I’m thinking about starting a series on the most surprising workplace stories I’ve heard over the years. And by “surprising,” I mean the kind of story that makes you think, we really let this count as workplace culture?
One theme returns with grim consistency, and we should talk about it this day after “International Women’s Day.” Women being treated like their professional value is predicated by how visually pleasing, accommodating, or available they are…
-One client was working as an Associate Manager at a mall-based lingerie store overheard a regional leader telling the Store Manager that the team was “looking good.” Not effective. Not well-run. “Looking good.” Which tells you quite a lot about what he believed the team was there to contribute.
-Another BRILLIANT woman shared that while working in hospitality, in her late teens, she was “encouraged” to consider breast implants because she was “such a beautiful girl” and it could only help her. Because nothing says professional development quite like a completely inappropriate body modification suggestion disguised as career advice.
-And then there was a client who was an Assistant at a consumer goods company. She was hit on by a Senior Manager in a way that managed to be both blatant and unnerving. He described his hotel room to her in detail, including the bouncy bed, and later appeared near her car in the parking lot. She reported it to her leader, whose practical solution was to keep the man away from her. The institutional solution was, apparently, to do nothing. Other women told her, flat out, that this was just how things worked there, and that many of the women “enjoyed” the culture.
That phrase does a lot of work, doesn’t it?
Because women often learn how to smile through dysfunction, sidestep risk, normalize nonsense, and read a room with Olympic precision. That does not mean the room is healthy. It means they have been expected to become highly skilled at adaptation in places that never asked better of the people causing the problem. And that is the part that stays with me. The rules beneath the rules.
The quiet suggestion that a woman can be smart, capable, educated, and excellent at her job, and still be measured against a second scorecard no one prints but plenty of people use.
Too loud.
Too plain.
Too pretty.
Too stiff.
Too warm.
Too icy.
Too noticeable.
Too forgettable.
We have spent a remarkable amount of time asking women to be competent, but not threatening, attractive, but not distracting, polished, but not proud. Basically: please arrive as a fully formed professional with the emotional range of a candle.
This is both insulting AND bad business.
When organizations allow this kind of thinking they make poor decisions. They confuse compliance for talent and then wonder why trust thins out.
So, what is the most absurd or quietly infuriating workplace message you’ve ever seen women receive about how they should “be” in order to succeed?
