Things need to be changed in the workplace – (6)

This is Part 6 of this article. Read Part 5 of this article here.

*Note:
1. Throughout the article, the phrase “the business field” or “the business world” means the whole society where people join the workforce. It does NOT only represent people who work in a business-type position, but also every people who work in office jobs.
2. Throughout the article, “Boss” only refers to the CEO or the owner of the company; it does not refer to the “Supervisor” who is not a CEO but manages some employees. “Boss” and “Supervisor” is different in the article as above describes.
3. Throughout the article, “employers” is referred to the boss, hiring manager, and HR. It is NOT only referred to as a boss or an owner of a company.
4. When a situation in the article is not specifically pointed to as a “situation in Taiwan”, such a situation happens in the West, too.

8. Resolve subordinates’ conflict

Conflict among employees is a common scene in workplaces. Some supervisors avoid dealing with conflicts among subordinates because they think it’s not their job and the main thing to be cared about should be their team’s KPI, including the work assigned to subordinates, not the conflict. Furthermore, such supervisors don’t know how to deal with subordinates’ conflicts. In my view, this is not correct and supervisors should deal with subordinates’ conflicts. Some other supervisors will bring two employees in the conflicts to talk face-to-face. This way has received so much praise because people think such supervisors did have intentions to resolve conflicts and resolve conflicts by letting employees in the conflict discuss directly. However, I don’t think this way is good and I have a different view.

From my perspective, resolving a conflict by letting the subordinates in the conflict talk directly is just another version of doing nothing but letting subordinates in the conflict deal with the conflict on their own. Very often, such a talk between two subordinates in the conflict does NOT resolve anything but only maintains the ostensible peace. In many cases, it’s either the person who is wrong and acts bossier in the talk wins the talk or the person who is right loses the talk because the person who is wrong doesn’t want to accept the reason from the person who is right and says she/he is bossy.

Some conflicts themselves are part of office politics; some conflicts, despite aren’t part of office politics, will still turn into part of office politics if they are not resolved. Many of us have experienced terrible office politics, and the power of bosses and supervisors can prevent employees from some of these office politics and create a better work environment to let employees focus on work rather than dealing with office politics. This will stop good employees from leaving your company or your team. ( You can read some articles in some business magazines about how good employees leave will impact your company or your team. ) Bosses and supervisors can even lay off employees who hurt other employees by playing petty tricks when dealing with a conflict. Therefore, I think that bosses and supervisors should proactively resolve conflict among subordinates. Okay, so how to deal with conflicts among subordinates?

I suggest four steps:
(1) Understand what the conflict is by interviewing subordinates from both sides of the conflict.
(2) Identify which side is right or wrong. Sometimes both sides have done something wrong and something right. Identify clearly which side did which thing wrong and which one’s argument about which thing is right. List and judge every point in the conflict one by one with your independent thinking and knowledge.
(3) Gather the persons who are in the conflict, and tell them your view and reasons regarding which side is wrong or right, or when both sides have done something wrong and something right, which side did which thing is wrong and which side argued which thing is right. Explain your reason to your subordinates clearly and make the side who is wrong admit his/her mistakes and apologize for these mistakes to the other side. If both sides have made mistakes, just explain every point and your reasons one by one clearly and make both sides admit the mistakes they made respectively and apologize for them one by one respectively. Let your subordinates know you want these mistakes corrected by them.
(4) Lay off employees who hurt other employees by playing some petty tricks during a conflict if necessary.

The purpose of the above suggestion of mine is to protect good employees, and such protection can prevent good employees from leaving your company or your team. You can read some articles in some business magazines about how good employees leave will impact your company or your team. I will just briefly explain that here: Good employees can make your company grow or make your team have a better achievement; bad employees only stagnate the development of your company or your team.

Answering “How do managers generally deal with conflict between two employees” on Quora, two professionals provide some explanations about how to understand the context of a conflict and make a reasonable judgment. This linkand this link are the answers from the two professionals. You may read them along with my suggestions and adopt the suggestion in those Quora answers when practicing my suggestions. In addition, the answer from another professional provides her personal valuable experience of how her manager dealt with the conflict between a colleague and her. I think this manager’s way is great and is not different a lot from mine. Although the manager spoke to only one person in the conflict, the manager indeed did an effort to understand the context of the conflict and made a reasonable judgment. The difference is that he spoke to the person alone who was wrong, let the person who was wrong admit the mistake, and apologize to the person who was right ( Given the particular situation in the case that the wrong side talking to the right side may do more harm than good, the manager also said he could volunteer to speak to the person who is right. But this is just a particular situation in a special case that I don’t understand. I believe generally if you are wrong, you should apologize in person ). You may check out these answers, too.

