It’s nice when friends notice when you change something in your appearance, like wearing new earrings, or that you got a new haircut, and compliment it. But it is a different story when a colleague is commenting on your appearance, especially when you are not close and when they actually don’t like the change.
A woman was subjected to hearing her colleague repeatedly telling her her new haircut didn’t suit her and that she should return to what she looked like before. The woman didn’t put up with such harassment and without really meaning it, got the man fired. But it turns out that standing up for herself wasn’t acceptable, as other colleagues thought she overreacted.
More info: Reddit
You can't even get a haircut without being harassed for it at work, as it seems for this woman
Image source: Sascha Kohlmann (not the actual photo)
The Redditor Haircut49 is a woman who always had long hair, but felt a desire for a new look, so she decided to get a buzzcut. As you can imagine, it is a big change of style and one of her colleagues didn’t fail to notice it.
The Original Poster (OP) was always friendly with this colleague, but it seems that they weren’t close. However, he allowed himself to freely express his disgust at seeing the woman’s scalp, to which he got an insult back.
After that, the man wasn’t as rude as before, but he just couldn’t stop commenting on the OP’s new hairstyle and was vocal about his hopes that she would grow her hair back because it was so beautiful back then, as if he had a right to command how she should look.
The woman was annoyed that her colleague just couldn’t get over it and wouldn't stop bringing it up, so she kept telling him to stop. Her requests meant nothing to the man, so she had to have a serious talk with him about how inappropriately he was behaving.
She previously had long hair and wanted to try out a buzzcut
Image source: Haircut49
It seems that worked for a while, but the remarks resumed where they ended, this time with him excusing it away by saying that they were just jokes. The OP was done with her idiotic coworker at this point and figured that if he doesn’t listen to her, maybe he sees the HR as a bigger authority.
Other coworkers found out about this drama unfolding and accused the woman of overreacting. They couldn’t understand why she wouldn't just tell him that it bothered her so much or threaten him with HR instead of actually filing a report.
One of her colleagues really didn't like this haircut and made sure she knew that by continuing telling that to her
Image source: Haircut49
We can only imagine that the OP’s frustration could be compared to that of a person calling an IT specialist who asks if you tried turning the computer off and on to fix a problem. Not only did she try talking to that man, but she had a serious conversation with him and he even apologized, but apparently he wasn’t really sorry for his words.
Besides, she didn’t want him fired, or to have any other serious consequences on his career, but because it seems that a woman’s wishes are not enough, she tried to have them confirmed by someone in power.
The woman repeatedly asked the man to stop and at one point he even apologized but kept "joking" about it shortly after
Image source: Haircut49
It was a good thing she did, because her bravery made 3 other women file complaints against the same colleague and actually got him fired. The OP doesn’t know what he did to those other women, but was guessing that it was something serious as otherwise she doesn’t believe he would have been fired.
We don’t really know where the OP is from, but in the UK, the behavior of the man would have been considered harassment as picking on someone regularly falls under that definition, according to the Equality Act 2010.
All Voices, a platform for employees to communicate with their employers, conducted a survey trying to find out more about harassment in the workplace. They questioned 822 (52.8 percent were male, and 47.2 percent were female respondents) Americans who work full-time and found out that 44 percent of them have experienced harassment and bullying at work both in person and online as well as discrimination.
Half of them admitted they didn’t report the inappropriate behavior. Of those who did report the harassment, only a little bit more than half were satisfied with the resolution and 34 percent decided to leave their workplaces because of the unresolved issues.
So the woman did what felt logical and went to the HR to make the man keep his annoying comments to himself, but received a negative reaction from other colleagues
Image source: Haircut49
However, she realized it was the right thing to do when other women complained and the man actually got fired
Image source: Haircut49
You might be wondering why people don’t report behavior that shouldn’t be seen in the workplace. Well, according to HR Daily Advisor, there might be a lot of different reasons, such as feeling that they might have done something to prevent the harassment from happening, they might think nobody will believe them anyway or they witnessed a company not supporting the victim in similar situations, etc.
However, Business News Daily advises reporting the behavior anyway because it might be that you’re not the only victim and your testimony is the evidence the company needs to take action. Or you may pave the way for others to speak up, as this Redditor did.
Image source: Celeste (not the actual photo)
Why do you think her colleagues were so shocked to know the OP went to HR even though she was patient enough with the man persisting that her haircut didn’t look good on her? Do you think she was too sensitive and should have just ignored her colleague? Let us know your thoughts!
People in the comments were on the woman's side and believed she clearly expressed her feelings before resorting to a report to HR
