Complimenting women

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I will continue to compliment women. I’ve never received a negative reaction and I do it in a way that is genuine and not flirtatious. If there is more than one woman, I will usually say a compliment to them all. Fortunately I don’t have to worry about the workplace anymore, but when I did, they appreciated compliments knowing I was not hitting on them. It’s so sad people are afraid to compliment each other.
 
Actually, I was accused of sexual harassment. It was completely bogus. For several weeks prior to the complaint I hadn’t spoken a word to the person who made the accusation. It came out of the blue.

The supervisor who spoke to me about it said to a) have no more contact with the person and b) not tell anyone about it. I agreed whatever, I couldn’t care less about the person.

Of course, it was a complete lie because I immediately ran and told my supervisor the whole story. Except for the part about not caring at all about the accuser—that part wasn’t a lie. The person truly was meaningless to me.

Irrespective of the accusation, I found a new job several weeks later. About a year and a half afterward, I got a phone call from a guy who worked at my old place. Turns out; the individual who accused me had just accused him, and he was completely flummoxed. Clearly, the accuser was disturbed. And I think there had been a complaint made against someone before me.

We had a good laugh about it.

So, long story short, yes. Yes I have been accused of it. And no, it didn’t change anything about how I treat people.
 
To be fair, we don’t know his history. May not have been a one off. As my mother always says, it might have been the icing that broke the camel’s back.
 
on_the_hill said:
Focus your compliments on a person’s accomplishments, demeanor, comportment, ability, ethics, etc.
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I couldn’t agree more. OP - I think you’ll get a better response complimenting something more than base looks like this. Her intelligence, her wit, her sense of humor. Stuff men usually don’t bother complimenting.
 
Irishmom2 said:
“I really like those new jeans. It makes your beer gut look smaller.” How would that go over if a woman said that to a man? 😳 Or to a woman for that matter? 🙂
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The man could react either way (depending on his sense of humor) while the woman would almost certainly react negatively, which is understandable. Still, you have a fair point.

I am a bit socially inept, in case that wasn’t obvious, so that’s all the more reason to just keep my mouth shut. 🙂
 
Allrighty, here goes so it addresses your question more directly:
Rau said:
For how long can you work with people and yet retain such suspicions about their willingness to attack & misrepresent you?
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So far the answer is as above. I would add that very few people working there have near as many years as I have. Since the time of my hiring, the company has seen about 8,500 people come, and go. (Yes, over eight thousand five hundred.)
If you would like a nice time estimate in my opinion, “an entire career” is possible.
Dominus vobiscum
 
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Understood. This is unfortunately the time period for sue anyone for anything. Many companies will not want the bother at all, or having their name dirtied.
Dominus vobiscum

Mostly, politeness is accepted. Opening or holding doors open is big where I work. I open, or hold them for men, and women as well. I did see this go wrong for someone else once. They (man) held the door for a woman. She stopped, gave the guy a dirty look and said loudly, “I can hold that myself thank you!” Wow. They didn’t stay long, thankfully.
 
It’s also way too easy – and convenient – to wrongly punish an innocent person simply upon the word of another, without first doing an honest, objective and thorough investigation to find out the facts and the truth. If management deserves to be sued in a case like that, they should be sued by the wrongfully terminated employee. Faced with the possibility of wrongful termination suits, maybe some of these trigger-happy folks will learn to look before they leap.
 
A few weeks ago, a young man said that he didn’t know what I had done but he really liked how my hair looked and the “Okay, I don’t want to call it” in my hair was pretty.

He is a young man, about the age of my son. Yes, I am quite older. I see him at Mass and when I am at work at the parish.

I had used hot rollers that made my hair wavy and I had a hand band on.

And I have to say, the comment, Made My Day. If I take extra time with my appearance and someone notices, I like that.
 
I agree. It’s better to compliment ones intelligence or another noticeable quality. Appearance is lowest on the totem pole in my opinion.
 
neophyte said:
A place that will fire me for saying “nice shoes!” is a place I don’t want to work.
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I think we all agree about that.

I think we all are reading the OP’s question with wildly different ideas in mind of what kind of “compliments” he’s asking if it’s okay to give.