9. Indecisive supervisors

Indecision is also a common problem among many supervisors or bosses. There are many articles from business magazines talking about how to deal with the problem of being indecisive. You may check such articles out. This point is just a reminder for such supervisors. I don’t have any particular view at the moment.

10. Unfair treatment toward different job types

Answering What’s something that sucks about working at Google, Sarthak Ganguly answered on Quora, ” Google is an extremely engineering-driven culture. So people in that rule the company. So, if you are a Googler as a Software engineer / Site Reliability Engineering / Product Manager / Technical Program Manager, then you are the center of the universe for the company…In any company meetings, normally they ask the question, in internal tools like memegen their points of views resonate with everyone. In various internal google groups, they are often found deep in conversations about various company/industry and world issues. Now instead of that if you are in a different role then your life can be drastically different.” He further states that he as a customer engineer for Google Cloud wonders how all these people have so much time to talk about and opine on so many random stuff through different internal forums. He has hardly ever seen any of his team members have the luxury of posting/commenting on industry topics on broad internal forums and being immersed in discussions over the next many days. Plus, all the above roles earn a lot more than he as a customer engineer does. ^[1]https://www.quora.com/Whats-something-that-sucks-about-working-at-Google/answer/Sarthak-Ganguly?ch=99&oid=122021232&share=479381e9&srid=uzPvp&target_type=answer 

I will disregard the point regarding salary because apparently at the current time creating software is more valuable than integrating software. I do agree creating is more valuable, too. But that does not affect his complaint that Customer engineers don’t have time to join conversations. The main problem is about the workload of the Customer engineer is heavier than the workload of the core group of engineers, so Customer engineers can’t join the deep conversation (because they don’t have time). It’s similar to the situation that the employees often work overtime but the managers have plenty of time to relax and sit in their offices.

There are some jobs in some companies having such problems. If you have encountered a similar problem, you may consider my view of the above.

First, one question needs to be clarified: Are Customer engineers in Google indeed busier than core engineers in Google? That’s something only someone who works at Google can verify. It depends on a lot of factors – maybe it’s true, or maybe core engineers are usually smarter (that’s why they were hired as core group engineers), so they work in a more efficient way than Customer engineers do. Still, Customer engineers must ask themselves this question if they think they are very busy.

Second, suppose it’s not the problem of work efficiency described in the first point, in my view, there is a problem. I think it’s unfair treatment toward different job types. Why? Because both types of jobs are in the “same” ranking in the company, there shouldn’t be a such big difference. The difference in salary between two job types depends on the skill and the value each job type brings to a company; however, the difference in workloads doesn’t. Why must a Customer Engineer work overtime while a Development engineer doesn’t have to do that? Why must a Customer Service work overtime while an employee in any other department doesn’t? It’s that unfair treatment due to either the contempt toward some types of jobs that are generally considered to bring lower value or that the supervisors in some departments don’t think of decreasing their subordinates’ workloads. Speaking of which, if it’s the latter case – the supervisors in some departments don’t think of decreasing their subordinates’ workloads, the heavy workload in most cases is pretty obvious, so why didn’t you think of decreasing their subordinates’ workloads? The problem of many supervisors in the latter case is that these supervisors and the bosses take the work-overtime situation of employees in some departments for granted while they know it’s wrong that every department has to work overtime since employees in some departments don’t do that. So it’s still unfair treatment to some extent.
Anyway, since there is unfair treatment, bosses and supervisors should understand this is unfair and adopt some measures to reduce the heavy workloads of employees in some departments. Maybe you should consider hiring more people for some departments as other departments do when people in other departments say their workload is too heavy and need more people (That’s why I said many supervisors and bosses take a such situation of working overtime in some departments for granted). Another thing you should do is that you can reexamine the workflow in your department to see if there is anything can be streamlined to improve the work efficiency of your employees – either with or without some new technology tools. Maybe it’s not about the number of employees are not enough; it’s about the workflow in your department needing to be streamlined.

