Episode 509: War of the Wigs – Malicious Dress Code Compliance

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Paul: Hi everybody! Welcome to this week’s episode of What the Hell Just Happened in HR. What the Hell just Happened in HR is that we’re having legislation passed across several states. The legislation is typically named something along the lines of the Crown Act, and as the name would indicate, these acts address what employers can and can’t say or do when it comes to appearance policies and specifically when addressing how hairstyles, length of hair, head coverings and all things that would have to do with anything that has to do with that. So any time you’re creating a policy for appearance or enforcing one for appearance and maybe something that’s been in place for quite some time now, you need to go back and look and make sure that if you have a Crown Act, that your policies and or your enforcement don’t go against what that law allows you to do as an employer. As we go into today’s episode, Harley and I are going to talk about appearance in general. We’ll talk a little bit about the Crown Act and we’ll share some stories and I hope you enjoy the episode. Harley, you look like you have something you need to get off your chest.

 

Harley: Paul, I actually have a confession of my own.

 

Paul: What is it?

 

Harley: I have a TikTok addiction.

 

Paul: Harley I have a confession too. It’s bad.

 

Harley: [laughing]

 

Paul: Mine’s connected to Reddit.

 

Harley: Oh, no!

 

Paul: Yeah. So I bounce back and forth between the two.

 

Harley: My TikTok does feed me a lot of Reddit stories.

 

Paul: Yeah?

 

Harley: But lately, I don’t know if it’s picked up on the fact that I work in HR? But it’s feeding me a lot of HR stories.

 

Paul: Oh, it knows.

 

Harley: There’s a story that’s gone particularly viral. It’s been picked up by several news outlets of a woman who is doing what she calls malicious compliance by standing up against the dress code policy against pink hair by wearing really bad wigs to work.

 

Paul: Right. So I’m going to assume she came in with pink hair one day and her supervisor went over and said, “Hey, I don’t know if you know it or not, but that’s against company policy. You can’t have pink hair.”

 

Harley: She accepted a job with pink hair and didn’t find out until her first day.

 

Paul: Oh! She had pink hair.

 

Harley: She had pink hair and she did not find out until her first day that she wasn’t allowed to have pink hair, which I sympathize with that. I went through a very similar situation where I was basically “scalped,” they like to say, by one of the people that I’ve worked for in the past from a job that I had to go work for her, and she didn’t put me through her normal process. I started the first day and the manager was like, “You can’t have nails that aren’t neutral colors and short.” The people listening don’t know this, but all my coworkers do – That’s like a huge part of my identity is kind of crazy, fun colored nails.

 

Paul: Well, it’s not like she said, “You can’t wear your mouse ears to work.”

 

Harley: Right. It’s not something I can take off and put back on again.

 

Paul: No, I’m kidding, Harley.

 

Harley: [laughing] Okay. All right. He’s trying to out me as a Disney adult on the podcast, which yes, I will own that identity.

 

Paul: It’s completely true. It’s really bad. It’s really bad.

 

Harley: Paul, just let me take you to Disney one time. I’ll convert you.

 

Paul: I don’t think so. But if I was going to go to Disney, I would definitely hire you to be my guide. Can you get me in the underground and do the back things where they actually give shots? Don’t they give shots of Jäger away in the underground?

 

Harley: There’s no shots of Jäger!

 

Paul: What?! There’s no shots of Jäger in the underground at Disney?

 

Harley: [laughing] No! You know that is only at Disney World, but let’s not go down this road Paul or we’re going to talk about Disney the whole podcast.

 

Paul: Okay. All right. I’m sorry. I got…Look, she’s got this crazy grin on her face. She’s just like, “Oh, my God! We’re going to talk about Disney!”

 

Harley: We’ll do a whole podcast on Disney Employment Law. That’ll be a thing.

 

Paul: Okay. So I had something kind of like that that happened to me. I was young and I got an interview at a utility company in my town, which was really cool because my degree was in energy technology and stuff, so tangential to that. I was going to get this job and they offered me the position in the last thing, and I was so excited because it was an adult job, like I was going to get paid more than minimum wage.

