Viral Email Exchange Shows Workplace Gender Discrimination the Door!

Sexism and gender discrimination are alive and kicking in 2021. Today’s reminder comes in the form of an email exchange between an employer and potential employee that proved they didn’t care to give her the job because she wasn’t a man. This exchange was shared by Twitter user @dzzzny, who laid out the email the employer (Mark) sent and then the email his sister, a.k.a. the potential employee (Charlotte), sent back to them. And it really is a chef’s kiss moment!

Usually, an employer will tell the possible employee whether they made the cut or not. I stress “usually,” because a lot of the time employers have so much going on with the hiring process that it’s go, go, go. So, they don’t have time to individually break it down for everyone. But most jobs will send an automated email to a batch of people who didn’t make the cut. Been there, done that. But sometimes, just sometimes, you get someone like Mark who thinks his comments are necessary and need to be shared.

In the initial email, he made it clear that the position was open, but that he wasn’t going to hire her. Why? Because he feared that she wouldn’t “be able to handle the work load,” supposedly because she’s not a “bodybuilder.” To him, he probably thought he was doing the right thing by laying it all out for Charlotte. Instead, he came off as the biggest jerk ever that proved that sexism and gender discrimination are still thriving.

Charlotte, being the baddie she is, basically told him to buzz off to the point where I wonder if he’ll ever recover from her savage words. She started the email with “Hi Muscle Mark,” something that had me DYING. She then went on to talk about her impressive experience when it comes to the job advertised. And before the haters come out and say that she was too cocky or straightforward, her experiences in the workforce are absolutely something she should talk about, especially when someone is discriminating against her based on her gender.

She went on to tell him how she checked his company before emailing and how “it would be no more challenging than the work I have completed before as it was to a much higher standard than the work I’ve seen your ‘company’ produce.” It’s the extra quotation marks around company that get me, because in one fell swoop she questioned the legitimacy of his business and whether she should even be applying to such a place if they aren’t a credible workplace.

Charlotte then went for another blow:

How what I do find challenging is working with small minded individuals such as yourself that I could probably bench press 5 minutes after being woken up from a 3 year coma, therefore I am no longer interested in this position. I’m sure you will have no problem finding the correct individual at your next visit to the bodybuilding convention.

King regards,

Charlotte (AKA not the body builder)

Personally, I’m super proud of Charlotte. She put herself out there, and when she got this rude and ignorant response, she acted accordingly and stopped Mark in his tracks. Because you best believe that this isn’t the first time he’s done this. It probably isn’t his second, third, or fourth. Because that email he sent Charlotte was full of self righteous garbage as if he were the authority in determining if women can handle landscaping or not. Newsflash: They do and don’t need you to them that.

The internet went to town on this viral email exchange, and here are some of my favorite responses yet:

(image: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels)

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Lyra Hale

Lyra (She/Her) is a queer Latinx writer who stans badass women in movies, TV shows, and books. She loves crafting, tostones, and speculating all over queer media. And when not writing she's scrolling through TikTok or rebuilding her book collection.

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