11. Office outfits

Office outfits are another topic I would like to discuss. Let me list the situations and provide my views one by one.

11.1 General view toward office outfits

Many people wear formal outfits in workplaces. Despite there are many companies in some Western countries allow remote work, and therefore employees are free to wear whatever they want now, many companies which don’t allow remote work still require employees to dress formally in the workplace, and some companies that allow remote work also hold the same view toward work outfits for remote meetings. In my view, either in the physical workplace or at remote work, unless there is a meeting with clients, the demand for a specific type of work outfit should be discarded, including in internal meetings in the company or a job interview. Bosses and supervisors should allow employees to wear whatever they want as long as they aren’t not wearing this to meet a client: Yes, whatever they want to wear, even if what an employee wears is pajamas.

First, there are many different clothing styles nowadays. Clothing style often shows a person’s personal style. Allowing such demonstration of personal style will let employees be more confident, more comfortable, and happier at work. Because they will be more confident and happier at work, it’s possible that this can increase the work performance of employees who were forbidden from wearing some specific style of clothing. Furthermore, wearing “weirdly” won’t decrease work performance at all. If there is anything to do with work performance, it should be that the prohibition of wearing any style of clothing may decrease the work performance of some specific employees. More importantly, outfits in any style have nothing to do with a person’s professional abilities. You should focus on the performance of work and the professional abilities of a person rather than asking employees must wear a specific type of outfit. In some software companies, people are allowed to wear whatever they want. I once saw a male American engineer from Microsoft wearing punk clothing when accepting a news interview. Why can’t every job type in any type of company be like him?

Second, why even a pajama should be allowed? At first, as many people view wearing a pajama in workplaces as inappropriate, I also feel that wearing a pajama to a workplace is inappropriate. However, my point is about employees should be allowed to dress casually in many workplaces that required them to dress formally at the current time. Speaking of “dressing casually”, isn’t wearing a pajama also “dressing casually? Many clothing In some particular styles of outfits are considered “like pajamas” in different people’s eyes. Some people feel it’s cool and it’s not a pajama, but some people just feel it looks like a pajama even though they know many people wear this type of clothes on the street nowadays. There are many different styles of clothing nowadays, and people’s esthetic conceptions are different from each other. Because of this reason, you can’t define on your own what is “casual but okay” and what is “casual and not okay”, then imposing your personal preference on others. Therefore, since it’s about “allowing employees to dress freely as they want or not dress intentionally at all”, just allow pajamas. Focus on work performance instead.

Third, why can’t wear whatever you want to meet a client? Because the view of the company you work for can be changed, but you can’t make sure every other company changes their view toward work outfit. So unless you know the company your client works for also changes their view toward work outfit, it’s better to follow the traditional concept and dress formally to meet a client. By the way, in some customer-facing roles such as the financial consultants in banks, dressing formally is still inevitable as there are numerous customers you need to meet every day, and you can’t make sure every customer won’t have a negative perception of your outfit, even if that negative perception is wrong.

11.2 Outfits to fit into company culture?

Many articles suggest candidates or employees choose outfits that fit the culture of the company that they are interviewing with / working for. One article from Harvard Business Review states, “avoid disappointing them. Be sensitive to context. For instance, if you are speaking to a recruiter at a disruptive tech start-up, you should not wear the same outfit you might wear to an interview at a big bank or conservative corporation. It just means you need to be emotionally intelligent enough to respect the social etiquette of the company looking to hire you. Things might be different five years later when you are an established player in the company and have a strong reputation, but you need to play the game before you can break the rules ^[2]https://hbr.org/2020/10/4-pieces-of-career-advice-its-okay-to-ignore. ” Another article from Zippa writes, “wearing clothing that doesn’t reflect the company culture” is a thing that has to avoid as it will make a bad impression. ^[3]https://www.zippia.com/advice/10-ways-to-make-a-bad-impression-at-an-interview/ ” There have been many old professionals on Linkedin who suggest that old candidates should wear casual when interviewing a tech start-up that is full of young employees.

