Watercooler: Girls “like you” need to smile
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Watercooler is the section of the blog in which we share with you real-life horror stories from the frontlines of race in the workplace. 
This week, we have a story from La:
Over 5 years ago, I received a job as a timeshare clerk at a hotel while I attended college. This particular 5 star hotel timeshare employment environment was predominantly white.
I was the only black female working with two other white females greeting potential clients and executing timeshare contracts for the sales reps. All the managers were white and mostly male. All the timeshare sales reps were white men except for one black male who seemed middle aged and kept to himself. This environment was highly competitive among the sales people, but for me (non-sales), everyone was generally friendly and welcoming.
My manager was an older white female. She awkwardly kept mentioning she didn’t get the chance to participate in the interviews and there must be something “special” about me why the “guys” choose me over so many others. Through out the days, she kept nagging me about smiling. The thing that got to me, I was always smiling in the first place – what gives? She never told the other girls to smile, one of which came to work the same day as I and kept this permanent concentration look on her face all day. Through out the days, she would walk pass the front desk area and tap on it with this rapid obnoxious tapping parody - directly in front of me, as if to say “smile”. Most of the times, she never even looked at me to see if I was smiling or not. Everyone was annoyed with her for this, it was highly disruptive. After the third day of this craziness, I privately told her I felt like I was being singled out. To my astonishment, she abruptly said “well, I need to see when girls like you keep a smile on your face, it makes you look pleasant”. Ok, this might sound odd, but I remember leaving her office feeling dirty and ashamed of myself of some sort - “girl like me”? Eventually, as I got back to my station, I had a delayed response of anger and I made up my mind to leave.
Now, on my fourth or fifth day, there was a heated argument between the only black rep and a young white male manager. The argument spilled into the lobby and the black male walked away. Another manager came up to the younger manager and suggested that he sit down and talk to the guy instead of yelling. The younger manager then yelled “I can’t, he’s an IDIOT maybe SHE should go talk to him”. He did this while pointing in my solo direction and he stormed out the room while everyone looked at me. At that point I had sure thoughts of preparing my resume again. I can’t remember much after that, but I know there was more stuff that blew me away also. I resigned in less than a month. I always wondered if it was I, who was being touchy? Unbelievable.
Please email [email protected] if you’d like to send in a story, put “watercooler” in the subject line, and let us know what name we should use for you. Pseudonyms and first names are totally fine. You can read more Watercooler stories here.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Joe wrote:
Why didn’t these employees fight back? Why did they put up with that behavior and just leave? There are laws against this type of behavior? Things will not change if we are afraid to fight.
Posted 19 Aug 2007 at 12:45 pm ¶
Ondrea Taylor wrote:
As a black woman who is often mistaken for being “angry” because of my facial expression, I was especially taken aback by this article. To insinuate that a woman of a darker hue looks unpleasant when not grinning from ear to ear is both insulting and a typical “plantation” like mentality. The more things change the more they stay the same. I have to agree with Joe. There is no way I would have allowed this behavior to go unreported and I would have made my views understood by all parties involved.
Posted 20 Aug 2007 at 9:32 am ¶
Angel H. wrote:
My sister had an experience like this recently. She had applied for a higher paying position and was passed over a White woman. (Not that she cares, though: By the time she was told the “bad news”, she had found out she was hired for an even higher-paying position with more prestige! GO SIS! :-D)
She decided to be nice and congratulation the woman. The woman told her that she “maybe she would’ve have gotten the job if she’d acted like she wanted it more.”
The hell???
Posted 21 Aug 2007 at 5:13 pm ¶
K-lo wrote:
I recently had a similar experience. I interviewed for a job. Granted, it wasn’t my best interview ever…but in my feedback session in addition to one very constructive piece of information… I was told…AND YOU DIDN’T SMILE ENOUGH. What? I was friendly pleasant, charming, and we shared laughter.
Were they expecting me to shuck and jive as well? If the first piece of feedback had been BS I wouldn’t be so put-off, I would’ve just said “Cleary, I’m not the person they’re looking for…”
Grrr….why do I have to be Fake Tan Mary Sunshine in order to seem pleasant. What is so threatening about black women in the workplace?
Signed,
Grinning black woman
Posted 23 Aug 2007 at 9:32 am ¶
Wendy wrote:
I’m white, but the story told above rings a bell for me just the same. Starting in my late teens, and lasting almost until my mid thirties, I was routinely ordered to smile by coworkers and complete random strangers-often males my own age, or older females.
The item in the story about the woman tapping the desk in front of her [the writer] reminds me of something too-I remember having people correct me rudely, snidely, and angrily a lot, push things at me, grab my shoulders and turn me in a direction (which I would yank myself away from) and I had at least one incident where some older woman did something like what the writer described-tapping or rapping on the desk near me to bring some miniscule flaw or error to my attention, apparently. I don’t remember the specific instance more clearly than that.
I don’t know what is wrong with people and would like to get into the heads of people who treat others this way. I think we are patronized especially when we are YOUNG and FEMALE, and I wouldn’t doubt if that experience goes double or triple for minority women. I have no idea what goes on in the heads of people who treat others in this demeaning way, though. I can’t even get a grasp on what is in that headspace.
The only thing I can think of, about the “smiling” criticism-and this is grasping at straws-is that some people need to find fault- and they will heap up the petty criticism and point out the tiniest mistake. IF THEY DONT HAVE ENOUGH FODDER to fill their inexplicable thirst to criticize, they’ll just point out whatever it is you’re not doing. Since it’s very rare for anyone to have a big grin pasted on every single second, that’s just a built-in thing for some crazy to say to us. They’d snarl at us for inhaling and exhaling if it didn’t sound so obviously absurd.
Posted 11 Jan 2008 at 11:56 pm ¶
Angel H. wrote:
I remember one day when I was a cashier at one of the big-box stores (rhymes with Al-Cart).
I had a ridiculously long line of people, my lunch break was almost an hour late, it was hot. And, I was having a nasty migraine that decided it wasn’t content to live in my skull; it wanted to take up residence in my neck and shoulders.
Then one of my customers (male) said, “Smile! It can’t be that bad.”
I told him, “Sir, right now I’m working through intense pain, and if I don’t get a break soon, I’m going to pass out.”
That shut him up.
Posted 27 Jan 2008 at 2:36 pm ¶