I work at a major retail hardware chain in the US part time. I sell appliances. This has been an ongoing problem in multiple departments over the 3 years I have worked here.

There is currently a woman, “Erika”, who also works in appliances and a customer service associate, which is my exact same job title.

Part of working in appliances is pulling appliances off of the floor and off of shelves for customers or for display or for deliveries.

She outright refuses to do it and plays it off by playing up the “I’m a tiny girl” act.

So I’m 20 years old and I hurt my back last year doing all of the labor in this department so I sent an email to my boss and he responded and literally said “women sell more” so he preferred me to be the one doing the lifting but he still wants me to be on the sales floor as much as possible because Erika still can’t even do all of the sales floor component of the job.

So I wrote and called into district management who called me and told me they’d talked with the store management and then the store manager talked to me and apologized and said we both had to do our “fair share”.

Okay. So then today Erika asks me to get items down for her. I told her I no because I had my own work list from our boss to do and because I never ask her to do my work. She said, “I don’t know why you can’t do it, you’re being an asshole.”

My opinion is that if she can’t do the manual part of the job, she should be on a cash register, or not work here at all. Imagine a female surgeon refusing operate because of some bullshit like “that’s icky man’s work”.

It’s the principle of the thing. I shouldn’t have to do her job too just because she has two X chromosomes.  

But I am open to changing my mindset if I am the one in the wrong. AITA? Note that I said she was a tiny girl earlier, but she’s 1000% capable of doing the work and I’d be willing to get big things like refrigerators that she legitimately couldn’t handle. That said, Even if she couldn’t physically do it, that’s no excuse and she should work another job within this company, or somewhere else entirely. 