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Come on, it’s 2023 and still some employers seem to have a stick up their butts when it comes to personal employee choices, such as hair colour and tattoos.

If you work remotely, like myself and many others do, it’s easy to get away with a more ‘relaxed’ personal appearance. I don’t have to answer to anyone for my facial piercing and tie-dye pants during work hours. But for others – not so lucky.

Recently a woman named Emily Benschoter has brought this controversial conversation back into the public sphere by sharing her own journey with strict corporate rules and possibly the most hilarious acts of ‘malicious compliance’ the internet has ever seen.

29-year-old Benschoter found herself in a unique situation when she accepted a job offer but was later told she needed to cover her pink hair.

During her job interview for a front-of-house role in the hospitality industry, the interview was not conducted in person or via video chat, so her appearance was not a factor. It was only before her first shift that she contacted her manager to inquire about the acceptability of pink hair. The response she got was not as open-minded as she’d hoped for.

Benschoter shared that it simply didn’t make sense changing her personal look for the position, especially considering the effort involved.

“Dying my hair for a job I work at for 40 hours per week wasn’t an option. I am a self-expressive person, and I feel very confident with pink hair, so I came up with a solution to keep the job and my hair.”

When her dyed hair was deemed unacceptable, her manager suggested wearing a wig. Now here’s where the whole thing gets really funny, because Benschoter took the suggestion to heart in a way that her employer probably didn’t expect.

Since then, Benschoter has taken to TikTok, under the username @emuhleeebee, to showcase the various “terrible” wigs she wears to work. These videos have garnered thousands of views, with some reaching millions. And when she says “terrible” wigs, she means it.

 

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Despite complying (albeit with a huge dash of cheek) with her employer’s request to wear wigs, Benschoter remains critical of the policy. She expressed, “It’s dehumanizing that I can’t be accepted at face value because my hair is a non-traditional color. It’s so superficial that my hair color is an obstacle.”

So while Benschoter is technically compliant with company policy, the hilarious clips she’s created double up as a kind of bizarre protest.

“The worse the wig, the better,” she said. “It is a way to open up the conversation with the customers who think it is insane that I have to cover my pink hair.”

She’s got a point. It seems pretty old-school to judge your employees on their external expression.

And according to organisational psychologist Gena Cox, it’s not just ‘old-school’, but extremely biased.

Cox shed some light on why rules against unnatural hair colours or tattoos persist in some corporations, outlining that, “Companies focus disproportionately on employees’ visual characteristics when they have a preconceived notion of what the ‘ideal employee’ looks like and when they believe their clients and customers share that bias.”

Such policies reflect prejudiced notions of ‘normal’ and hinder workplace inclusivity. Since Benschoter’s brilliant malicious compliance wig journey, many more TikTok users have found the confidence to share similar experiences regarding workplace inclusivity.

One commenter shared that she, “had to cover my blue hair at Applebee’s, so I wore a jheri curl wig,” while another mentioned that she and her colleagues have also adopted the ‘terrible wig’ protest, “My friends wear Karen wigs that match. It’s unhingedly hilarious.”

As an appreciator of alternative expression, this is the kind of malicious compliance I can get behind. Hopefully the slew of awful fake hairdos gracing corporate spaces due to draconian dress policies will make conservative bosses do a double-take when it comes to telling people what to do with their bodies.

[source:instagram/@vt]