 

[laughing]

 

Paul: I was in my twenties and college is finally paying off the dream. The American dream’s coming true, y’all! The guy says, “Look, one last thing. How about you shave that beard off? We don’t have beards here.” This is the early eighties, mid eighties, something like that. I was like 12 years old. Frankie, our producer, is laughing out loud –

 

Harley: At the idea of you being 12 in the eighties?

 

Paul: Yes. Anyway, so kind of the same thing. I’m very excited about it and all of a sudden I kind of get blindsided by it and I kind of wish I had known before. I didn’t take the job. The story gets even better. It circles back around eight years later, but anyway, I digress.

 

Harley: Well, I mean, the thing is, is not everyone has the opportunity to walk away.

 

Paul: Oh yeah!

 

Harley: Some people have put their financial security on the line when they accept a job, they leave a job they were secure in. They put notice, they left. They started a job just to find out that the people who hired them weren’t transparent about their expectations.

 

Paul: Okay. So devil’s advocate. I’m going to play the role of the employer because I am one.

 

Harley: Yeah. Do it.

 

Paul: Really? It’s just your nails. The color? The color doesn’t matter, and the length of them doesn’t really matter. I know you identify with it, but it’s not going to change who you are. You’re still going to be able to be who you are. It’s not like I’m forbidding. It’s not like I have a rule where you have to go home and get rid of all of your Mickey Mouse wear…You can’t possess it.

 

Harley: [laughing] You’re banning Disney from my closet.

 

Paul: From your closet. [laughing]

 

Harley: That might just eliminate my closet. I agree to an extent, but I think that people should have the opportunity to make that decision for themselves.

 

Paul: Well, and I don’t entirely agree with that, but I do have a counter to my argument, which is the same kind of thought that I had when the guy said, “How about you shave that beard, the mustache?” I had that fuzz on my face ever since I was like…Well, there was the first hair when I was like 13 and I like to think that I still have it. I shaved one time. I had a girlfriend, who I eventually married, and she was like, “I want to see you without it.” Then I shaved it off for her because, you know, I’d never shaved it before. She was like, “Put it back! Put it back! No, no, don’t do that again!” So anyway, the counter to that is, really how is this going to impact my ability to do my job? The color of my nails and even the length of them? Now look –

 

Harley: Depends on the role.

 

Paul: Depends on the role. On where you are.

 

Harley: Depends on regulations.

 

Paul: And some regulation, OSHA and there are some really, you know –

 

Harley: Food safety.

 

Paul: Yes, all kinds of reasons why you might want to address this, but not in all instances is that true. So if you’re working in a back office or you’re not front facing, and even if you are front facing to a certain degree, how would this matter? Now, those nails that go out and curl around four times and then hook into each other and then form like a sentence? That’s a bit much.

 

Harley: Yeah.

 

Paul: Let me ask you something: If I handed you a Pepsi with a screw top on it, could you take the top off without help?

 

Harley: I can. My nails are not that long.

 

Paul: No, back then.

 

Harley: Yes. My nails have always been about this long.

 

Paul: Yeah? That’s what they were complaining about?!

 

Harley: They didn’t…It was the fact that I wouldn’t do them in a nude color.

 

Paul: Oh! So it wasn’t even hardly the length of it.

 

Harley: It wasn’t a length compliance thing with me.

 

Paul: It was the color of your fingernails. Okay.

 

Harley: Natural colors were all that they allowed.

 

Paul: Well, this has changed a lot over the years. I talk about this on the podcast when we talk about hair color and tattoos and what people can see and what they can’t see. I mean, I still have a problem if you have like six teardrops that indicate that you or your boyfriend killed six people together.

 

Harley: Yeah.

 

Paul: You know? Under your eye? However, I don’t care if your hair is blue. I don’t care if your hair is blue when you go to one of the big conferences that we go to. I don’t care if your hair is blue when you’re answering video calls. I just don’t care.

 

Harley: Well, and I think a lot of people would be willing to change those things about themselves if they cared enough about a job.

 

Paul: And the point you’re trying to make is if they knew.

 

Harley: Yeah. It’s so easy to be transparent about that during the interview process, before someone accepts an offer. Hell, put it in your offer letter if that’s the last place that you want to have that conversation, but putting people on notice that they’re going to be asked to comply with a certain dress code policy is best practice, I think. It avoids these awkward situations because then what happens when you have someone who wants to be maliciously compliant and they’re showing up to work in anime wigs? Or Paul Revere wigs?

