Not Your Baby: How I Got More Respect at Work
For some crazy reason, my parents let me test out of the first grade. This would turn into the bane of my existence, and also a big part of my identity when it came to school and extracurricular activities. My siblings can attest to the same. We were all known as the “babies” in our respective grades.
There are some positives though. While all my friends are turning 30 this year, I’m out here with all the experience and practically none of the knee pain. *wink*
Today, I’m still considered the “baby” in most environments, especially at work. On any given day, I’m working and meeting with people who are closer to my parent’s age. And on top of actually being younger than most people I work with, I have the privilege of youthful skin (shout out to melanin), so it’s been a struggle to get that REAL grown woman respect I deserve.
This isn’t news, but even though I certainly consider myself a grownup – meaning I can cuss in front of anybody, pay all my bills on time, and argue with any auntie, uncle, or old person who tries to play R Kelly songs at a family function – I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I think people around my age group give off this kind of uncertain energy in general, and these Baby Boomers and Generation X’rs smell it from a mile away, delighting in our doubt and eagerness to please.
I started with my current company when I was 25. I’ll be turning 29 in a couple of weeks, and it still seems like I’m seen as some young girl who got her first job out of college and is just happy to have landed somewhere. This isn’t the case for me. I’ve been working real jobs (like with a salary, benefits, and retirement plan) for over 7 years at this point, and I’m damn good at what I do.
But this whole “baby” thing has made work so much more stressful recently. Every day, I’m listening to meditations on my drive into work, saying affirmations, journaling, PRAYING like a Grandmother, just to keep my sanity.
So this year, I tried to take some steps to be taken more seriously at work. Some of that included finally speaking up to my boss about the unfair review I had last year (read it about it here), saying “no” to projects my team can’t take on, actively searching for opportunities outside of this organization that would give me more responsibility and money, and having regular check-ins with my boss about the trajectory of my career.
All of that seemed to work, or at least just made me feel better, but I still found myself getting frustrated with how slowly things were moving. After many vaguely worded “project status meeting” calendar events with my work BFF that are really just an hour of complaining, watching funny videos, or sometimes therapy sessions, we decided to do something. For some time now, I’d been talking to him about how to better word emails to sound more like an expert/professional instead of a youngin who takes orders and doesn’t really have an opinion.
Ultimately, I decided to stop using exclamation points in my emails.
Tbh, exclamation points are like the LOLs of work correspondence. I’m too grown to put an “LOL” in a text when I’m not laughing, so why was I pretending to be excited and cheery to appease these nobodies at work?
At first, I was skeptical, and I guess you could even say scared. I’d been burned by my attempts to be concise before. It actually came up in my review a couple of years ago when I was being “rude” and seemed to have an attitude. Of course I wasn’t and I didn’t, but when you mix being a young black woman in a mostly YT space with being straightforward sans exclamations and smiley faces, you automatically get labeled as rude.
I moved forward with my plan anyway, and I’ve noticed a few things:
1. I feel like a BOSS – I’m more confident, getting way less pushback, and I’m turning things down without feeling guilty after.
2. I’m more efficient – I don’t have to spend 10 minutes trying to perfectly craft an email, I can say what I need to say and move on. No more questioning, “Should I put an exclamation or smiley face here to soften it up” or “Do I sound like a bitch?” No. I sound like me.
3. People don’t want to disappoint me. Folks are actually meeting my deadlines, and if not, I can see a lot more effort being made to do so.
I definitely plan to keep this up, and even take it with me to my next stomping grounds…along with the small lie that I have kids because these working moms and all these “doctor’s appointments” and “sick babies” that make them late for everything is looking like the move. But that’s a post for another day.
