but here it goes anyway. Maybe someone is looking for some real insight here, and not just reasons to criticize: (least)

I am a man. I cannot understand most women’s desire to add unnecessary complications and expenses to things.

You may have seen this meme. I know Quora doesn’t allow memes, so the bots might collapse this answer. But hopefully the human moderator who reads this when I appeal that collapse will recognize that the meme is necessary to understand the answer.

My response to that, like a lot of guys’ response to that is: yes, I don’t see the issue. If this is a single guy’s apartment, and he has everything he needs in that apartment, then what’s the issue? I assume he has a folding chair somewhere that he pulls out for guests. Or he gives them his chair and he takes the floor when someone is over. It’s common courtesy.

It’s not complicated and expensive enough… That’s the issue for women.

I lived like that for several years before I got married. When we got our first apartment, I assumed our kitchen table would be the same folding card table that I’d been using as a kitchen table/desk in my studio apartment.

I was wrong. A folding table that you already own is way too easy and cheap. Complications and expenses MUST be added.

And, if you were wondering, no… putting a table cloth on a folding table is not enough complication and expense.

In my house now, we currently have a kitchen table (our second one of those, because the first one was “outdated” after a few years), and a larger dining room table, and a children’s table in another room, and a fourth table in the basement. We also have at least a dozen table cloths, with their own special drawer in our hutch.

FYI, “hutch” is just another way of saying overly-complicated and expensive shelf.

I could go on, but it’s not just my mother and sister in law that do this. The women I’ve worked with over the years have similar behaviors. A problem will come up at work for which there is a simple, cheap solution, and the women will find a way to complicate things.

For example, in my workplace desk, I have a INR 900 plastic shelf that I cut down a little and I use as a podium, because regular podiums are too short for me. I had this problem a 2 years ago when I started presenting, and I fixed it for INR 90. The shelf does everything I need it to do: hold my book in front of me while I’m presenting, and give me something to lean on if needed.

I’ve taken that plastic shelf/podium with me to every presentationI’ve worked at… four total client locations now… and at every single location, at least one female coworker has said something negative about it. Why don’t they like it? My guess is that they can sense how cheap and easy it was as a solution to a problem, and they can’t let that go. Why not order a special podium just for tall people?

Yes, that would also work. It would be more expensive and complicated than the solution which already exists. Perhaps that’s why they keep suggesting it to me.

I’ve learned from experience when in business research meetings to think about how my suggestions to problems will be received by my colleagues, most of whom are female. It goes like this: (based on a real-life scenario at the first school I ever taught at eleven years ago.)

• Problem is brought up in meeting. (Crowded hallways at dismissal making some students a few minutes late for after-school programs.)
• I think of simple solution to problem. (Tell the people who run the after-school programs to start five minutes later. They work for the school. The principal has the power to do that.)
• I stop myself from suggesting this simple solution, because it seems too simple, and experience has taught me that if it seems too simple, it will be rejected. I wait to hear everyone else’s solutions.
• I notice that the other two guys on the market research also aren’t offering any suggestions. We give each other the “look.” The “why are we meeting about this when the solution is obvious” look.
• About 30 minutes later, after considering several complicated suggestions from the 20+ female market research members, a solution is reached: Staggered dismissal times for members of various after-school clubs. The robotics club kids get to leave five minutes early. The band kids three minutes early. The basketball kids three minutes early on days when they have practice, etc… I end up with a print out next to my classroom door of every dismissal time for every after-school program for every day of the week. Telling the students to “pack up and go home” has now become a major hassle.