 

Paul: [whispers] Oh, I love her.

 

Harley: It is! It’s bold.

 

Paul: We’re talking about a TikTok here. We’ll give you more details on that on the other side of it. Look, I both hate her and love her.

 

Harley: Same.

 

Paul: Malicious compliance can be the bane of someone’s existence, especially if you’re like, challenging me to fire you. You made me mad. Now I’m going to start doing these things to just kind of mess with you and everybody around me. Not a big fan of that.

 

Harley: No, and it’s tricky, too, because wigs in the workplace need to be protected to a certain extent. There’s a lot of reasons why communities would use wigs in the workplace: religious, cultural, health reasons.

 

Paul: Medical reasons. I had a friend –

 

Harley: It’s hard to draw a line in the sand that’s forcing an HR department, trying to navigate that situation, could result in people who need access to those things? Losing easy access and putting them in a position of having to advocate –

 

Paul: To make a choice. They might have to make a choice between doing that. So like everything in HR, nothing can be cut and dry, but I just want to go back a little bit more towards this, and I’m going to bring in the Crown Act. If we look at any legislation that’s out there right now, that’s kind of addressing parts of this, it is about natural hairstyles. They’re passing state by state. I wouldn’t be surprised to see something at the federal level. You guys have heard me say that many times, because once the nine or ten states start to pass something and then you get a state that you don’t expect to pass it, pass it? Then that’s when the feds are like, “Well, maybe we can write this rule in.” Even telling people they have to pull their hair back; if they do want their hair in a natural style, they have to pull it back, could get you in some trouble underneath some Crown Acts. So the Crown Act refers to your head. They generally refer to hairstyles.They’re basically saying, “Look, people don’t need to straighten their hair for you.”

 

Harley: Right.

 

Paul: People who wear their hair a certain way or cover their hair a certain way need to be left alone unless you have a very, very good reason, business associated reason with it. That reason can’t be, “It looks unprofessional.”

 

Harley: Exactly. “It’s not sleek enough.”

 

Paul: “It’s not sleek enough. It doesn’t fit our mold. It doesn’t fall into that.” But what’s a person supposed to do? I’m going to share a story with you: I had an employee come in. This is about eight years ago, and she didn’t have her shoes on. Someone said, “Hey, where’s your shoes?” And if she had answered, “I chose not to wear shoes today. They’re in my car. I just decided to walk barefoot for a little while. My feet hurt. My shoes are over there.” Her reply was, “Oh! Oh, wow!” And then that was a tell for me and their supervisor, which was she didn’t realize that she’s not wearing her shoes.

 

Harley: Oh. Yes.

 

Paul: And so we were worried about this person because that’s not something that is normal. The other thing is, I need you to wear shoes at work. Now people listening will be like, “Why, Paul? Why do they have to wear shoes? What do shoes have to do with HR? Hey, let me turn your stupid argument around on you, Paul.” I guess, good point, but all the chairs here have rollers on them, and I don’t want her little toes crushed. How about that?

 

Harley: There’s a lot of things that you…What if there’s like a little piece of glass and then she steps on it? It’s for protection.

 

Paul: Decorum, though. I do want to make the point that decorum comes into play. So when people are looking at their dress codes or they’re going through their decision making process about who they’re going to hire and what they want their folks to look like, I think you need to really take a step back. By the way, I started to say this earlier, and then I did what I always do. I left it sitting out there. I’m sorry, Ed, if you’re listening. This has changed over the years. It used to be no tats, no piercings, no this, no that. You have to wear this. Your hair has got to be pulled back like that. I mean, to the point that some doctors are like, “I prefer blonds.” Not just male doctors, by the way, listeners. This has really evolved over time for I think for a couple of reasons. One, as people age into leadership roles and ownership roles with blue hair and tats, they make a decision that, “Hey, I can let other people do that.” Also, if you look up in society that has tats and blue hair, (we’re just using these as an example), then you kind of begin to think, “Well, this is the norm.”

 

Harley: That makes it harder and harder to find a workforce that doesn’t have –

 

Paul: That’s the third thing. That’s the third one, which is, if your best candidate has more piercings in their left ear than you are comfortable with, by the way, 37 but not for me. I’m just using it –

 

Harley: I think you should get 37 piercings Paul.