I disagree with this view. These tech start-ups think they shouldn’t be required to dress formally at work, so they ask every employee to wear casually; otherwise, employees who wear formally will be viewed as “weird”. However, in my view, this is a distorted view of work outfits. If they can even wear casual clothing at work as they like, why can’t others wear formal clothing if others like wearing formal clothing? As I said, everyone should be allowed to wear whatever they want at work. Although in many cases that means young employees shouldn’t be forbidden from wearing clothes in some special styles or casual clothes such as a simple T-shirt, that doesn’t mean that any employee who likes to wear formally should be forbidden from wearing formally. Some people just like to wear formal, why can’t they? Again, “whatever they want to wear”: Everyone has their own preference. Companies and employees shouldn’t put their personal preferences onto others, including new employees.
Moreover, why does a person has to wait until he/she becomes “an established player” in order to wear whatever he/she wants? It’s just clothes and has nothing to do with a person’s professional abilities. Let me repeat: Wearing “weirdly” won’t decrease work performance at all, and outfits in any style have nothing to do with a person’s professional abilities.

In conclusion, although the suggestion from Harvard Business Review and Zippa meet the requirement of many companies including tech start-ups, it’s that these tech start-ups also have some distorted views of work outfits. Employees, no matter if they are new to a company or are “established players”, should be allowed to wear “whatever they want”, including general formal office outfits.

11.3 Men’s outfit in the office

Nowadays, women are allowed to wear low-cut clothes in workplaces in some Western countries because of fashion trends. However, men are still required to wear ties and suits in workplaces. Sometimes I see photos that there are some men in the U.S. wearing a tie on a big sunny summer day. I feel they must feel very hot, and it’s so terrible. Wearing a tie is like wearing clothes with high necks. Wearing clothing with a high neck is okay, but wearing clothing with a high neck every day isn’t. Some people may feel uncomfortable when wearing clothing with high-neck every day. No wonder in many U.S TV series, the first thing men do when they come back to their houses is to untie their ties. Wearing a suit is handsome, I agree; however, wearing a tie is sometimes unnecessary, and removing a tie won’t decrease any handsomeness of wearing a suit.

Equally importantly, men shouldn’t be required to wear trousers if they don’t want. Men wearing shorts are considered inappropriate at the current time. However, women are allowed to wear either short skirts or knee-length skirts which exposed their calves in workplaces, then why can’t men wear shorts? You know what? In some companies, not only short skirts are allowed, but women are also allowed to wear short pants in workplaces. This is basically a differential treatment between men and women.

Some people will say men don’t remove the hair on their legs. Guess what? In some Asian countries such as Taiwan, women removing hairs on their legs are not necessary – It won’t be considered impolite if a woman doesn’t remove her body hair ^[4]https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-find-natural-body-hair-on-a-woman-disgusting-and-have-to-publicly-make-rude-comments-about-it . Many Taiwanese women do also remove hairs on their legs, but that’s simply because they like the hairs on their bodies to be removed, not because keeping body hair will be considered impolite. There are indeed some women who do so because they bought the trend in the West, but the general conception in society still doesn’t consider women keeping body hair as inappropriate (Something that surprisingly women in the Western world can learn). But in such countries, men are still forbidden from wearing shorts in workplaces. In fact, because body hair will grow repeatedly, even if a woman in a Western country removes her body hair regularly, she won’t have a body without hair every day forever unless she does laser hair removal. Moreover, there are some women in the West who stop shaving their legs, too ^[5]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyJwdGVnb9k . If women can have hair on their legs when wearing skirts, why can’t men have hair on their legs when wearing shorts, too? More importantly, since men with hair on their legs are already considered appropriate or even masculine in the traditional concept, there is no need to forbid men from wearing shorts and exhibiting their hair on their legs in workplaces.
Anyway, companies should allow men to wear shorts.

As I pointed out in the example of the Microsoft engineer wearing punk clothing, every person should be allowed to wear whatever they want in the workplace. Yes, “whatever they want”. So stop demanding men wear suits and ties at work. Just to be clear, I don’t mean men shouldn’t wear ties and suits in workplaces – I personally feel wearing suits are very handsome. What I mean is that men shouldn’t be required to wear ties, suits, or trousers if they don’t want.

