It’s good when pals notice and compliment you on a change in your look. But it’s a different situation when a coworker comments on your looks, particularly if you’re not close and they don’t like the change. In this story a woman whose coworker kept telling her that her new hairstyle didn’t fit her and that she should go back to how she looked before. Read the story to know what happened and let us know what you think about her reaction. Did she overact? Would you have done the same thing?
Source: Reddit
I (28f) have always had long hair, but a few weeks ago I decided to get a buzz cut.
One of my colleagues reacted… not so well to the change. When he saw me he went “oh my god, no. Just no. I can see your SCALP!”, to which I replied “yeah, and I could see yours every single day for the past few years (he’s bald), and you didn’t hear me complain. Maybe return the courtesy, yeah?”
He wasn’t outright rude after that, but for weeks he kept making comments about how he hopes I’m going to grow my hair out again, and that my hair was so beautiful when it was long.
I mean, a man trying to police a woman’s looks is nothing new around here, and we’ve always been friendly before, so at first I only kept asking him to stop with the comments, but he didn’t. Then once had a longer talk with him in a firmer tone, and he backed off and even apologized.
Then a day or so later he started again, except in a joking tone, which is just horsesh%t dressed as a bride. Everytime I told him off he went “oh it was just a joke, we already had this talk”, and I really don’t know how to deal with such blatant idiocy so I reported him to our HR department.
My colleagues were surprised and told me I overreacted, and that there were more levels of escalation before going to HR, like “you could have talked to him, make him understand you’re serious”, or “you could have just threatened him with going to HR instead of actually doing it”. I tried the first one, and he didn’t take me seriously, so I don’t believe he would have taken my threats seriously either.
At the same time, I don’t know what kind of effect this incident will have on his career, as we don’t get a lot of cases like this in my company. I don’t want him fired, I just want him to keep the sexist bullsh%t confined within skull.
Do you think the post author did the right thing or should she apologize? Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