 

Paul: I’m on it.

 

Harley: I love it.

 

Paul: I’m on it. We were interviewing for a marketing manager about a month ago and we always hope that people go out and research a little bit. Anyway, one of the people who we researched as a candidate saw some of our video footage of this show and said that they made a comment about me wearing T-shirts, not wearing a sports jacket. I think they may have said something about how I should cut my hair or whatever.

 

Harley: You’re going to pry that T-shirt out of Paul’s cold, dead hands.

 

Paul: You know where they’re not working right now?

 

Harley: Here. [laughing]

 

Paul: [laughing] You know what, though? I do appreciate the comment. And by the way, that wasn’t a deciding factor.

 

Harley: No!

 

Paul: No, seriously, it really was not a deciding factor. I just wanted to point out that people have opinions and what they’re comfortable with. Personally, and I’ve always been this way, I don’t think that wearing a suit and a tie and being dressed up really well actually indicates how good of a human being you are. In fact, the people who ran the economy into the ground in 2009, in 2010 were wearing very, very nice shirts and ties who basically, through their own greed, stole 60% of my parents retirement, which they could have used now had it still been in there. So I’m not really a fan of this, “By wearing suits, you’re showing that you’re at some stature or where you’re supposed to be.”

 

Harley: I wholeheartedly agree with that, but what I also believe is that especially regionally in certain parts of the country –

 

Paul: Oh, yeah.

 

Harley: It’s very possible that having a front desk person with blue hair and tattoos is going to affect your business.

 

Paul: It’s not going to work.

 

Harley: So to those business owners’ defense, I understand the policies that they create because they make the most sense for their business and their customers.

 

Paul: They’re intentional.

 

Harley: Yes.

 

Paul: They are applied, and probably in this day and age that doctor, he or she is not nearly as strict as they were ten years ago, but they still got to keep the blue hair in check.

 

Harley: Correct. The only piece that we really are trying to speak to in this, I think, is just encouraging people to be intentional in their disclosure of those policies to their candidates.

 

Paul: Especially if your candidates are coming, and if you’re doing a good job hiring people, Harley? You’re actually taking good people away from other businesses. You’re taking them out of their job. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t hire someone who doesn’t have a job currently. That’s not my implication, but people who are looking to better themselves, who are excelling at their own work, are the kind of people who I’m trying to hire away and pull into my business. I want them to bring those experiences, that maturity, those skills, hard and soft skills, all those things that they can bring from another business. The last thing we want to do is surprise them with some kind of a more strict dress code policy or hair policy or nail policy or whatever that is, than they were accustomed to.

 

Harley: So I think a couple takeaways for me is can you be more open minded about your policies? Maybe that’s the first internal conversation you can have with yourself.

 

Paul: Yeah.

 

Harley: Secondly, if the answer is no –

 

Paul: And that’s okay!

 

Harley: Or even if it’s a yes and you’ve adjusted, still making sure you’re disclosing those policies. I think, especially if you are strict about it, put it in the job ad. Ask those people to not even put themselves up for candidates if you’re not going to consider them.

 

Paul: I’m not sure I want it in the job ad and I don’t have a legal reason for it. There’s so much in the job ad already.

 

Harley: That’s true.

 

Paul: I will say that. Here’s the thing, Harley. What happens when someone comes in looking, because that’s what we’re doing. We call the resume the packet of lies, and they’re not total lies, but you’re trying to make yourself look as good as you possibly can.

 

Harley: You’re selling yourself as a candidate.

 

Paul: You’re selling yourself. So you come in and everything looks normal, and then you show up the first day and you got Mickey Mouse ears on and you’ve got fake nails on that are sixteen inches long and you’re not wearing shoes?

 

Harley: [laughing] I’m loving this image of my interview right now.

 

Paul: I got a problem. I may have a problem with that. So, you know, it’s not easy. It’s not always as clear as the person showed up in front of you and they were wearing all their face piercings and everything and so you knew to say something to that. You knew that you may have an issue there. “I want to hire you. However, I need to know you’re going to be front facing here and 20% of our patients are in their sixties and seventies. It’s just what we do here because we accept Medicare or whatever that is and they’re going to be a little bit freaked out. I have to put the right person upfront.”

