Turns out that today our team at work had to visit a team of associates at another corporate site of our company. Basically we have two corporate sites, and I work at one when I’m working in the office. Because of my job, I get to work at home most of the time which means that I can wear whatever I want, and that includes my long hair too.

So, I suit up, put my long curls into man bun, as it is known, and proceed to go with my three colleagues to visit this team at the other location some 30 minutes away from our site.

The situation

We get there at 2 PM, the plan was to have lunch and then do a series of meetings so as to go through the quarterly reports and how we can improve the cross-performance of both our teams.

We choose the restaurant in downtown Buenos Aires and get on with it. For the record, I hate going to restaurants to eat with co-workers. I want to enjoy my food alone or with my wife and kids, not with some guys I’m pretending that I like.

It turned out that there was a bald guy in the other team, his name is Mike and he’s English too as we have quite the international team at our company. The guy is in his late 20s and he’s already a Director of Operations, which is one of the highest ranks at our company. He got there so soon because he’s the nephew of our company’s CEO, which is so typical of countries like this one where family members are given priority status in a company. As soon as we met outside the restaurant, Mike had been looking at me in a funny manner right from the get-go. I hadn’t met this team before as we do our communication via emails and phone calls, so I had never met this chap called Mike.

So, we sit down and proceed to order our food. It’s customary here in Argentina to have some kind of soup as the first dish of the meal, so off we go and we all order chicken soup. What’s to follow is an exchange of words between Mike and I; I’m going by my memory (of this event), so I’ll be paraphrasing the entire conversation as you’ll read below.

Mike continues to look at me funny as we wait for the chicken soup. Once the waiter brings our first dish, the bald guy proceeds to yell out, in front of our co-workers, “Henry, you should watch out that you don’t get one of those frizzy hairs of yours in your soup!”. The rest of my team laughs briefly so as to leave the matter there, after all, they know I’m a big freaking lover of long hair and I feel very strong about the cause. I stare at Mike for a couple of seconds, then shrug it off and continue with my soup.

The bald guy ain’t happy that I’ve not given a toss about his stupid comment. So he then says (I’m paraphrasing) why is it that I have long hair considering my job; that long hair only belongs in jobs for pizza-delivery boys or for guys working at a warehouse away from the public. What this guy is trying to do is pick on my long hair to humiliate me. I ain’t gonna let this idiot get away with it.

“You’ve got a problem with my long hair, pal?” I tell him.

“Well, everyone at your job position has short hair and so do those of us above you in the corporate ladder. Don’t you think that’s just more than a simple coincidence?” he says.

“My long hair has nothing to do with my job and my job performance. So stay away from trying to associate my long hair with my job position. Thank you.” I reply.

“I’m sorry, Henry. But you trying to be yourself and a free spirit by having long hair goes against the corporate ethos of our company. We’re a serious company with a formal code of conduct which means that scruffy long hair isn’t welcomed here”, he yams about again.

“First of all, there is not a single line in our code of conduct or dress code that goes against long hair. Second of all, did you just say that my long hair is scruffy? I ask him, now looking “slightly” intimidating to him.

“Oh… I’m sorry, Henry, it’s the only way that I can describe the type of hair that you have. Never have I seen such bushy hair. Like I say, we work in a formal place and if you ever want to be promoted and leave your mere management position to a position like ours (referring to his position in the company), you just will not go anywhere with that hair. You can call it free speech or freedom of doing whatever I want, if you will. But that does not mean that you can get to write your own terms while looking out of place from the rest of your work colleagues as they have to confirm to the implicit rules about hairstyles in the workplace”, the bald guy yaps again.

“Listen up, bald guy. There are no rules about long hair in our company. I wear long hair because, unlike you, I can grow hair and have my wife caress it while we’re getting intimate. She loves my hair and so do the majority of women. Women love hair, be it short or long. You, on the other hand, have surrendered your follicles like a pussy and you’re bald for life. How’s that for a fucked up life while trying to stir up crap over your own inferiority complex, you bald idiot? I shout at him staring directly into his eyes.

My co-worker sitting next to me said something along the lines of “Henry, chill out, Mike is just teasing you”. No, I ain’t chilling out, this bald guy knows very well he’s trying to pick on me because he’s got an ugly shiny dome for a head. Not going to let that happen.

As soon as I finish my sentence calling him a bald idiot, he looks down and shakes his head, as if not believing what had just happen.

I then proceeded to tell him, “Hey Mike, look here”. Guy looks at me again and I follow the sentence with this:

“Fuck your ugly bald head, mate”, I tell him again. I then stand up, stare at him into his eyes again, he looks down and then I walk away to head back to the office.

This isn’t the first time that I have to deal with some idiot calling me out for being in my 40s and having long hair. It’s the fist time though that a co-worker picks on my long hair, especially since the company that I work for has a very relaxed dress code and not once have I been told that my long hair is inappropriate.

I’m not willing to allow anyone to give me crap. Sure enough I may have overreacted, but believe you me when I say that, next time, this bald idiot will think twice about projecting his inferiority complex on a non-balding human.

The only thing that I’m having to now worry about is if this gets reported to my department’s director. While I show no remorse for what I did, I may be getting into deep waters with this.

I’ll let you all know how that goes.

Henry