She had to convince clients to respect her
What happens when a man accidentally uses a woman’s name on the job?
Martin R. Schneider, an editor for the movie-reviewing site Front Row Central based in Philadelphia, realised men and women are treated differently in the workplace after he accidentally signed off on emails using his female co-worker’s signature
He tweeted the experience that made him realise women do not get the same respect in the workplace. The tweet that has been liked nearly 7,000 times and shared more than 5,400 times at the time of writing.
Mr Schneider, at the time working at another company, said that his colleague Nicole was getting criticism from their boss for taking longer than he did on tasks that involved communicating with clients.
As her supervisor Mr Schneider thought this was due to his higher level of experience, until one day he noticed one of his clients acting unusually difficult.
“He is just being IMPOSSIBLE. Rude, dismissive, ignoring my questions,” he said, adding “Telling me his methods were the industry standards (they weren’t) and I couldn’t understand the terms he used (I could).”
He realised the problem was coming from his signature – Mr Schneider was accidently signing all his emails with the name “Nicole” since they shared an inbox and she was handling the project before.
So he corrected the mistake and you’ll never guess what happened next hahahaha of course you will.
“IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENT. Positive reception, thanking me for suggestions, responds promptly, saying ‘great questions!’ Became a model client,” Mr Schneider said.
“Note: My technique and advice never changed. The only difference was that I had a man’s name now,” he added.
He and his colleague then did the switch for two weeks; nightmare for him, bliss for her.
“I realised the reason she took longer is because she had to convince clients to respect her.By the time she could get clients to accept that she knew what she was doing, I could get halfway through another client,” he said.
“For me, this was shocking. For her, she was USED to it. She just figured it was part of her job,” he concluded.
Yep.
My son frequently games with a female name and avatar; he has noticed the same thing. No one realizes he is male, and they treat him horribly. He’s becoming quite a misanthrope from the experience.
iknklast, I’m in a couple of gaming clans, not that I have much time for that sort of thing now. The old core of both clans have gamed together for years and are a nice mix of nationalities, ages and men/women (or other for all I know). Every now and then a new member(s), always young men, will say something appallingly racists, sexist or generally nasty. When we politely point out that we don’t tolerate such behaviour it ends well maybe 1% of the time. Usually the party being reminded of the clan’s code of behaviour immediately goes into a ballistic rant that your average gamergater would approve of, before either flouncing or getting kicked.
I mean, what’s wrong with graphically violent rape banter in mixed (or any) company!?
(we have kids in the clans as well)