 

Harley: Yeah, I mean, if someone comes in, you’re interviewing them, you love them, they’ve got pink hair. “Hey, this all looks good. I think we might move you forward to the next process. How willing are you to change your hair color?”

 

Paul: “Or to wear one of these seven -”

 

Harley: “Or what can we do to link to compliance with our dress code policy that works for the both of us?”

 

Paul: Because if it won’t work for you, then I totally understand.

 

Harley: Yeah! And maybe you are fine with them wearing a wig. Maybe not an anime wig.

 

Paul: Okay, let’s talk about this really quick.

 

Harley: Okay. [laughing]

 

Paul: So we both have a…It’s funny, you’re saying TikTok shows you Reddit things, well Reddit shows me TikTok things.

 

Harley: Oh, great. We’re just on the opposite –

 

Paul: We’re just on the opposite end of the whole thing when we have to go over the other thing. Do you have her name?

 

Harley: Yeah. [laughing] I don’t know if I could pronounce it, but it’s Emuhleeebee. There you go. I spelled it for you.

 

Paul: You spelled it. Wait a minute. Where is it? Where’s it in our stuff here?

 

Harley: The link is the second blue link. Yeah.

 

Paul: This one?

 

Harley: Mm hmm. So that is her profile.

 

Paul: Oh! E M U H…

 

Harley: Emily B?

 

Paul: Yeah. E M U H L E E E B E E

 

Harley: I assume her name is Emily and she’s spelling it phonetically.

 

Paul: There’s so many E’s and B’s in there.

 

Harley: There’s a lot of E’s and B’s.

 

Paul: Look, if you can find her….She’s just, you know, she has a lot of good humor in this. She’s wearing scrubs –

 

Harley: If you just search, “wig, malicious, noncompliant,” she’s gonna be the first.

 

Paul: She’s going to come up.

 

Harley: Paul Revere wigs. Bright yellow anime wigs.

 

Paul: Right.

 

Harley: It’s hilarious. I love her stuff. She makes me laugh.

 

Paul: She does have a good sense of humor.

 

Harley: Yeah.

 

Paul: There is nothing –

 

Harley: She turned a crappy situation she was put in, into a platform, which I respect.

 

Paul: And they continue to allow her to do that without giving her a hard time.

 

Harley: Yeah. I have questions about the real life application of this.

 

Paul: Oh! Whether or not she’s just sitting at a desk at home pretending she’s at work?

 

Harley: Or if she puts on the really egregious wigs at work for like a few minutes for a video and then puts on something else. I’m sure there is some version of this playing out in real time or has played out in the past.

 

Paul: Well, if I knew she was in my town working at a place like at a dental office or someplace that I wanted to go to, I would seek that place out. I would be like, “Where is she?”

 

Harley: I think it’s hospitality?

 

Paul: I’d buy her a wig. [laughing]

 

Harley: So if I could figure out what hotel she worked for? I would go stay at that hotel.

 

Paul: But I thought she’s wearing scrubs?

 

Harley: It looks like it, right? So I had this whole conversation recently. It did look like scrubs, but upon closer inspection, it is a polo.

 

Paul: Ah ha!

 

Harley: In the news article, it said hospitality. So I want to trust the journalism being done here and believe them.

 

Paul: All right y’all. Hang up on the podcast and go get on your TikTok, because we know you’re addicted and go find this woman and enjoy Emily B and her wigs.

 

Harley: And her beautiful malicious compliance wigs.

 

Paul: I don’t know that we really helped anybody here other than be aware of the Crown Act. Have reasons. Don’t catfish somebody away from a job if you know they’re going to have to change something substantial about how they look in order to work for your business.

 

Harley: Or do but just tell them that they’re going to have to do that.

 

Paul: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay, Harley, thanks for bringing both these…Well, this to us. Everybody, we did a podcast before this, so I’m thanking her for both podcasts. Thanks, Harley.

 

Harley: Thanks, Paul.

 

Voice Over: Thanks for joining us for this week’s episode of What the Hell Just Happened. If you have an HR issue, question, or just want to add a comment about something Paul said, record it on your phone and send it to podcast@wthjusthappened.com. We might even ask if we can play it on the show. Don’t forget to Like and Subscribe and join us again next week.