By the way, I also would like to mention my personal thought – which I think it’s depends on personal preference. I personally think that pointing out that perhaps the general conception of men’s formal outfits should be changed will perhaps help. Because of fashion trends, women wear some clothing such as see-through clothing that exposes their bodies or don’t wear bras nowadays. Many fashion brands also have rolled out many men’s clothing that exposes men’s bodies more than traditional men’s clothing during these years ^[6]https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/fashion/dolce-and-gabbana-milan-men-s-fashion-week-spring-summer-2019-a3865271.html . Still, no men wear see-through clothingor only wear something like underwear on the street. If a men wear something like this on the street, the public probably will think he is an exposure nut and call the police (Maybe he is seen as indeed guilty in some countries). It may be reasonable that no one wears like this or this on the street, but there is no male celebrity wearing something like this on the red carpet, either, while there are many female celebrities wearing some dress that really exposes most of their bodies on the red carpet. Anyway, either exposing bodies or not, I think men’s formal outfits will be more comfortable in summer if there are more male stars wearing clothing other than suits and trousers. Maybe it’s just a shirt without a tie, a sleeveless top, or a short that expose calves – these won’t expose bodies too much.

11.4 Women’s Outfits in the office

As I said, unless there is a meeting with a client, everyone should be allowed to wear anything they want in the office, and some office places has a high acceptance level toward women’s work outfits during the past few years. However, that’s only in some office places; there are many companies that don’t allow women to wear specific types of clothing, and there are also some stereotypes toward women’s work outfits.

Asking what is an appropriate office outfit, a female Taiwanese said her male supervisor thinks her work outfit isn’t good enough. She said, “There is a new male sale supervisor. He often hints to me that I look ugly and wear too many clothes, and say I don’t look like an “IT girl”. How to dress like an IT girl? ……A female sales came to visit the company before, and her neckline of the clothes was so low that her breast was about to “fall out”. Even if I was a girl, I didn’t know where to put my eyes. But my supervisor hinted to me that this was the right type of outfit at work, and said to me, ‘You really don’t look like an IT girl ‘ …..He said that the girls in the company he previously worked for used to dress beautifully. ^[7]https://www.dcard.tw/f/job/p/239626839碎花洋 ” She provided a photo of herself which demonstrates what she usually wears in the workplace and what she usually wears is some country-style floral dress. Some Taiwanese comment, “are you being exploited by ‘unspoken rule’? (This Means some male supervisors at work want to sexually harass female employees by using their power at work) “. Some female Taiwanese comment, “What is the right outfit at work for ‘an IT girl? I also work in the IT industry. I always wear hoodies and jeans at work.”

First, I partly agree with these Taiwanese comments about the “unspoken rule”. I think that the male supervisor probably doesn’t dare to “actually” sexually harass a female employee, but he probably wants to see some sexy outfits on his young female subordinates (the author of this article) for eye candy. That’s a common situation in the technology industry in Taiwan which should be forbidden. Bosses and male supervisors, this is disgusting. Young female employees shouldn’t be treated as your eye candies. There are indeed many women in the West wearing low-cut clothing at work, and there are more and more women in Taiwan wearing that at work because of the trend in the West, too. But women wearing low-cut clothing in the West is because they like it, not because they want to please you. So women should be allowed to wear low-cut clothing, but this shouldn’t be a mandatory outfit at work. As I said, everyone, no matter a man or woman, should be allowed to wear whatever they want.

Second, the first point is only one of the possibilities. Another possibility is that the male supervisor doesn’t like the country-style floral outfits and as other characteristics of the low-cut outfits make the outfits look more formal, he prefers the low-cut outfit on the female sales. In addition, he personally prefers the style that the low-cut outfits belong to, too. That’s why he said “the girls in the company he previously worked for used to dress beautifully”. It’s highly possible that the male supervisors don’t understand women’s clothing and therefore only refer to the outfit of female employees based on their past experience. Many males indeed don’t understand women’s clothing and they don’t have to understand. Also, many males don’t like floral dresses, especially country-style floral dresses. They only like women wearing well-fitting T-shirts with well-fitting jeans or wearing well-fitting outfits with no patterns; they don’t understand women’s clothing at all. They consider other types of women’s clothing as “ugly” – Some women in Taiwan share the same type of aesthetic as such men do, too. The male supervisor may have no intention to ask a female employee to wear low-cut clothing; he simply prefers the style that the low-cut outfits belong to, so he used what the female sales wore as a reference because he doesn’t know anything about women’s clothing. Still, I suspect that the most possible case is that the male supervisor has both the problems of the first point and the second point – He doesn’t understand women’s clothing, has such a preference, and put his personal preference on other female employees, while he also indeed likes to have some eye candy.
Anyway, here is my suggestion. Although the problem is more about the supervisor according to the above two points ( I think bosses and supervisors shouldn’t use his/her personal preference to demand subordinates’ work outfits. Everyone has their own personal preference; I personally feel a country-style floral dress is beautiful ) and I also said everyone should be allowed to wear whatever they want, a country-style floral dress isn’t considered a formal outfit in traditional concepts. So if you need to follow the traditional concept, I suggest that the lady in this article can wear something formal without wearing low-cut clothing. If you are afraid of being eye candy in front of the male supervisor, you can wear dress pants with a shirt. Many female Taiwanese said in the comment they are from the IT industry but they always wear casual. I guess that that’s because they are engineers, which is not a client-facing role. Given the content of the article, the lady in the article is doing a client-facing job such as Sales. Sales should dress more formally in the traditional concept in even the technology industry. So I suggest the lady in the article can dress more formally.

