A male and female coworker switched emails and learned some pretty depressing truths about sexism at work
Today in news that will make you want to eat your own eyeballs, a male and female coworker switched email signatures for a week — so he was signing off as Nicole Pieri and she was signing off as Martin Schneider — and the social experiment revealed some truths about workplace sexism that have us screaming.
In a series of tweets that have gone viral, Schneider shares the email-switch story and the insights he gleaned from it about the uphill climb women face in the workplace.
Schneider writes that he and Pieri previously worked together at an employment services firm, where he was Pieri’s director supervisor. He was pleased with her performance, but the boss above them found that Pieri took too long dealing with clients.
As her supervisor, I considered this a minor nuisance at best. I figured the reason I got things done faster was from having more experience
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
Schneider goes on to explain that one day, while emailing back and forth with a client about his resume, the client was being inexplicably rude and difficult.
So one day I'm emailing a client back-and-forth about his resume and he is just being IMPOSSIBLE. Rude, dismissive, ignoring my questions.
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
Then he noticed something.
Anyway I was getting sick of his shit when I noticed something.
Thanks to our shared inbox, I'd been signing all communications as "Nicole"— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
Realizing the error, he emailed the client saying, “Hey this is Martin, I’m taking over this project for Nicole.”
IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENT. Positive reception, thanking me for suggestions, responds promptly, saying "great questions!" Became a model client.
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
Note: My technique and advice never changed. The only difference was that I had a man's name now.
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
Schneider said he then asked Pieri if she’d had this experience before. “I mean, not ALL the time,” she said. “But yeah. A lot.”
So the two colleagues decided to try an experiment.
We did an experiment: For two weeks we switched names. I signed all client emails as Nicole. She signed as me.
Folks. It fucking sucked.— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
I was in hell. Everything I asked or suggested was questioned. Clients I could do in my sleep were condescending. One asked if I was single.
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
As for Pieri, she had one of the best workweeks of her career at that company.
Nicole had the most productive week of her career.
I realized the reason she took longer is bc she had to convince clients to respect her.— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
By the time she could get clients to accept that she knew what she was doing, I could get halfway through another client.
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
I wasn't any better at the job than she was, I just had this invisible advantage.
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
It’s worth noting that though Schneider’s experience was shocking to him, the kind of disrespect and condescension he describes are something women experience all the time. And though many women choose not to speak out about workplace sexism, plenty do — but their stories often aren’t believed.
Case in point: When Schneider and Pieri presented their “findings” to their boss, he dismissed them.
I showed the boss and he didn't buy it. I told him that was fine, but I was never critiquing her speed with clients again.
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
He conceded that battle, but found ways to hound us both on time in other manners, but again, that's a different story.
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
Schneider says the experience was truly eye-opening for him.
Here's the real fucked-up thing: For me, this was shocking. For her, she was USED to it. She just figured it was part of her job.
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
(I mean, she knew she was being treated different for being a woman, she's not dumb. She just took it in stride.)
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
And he acknowledged another Twitter user, too, who noted that for women with “black-sounding” names, the experience of workplace sexism is amplified by racism.
Imagine if your name was….say, TaNeisha or Yolanda.
— JC (@notladymary) March 9, 2017
Yeah, a few people have brought this up and it absolutely should be considered when we talk about this kind of story.
— Marty Schneider (@SchneidRemarks) March 9, 2017
Following Schneider’s tweet thread, Pieri detailed her own experience of the social experiment on Medium. She explains that it wasn’t just clients treating her badly, it was male coworkers — including Schneider, who she calls “Marty” here — creating a hostile work environment.
"I kept working there and taking [the boss'] money, despite the bullshit I lived with on the daily," Pieri writes in the Medium post. "When Marty and my boss would talk over me, I’d just get louder. When they drifted off and stopped paying attention while I was talking, I’d rewrite it in an email and force my words in front of their eyes."
She says she later confronted Schneider about his behavior and noticed an immediate change. “He took it to heart. He started using his voice to bring attention to me in meetings. I’ve seen him do the same for other women in mixed settings since. I’m grateful for that.”
Her boss, though, remained a real piece of work. She concludes her essay by saying that her boss’ refusal to accept the result of her and Schneider’s experiment was the last straw.
“What did my boss have to gain by refusing to believe that sexism exists?” she writes. “Even when the evidence is screaming at him, even when his employee who makes him an awful lot of money is telling him, even when THE BOY on staff is telling him?”
Instead of losing her cool or searching for answers, though, “I quit and started my own business writing blog posts and web copy as a freelancer.”
That’s a brave decision, and we totally applaud Nicole. But we’re still rolling our eyes at the denial of women’s experiences, and look forward to the day when workplaces welcome everyone.