Honestly I don’t see the point in folks continuing this discussion unless people start giving sample “compliments” that they’d like to offer in different contexts. Because opinions may vary wildly if some people think we’re talking about how reasonable it is to say “Nice shoes!” versus “Wowzers! You look gorgeous in that dress! Lovely curves!”

You may think I’m joking but common sense is not equally distributed across the population. I think we really need to get specific here if we’re not gonna come across as either suggesting no man may compliment a shoe, or all men may compliment the shape of a coworker’s body.

(And I don’t think the OP’s clarification that he means “appropriate compliments” is enough. I have received ‘compliments’ from men whose idea of “appropriate” ranged wildly across the spectrum. (There are genuinely men who think it’s “appropriate” and “complimentary” to let a coworker know how they think about her sexually, or don’t realize they make someone self-conscious if they compliment how her hips move.) And everyone reading this website probably has a different definition for the word.)
 
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Neithan said:
Some men have an artful talent for charm and may get away with compliments without being cringy or creepy
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This. Guys, know yourselves. (Women, too, for that matter.) Look, some people are socially charming, and some people are socially awkward. And let’s be real, most of us know which we are.

Some men can compliment women all day every way, and it will only ever come across as charming and friendly, because he just has a particular, natural, God-gifted social talent.

Other men do not have this gift. And if they try to force it and just imitate the things they’ve seen other men do, without the inner intuition to know, while they’re doing it, that it’s okay, because they’re genuinely that good at reading the room… that’s a disaster waiting to happen. (Worst case scenario is, I guess, a delusional person, who somehow believes he’s charming even while the rest of the world tells him he isn’t, and he thinks it’s just a problem with the rest of the world. But for the most part, charming people know they’re charming, and socially awkward people know they’re socially awkward.)

This does not just apply to compliments. I increasingly think this is relevant to every area of life. We all have specific gifts, we all have specific limitations. We are not interchangeable, and we cannot imitate other people and expect the same results.

There are some ‘rules’ we can all learn and follow, for base-level social skills (e.g. complimenting a coworker’s shoes is usually okay, complimenting the shape of their body usually isn’t), but please people, always rest on the side of safety and not crossing boundaries. Those smooth-talking charmers out there are ALSO erring on the side of safety – they just have the social dance so built into their DNA that they can lean out way further while still knowing they’re totally safe. If you don’t know that what you’re about to say is okay, just don’t say it. Trust your own intuition, and don’t overstep the confidence level you naturally have.
 
I learned early in my first professional job out of college that the exact same words could be taken very differently depending on how the woman felt about the man saying them. Later I learned that women could be real jerks in the workplace. Just like there are male jerks. Then still later on, I found that while real accusations happen, false accusations can also happen. Hence no one’s word should be taken automatically.

Yet it often is if it’s a woman saying them. When a woman has the power to kill a man’s job and possibly his career solely on her word, men are going to clam up. Especially if they have a family that is dependent on their paychecks. Some say there is way too much paranoia. But I’ve seen it happen and I saw what it did to that guy. Let me put it to all this way: there might be only one woman in an office who is capable of a false accusation. But she often can’t be distinguished from other women before she makes the false accusation.

Hence many men will feel they have no choice but to limit conversations to business and chit chat about the weather or the commute, and to be very cautious when alone with a woman unless he knows her very well. So if false accusations are rare, one should consider maybe that is because many men have received the message they will never be believed so they had best avoid anything that smacks of the slightest impropriety.

A shame, I think. But I no longer work in offices and I feel a lot less stressed as a result.

Now if I’m on a date, that’s a different environment from work. Here, a tasteful compliment is often welcomed by women because it is understood by both of us that we’re on a date.
 
That’s what I mean - don’t mention appearance at work just good sense
 
halogirl said:
That’s what I mean - don’t mention appearance at work
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Correct. If you are not careful and you do slip up and compliment a woman, you might be fired. Could this be the new rule on sexual harassment put in place by the MeToo movement?
 
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Agnus-Dei said:
She stopped, gave the guy a dirty look and said loudly, “I can hold that myself thank you!” Wow. They didn’t stay long, thankfully.
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I got that once. My response was immediate: "My mother taught me to b polite. She got the point.
 
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