By the way, one thing needs to be noted. Although I said males don’t have to understand female clothing, that doesn’t mean you can criticize a female’s outfit as ugly. Since you don’t understand, who on earth are you can criticize someone’s outfit as ugly? SHUT UP your mouth. If you want your employee to dress like a professional in the business world, improve your knowledge of the work outfit of women rather than saying someone’s outfit is “ugly”. Improve knowledge of work outfits for women doesn’t mean you have to understand women’s clothing; it only means you have to understand what is considered a formal work outfit for women – There are many styles of women’s clothing, so you don’t have to understand every style; as I said, you only need to understand what is considered “a formal work outfit of women”. Saying someone’s outfit is ugly when someone intentionally dressed in a certain style rather than wearing sloppily without any consideration of clothing is very impolite, you know? If you can’t identify whether a person intentionally dresses in a certain style or wears sloppily without any consideration of clothing, just SHUT UP your mouth. If you know that a person intentionally dresses in that style, since everyone has their own preference, and the point you dislike is about the style of clothing, not clothing collocation, you shouldn’t put your personal preference onto others. So, still, SHUT UP your mouth.

I would also like to discuss another situation in Taiwan. A lady said in a comment of an article on Dcard, “I am fat. My supervisor said I would look thinner if I wear a dress, so I followed her demand and buy many dresses to wear to work…..Later I bought new shoes (white cloth shoes), she felt it was not formal enough……Previously she once said wearing cloth shoes is very informal. Then one day I saw her wearing a dress with cloth and shoes. ^[8]https://www.dcard.tw/f/job/p/237661839 ”.

This is a common but terrible situation in Taiwan. Many Taiwanese bosses and supervisors, either male or female, often have some demands of dressing in a specific style for young female employees, but these supervisors do not demand themselves to dress well. Many Taiwanese supervisors dress badly without any consideration for clothing ( They don’t consider what to wear will be nice at all, so I don’t criticize randomly here when I don’t understand). Here are my words to these bosses and supervisors: Who the hell do you think you are^^? You usually dress that ugly but dare to criticize others’ outfits? Dress well yourself at work as well or SHUT UP your mouth.

11.5 Makeup

The last thing about work outfits I would like to discuss is women’s make-up. I am not sure if there is a similar situation happening in Western countries, but this situation happens in Taiwan. There are some Taiwanese on the Internet talking about female employees having to wear make-up in some industries; otherwise, they will be considered unprofessional, think of themselves (female employees) as “still studying in college”, and haven’t prepared enough to walk into “the society” ^[9]https://www.dcard.tw/f/talk/p/239635353?cid=d56e8b35-7922-49cd-89f2-1e5272c781d1 . Many Taiwanese agree with this view. Yet, I don’t agree with this view. In my view, except for some jobs that are about make-up: For example, a clerk at a make-up brand counter in a department store, most jobs shouldn’t demand women must wear make-up at work, including jobs in the fashion industry.

Before I state my points, I have to mention that this requirement is not solely a pressure from males; many female supervisors also demand female subordinates to wear make-up at work. Ok. Let me provide my view that why I don’t agree with the view that women must wear make-up.

First, no one demands women must wear high heels at work. If women don’t need to wear high heels in office jobs which don’t have the requirement of standing for long hours, why do women need to wear make-up at work?

