Woman hits back after applying for a landscaping job and getting a super sexist response

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on August 4, 2021.

It is well-known that women have a harder time in the workplace, in general, but it is even more challenging when it is a "male-dominated" field. We rather say much more male-dominated than the others. Women are held to a different or higher standard. Even at the same level of experience and expertise as their male counterparts, they would be expected to show more for their work. Even with all that, they may be paid far less than men are. Despite how far we have come as a society, gender-based discrimination still persists. A recent study found that there are still numerous barriers for women in the workplace, especially for mothers.

"At the same time, given that even men with low grades go on to attain higher leadership roles than women, this study highlights perhaps the lack of barriers that men face in securing greater leadership opportunities." Jill Yavorsky, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who co-led the study, stated. Whether it is academia or tech jobs, women have to constantly face sexist remarks and judgment from men. One woman's response to such a sexist observation of her qualifications has gone viral on Twitter. 

The woman, identified as Charlotte, had applied for a landscaping job. In response, she received this sexist reply from a person named Mark at the company. He thanked Charlotte for her interest in the job and went on to say: "However unless you are a bodybuilder I fear that you will not be able to handle the workload. As it is very physical and demanding as we are a hard landscaping company." He then added that if she was still up to take up the job that she should get in touch with him. The email exchange was shared on Twitter by her brother, Dan, who captioned it: The email my sister got from a landscaping company job she applied for vs. The one she sent back.

Charlotte's response was filled with the exasperation that we all know we felt. She starts off the passive-aggressive letter with, "Hi Muscle Mark" and proceeds to thank him for the quick response. "Funnily enough, I probably have just as much experience bodybuilding as you do, which I’m guessing is none," she wrote. She then went on to explain her actual experience that should have been the basis of hiring her in the first place. "What I do have is years of experience landscaping and also building training walls in 40-degree heat (104F) as I did this for many years while I lived in Australia."

She then went onto say how she had already looked into the type of work the company did before applying and it was no different from the work she was already used to. She then went on to let Mark know that she was no longer interested in the position. "What I do find challenging is working with small-minded individuals such as yourself that I could probably bench press five minutes after being woken up from a three-year coma," she stated and added, "I'm sure you will have no problem finding the correct individual at your next visit to the bodybuilding convention." And for good measure, she signed it off as "Charlotte (AKA not the bodybuilder.)" 

The tweet has received more than 987k likes and has been retweeted over 118k times. Speaking to Bored Panda Dan said, “Me and my sister sat reading it and we found it funny because we just thought surely that’s a joke, but then when we thought about it we found it annoying that it was actually a genuine response. We originally typed out a more formal response but then we thought to tweak it a bit because his response was so backward, which was when ‘Muscle Mark’ was added.” He described his sister as a "very funny, independent and strong character."