Dressed for success 4/4: Tested on bunnies

It was the early 1990s, and I was a technician at a major software company, back when they still had in-house technical support departments. Working in high tech was a dream come true in the fashion department: Jeans and t-shirts were the standard uniform. At last, I was on the right planet!

I’d been at this company at least a year and had already received one minor promotion (the kind that doesn’t actually get you more money). I hoped to get promoted to a more senior technical or writing position, but there was at least one unsavory obstacle in my way: a certain manager. We’ll call him Dirk.

Dirk had risen through the ranks from technician to manager, and he was a rarity in the department: A person over the age of 35. Actually, in his case, over the age of 50. He seemed vastly satisfied to have earned a middle-management position and a fine window cubicle, which he occupied the way a man occupies his La-Z-Boy after a long day of exhorting assembly line workers to go faster, faster!

Dirk liked to remind us that it was not our job to dream big. Once he told us that it wasn’t in the company’s interest to hire widget-makers who were so smart that they became bored with widget making. (The “widget making” in this analogy was solving customer problems.) If we felt we were too good to make widgets, maybe the company had erred in hiring us.

One day I had a regular performance review. Dirk and I were crammed into a tiny, windowless conference room—what passed as a private space in a sea of open cubicles—and he had just dispensed a series of compliments about my technical skill and work ethic. And then he said something I had never heard from a manager before. He said that there was a problem—something that would “probably hold me back” in the industry.

“Really?” I said, alarm bells ringing in my head. “What?”

He paused for dramatic effect, apparently searching for a delicate way to deliver his news, which only increased my anxiety. And then he said, “You’re too nice.”

“Too . . . nice?” I replied, not knowing whether to be relieved, insulted, or wary.

I may have been in my mid twenties, but I was familiar enough with corporate norms to know this was not typical feedback. What did he mean? Was I too kind to my co-workers? Could that actually be a problem? Did he think I needed to be . . . what? . . . Machiavellian? Did he want me to delegate more? (Delegate what? To whom? There was nothing to delegate.) My mind was racing to make sense of it, but all I was getting was static. And then there was the problem of his expression, which was more smarmy than usual.

“Could you be more specific?” I asked. “Could you give me an example?”

Dirk leaned back in his chair, smiling, regarding me carefully from an angle. “Well, no,” he drawled casually, simpering. “Just . . . toughen up a little.” He paused, simpered again, and said in a lighter tone, “I’d like to see you in some black leather.”

Black leather? What the . . . ?

I may have raised my eyebrows at that. Maybe I chuckled as though he was using an edgy metaphor, and I was worldly enough to understand the joke. I don’t remember what either of us said after that, but we probably wrapped up the review with me thanking him for the feedback because, you know, I’m too nice.

Over the next few days, I felt confused, angry, creeped out. Unfortunately, it never occurred to me to report the incident to H.R., which is exactly what I should have done. Everyone in the department seemed to dislike Dirk, he was terrible for morale, and—if the rumors were true—he’d been playing mind games with other employees, too. But going to H.R. wouldn’t have been “tough,” right?

For the next several days, I periodically dropped by Dirk‘s cubicle to share some little status update about how I was toughening up, usually delivered with a conspiratorial wink:

“Hi Dirk! I want you to know I jaywalked this morning and I’m not sorry.”

“Dirk. Pssst. I was in a hurry, so I put a Post-It note in the trash instead of the recycling.”

“Hi Dirk. Yesterday I pulled a U-turn on 99. At rush hour.”

“Dirk! I bought myself a new kind of shampoo, and you know what? I’m pretty sure it was tested on bunnies.”

At first he laughed a little uncomfortably at these interruptions, but after a few days he just looked annoyed and I stopped. I never did follow his fashion advice. A few months later, I got hired by another department where no one complained about my wardrobe or my good manners.

Dirk left the company soon after, and I remember getting the gleeful e-mail whose subject line was “Ding, dong, the witch is dead.” There was a sizable celebration in his wake. I don’t know if he left of his own accord, but I like to imagine that he got forced out for not being nice enough.