Second, there is a traditional image of an experienced and professional businesswoman wearing nice with proper make-up at work. This traditional image has been carved inside many people’s minds in many countries including the U.S. That’s why there are many people, either male or female, think that a professional female must wear make-up at work; that’s why some Taiwanese supervisors think female employees without make-up in some industries are “unprofessional, think of themselves ( female employees) as ‘still studying in college, and haven’t prepared enough to walk into ‘the society. ” This is a stereotype. Ladies and gentlemen, the value of any professional at work including women at work is not about whether wearing make-up or not; the value of any professional at work is about professional abilities and maturity of mind. If you already hold this point before reading this article, why do you demand a female employee must wear make-up at work? Ridiculous. More importantly, wearing make-up has nothing to do with a person’s professional abilities, maturity of mind, whether a female “has grown up or not”, or whether a female “has prepared enough to walk into the society or not.

Third, wearing make-up makes a woman more beautiful – I agree, but wearing make-up should like wearing high heels, is a choice, not a requirement. Many women who are affected by the stereotype that is described in my Second point like wearing make-up; that’s why they demand female subordinates wear make-up as they do. But remember, women, wear make-up should because they like it, not because they have to. If you think you “have to” wear make-up at work to make you look more beautiful and therefore think you “have to” wear make-up at work, that’s still your choice and no one put that pressure on you. Hence, you shouldn’t demand your female employees must wear make-up and make this become a “must (have-to)”. Wearing make-up should be a personal preference. You shouldn’t impose your personal preference on others. Again, it should be a personal choice, not a requirement.

Fourth, a man isn’t required to wear make-up at work; why do women have to wear make-up at work? Simply because there is a trend in women but there isn’t a trend in men? See how ridiculous that many industries that are not related to make-up or even fashion blindly follow “a fashion trend”. More importantly, some people argue that they want women to wear make-up because this makes a woman looks more beautiful; some people also argue that wearing make-up shows a woman has grown up and is a mature professional businesswoman. Let me ask you: Why do women have to “make their faces more beautiful” by wearing make-up, but a man doesn’t have to “make themselves more handsome” by wearing make-up? Why does a woman have to wear make-up to prove she has “grown up” and is “mature”, while a man doesn’t have to prove that by wearing make-up? What does “wearing make-up” has a matter to do with the maturity of mind of a person? Fucking ridiculous. The requirement of wearing make-up at work is basically an overdose demand for females from many people because of the stereotype. Remember: Wearing make-up should be a choice, not a requirement. To women: Just because you like wearing make-up and feel wearing make-up looks more beautiful, doesn’t mean that every female employee has to wear make-up and looks more beautiful at work. To men: Just because you see many women wearing make-up, doesn’t mean that every female employee has to wear make-up and looks more beautiful at work.
( Because of the K-Pop trend, some young men in some Asia countries wear make-up. Therefore, when reading my Fourth point, people in some Asia countries will think men should also be required to wear make-up at work because women are required to do so. If you think in this way, you are wrong because of the above reasons I said. It should be about wearing make-up should be a choice, including “women”, not about men should also wear make-up at work. )

Fifth, I mentioned that even the fashion industry that is not make-up brands shouldn’t require female employees to wear make-up. I know that many women in the fashion industry love wearing makeup, and they will continue to do so even if no one asks them to wear some makeup – Probably there has been no actual demand in the fashion industry about asking female employees to wear makeup before because it’s possible all women in fashion industry proactively wear make-ups at work. Still, a fashion brand that is not a make-up brand such as a clothing brand doesn’t sell make-up. Therefore, there shouldn’t be a requirement on wearing make-up, and if there is a female employee/colleague who doesn’t wear make-up at work, you should NOT feel she is weird. Why it’s important for the face of a female employee “look beautiful”? Ridiculous. Even if you want your employee to dress as your company culture looks like, since it’s a clothing brand, why can’t a person just wear fashionably without make-up?

Just a reminder I don’t know if there are supervisors who have been doing such a thing or not. After wearing make-up becomes a personal choice instead of a requirement, you shouldn’t prefer or even promote a female employee over the other female employee simply because the one who is preferred wears make-up at work, and you love wearing make-up or you love seeing women with make-up on their faces.

Read the next part: Part 7 of this article here.

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Chrissy Slora

The articles published in this website are all written by Chrissy Slora. Chrissy Slora aims to make people learn about how the world can be better and provide her intelligent and wise insight by writing about various topics from technology to issues happening in the world. Follow her on social media: Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin