Woman copied her male coworker's email style word-for-word — her boss’ response revealed a double standard

While there is nothing that’s holding a woman back from chasing their greatest dreams, there’s surely one fly in the ointment – the politeness code. Like every arena of their lives, politeness is a characteristic that is often put on a pedestal, while being rude is likely to be considered incivility and crassness. Recently, a 27-year-old woman from the UK–who goes as u/Afraid_Respect_3189 on Reddit–went viral on social media for sharing a workplace story that resonated with over 31,000 people. Her story suggested how it is not always the glass ceiling that holds women back at work; sometimes it is blatant sexism. “I refuse to be overly polite just because I'm a woman,” the woman asserted after getting reprimanded at her workplace.

She shared that she was pretty established in her corporate job, not in a managerial position, though. When writing emails, she normally adopted a cool and chilly style sprinkled with lots of exclamations and emojis, like saying, “Hi! How are you? :)))).” But since this type of writing did not reflect professionalism, she “feared it was affecting how others saw [her].” So she started adopting a new practice not to let her natural style affect her professional career.

"I took a leaf out of my male colleagues' books. They email / message with no emojis, exclamation marks or fluff," she added in her post. Their emails, she said, were not rude but were not overly nice and apologetic either. In one situation, she even copied the entire email written by a male colleague, using its generic wording as the template and editing the necessary places. However, instead of getting appreciated for using a “direct tone” and “professional approach,” she experienced backlash from her manager.

“My manager said it was rude! I showed my manager the emails side by side and he was embarrassed for calling me up on it. We're supposed to be a company that cares about sexism,” the employee ranted in the post. In a later comment, she revealed that the email in question was: “’I will send you the interview schedule tomorrow, thanks.’ That’s not a template. It’s a standard sentence that could work in 10000 scenarios.”

“Kudos for showing your boss their own bias by copying the email. It’s a great way to make people see their own biases,” u/par72565 commented. u/urantichrist said, “I was in a similar scenario. Copy-pasted instructions from my boss to me, and provided them to my team. I was called aggressive and rude, told I should treat my team better.” Others reflected on the double standards many workplaces still have. On a funny note, u/QUarterok385 wrote, “Tell them you're just trying to bring more masculine energy to the workplace” with lots of laughter emojis.

u/FrailUnoriginality added, "They get raises for it and mansplain how being direct is best. But every time I’ve tried it, I get the same comments, 'Why are you being so rude now?' But at the same time, will snicker and snort over how there are too many words/emojis, etc., and refuse to 'actually read all that nonsense." Thankfully, this woman stood up for herself and settled the score.