September has been a long month for me. The new site launch at work had me working a lot of overtime. I think I’m overdue for a haircut. Despite my exhaustion, I can say I’m excited about potential opportunities that come with working exclusively online.

During the summer, I moved from the Radio department into a newly formed Web department at work. At prior multimedia jobs, I’ve worked with a lot of recent graduates who tend to be young, early-adopter, video gaming males. However, in this new department, I’m the only male out of eight full-time employees. Three of my colleagues have babies less than a year old. The only thing strange about all of this is the occasionally awkward water cooler conversation about “pumping.” They’ve already joked about me being the minority, and my skin may not be as thick as I thought. When laughter lasts just a second longer than necessary, it seems to slide down a few notches from hilarious toward humiliating.

In the world of bees, the queen bee and all the worker bees are female. Male bees, called drones, live to mate and die shortly thereafter:

Should a drone succeed in mating it will soon die because the reproductive organ and associated abdominal tissues are ripped from the drone’s body as copulation occurs.

In the world of bees, females rule. And if I had to choose a role in a society of bees, I might just decide to be a worker bee. After all, it sure beats the having the lifelong goal of getting your genitals torn off.