Any woman who has ever worked a customer-facing or corporate job knows that some men respect a fictional husband way more than they respect a simple no. That’s exactly why she wears a fake wedding ring to the office. It’s a harmless safety tactic to keep creeps at bay.
But her brilliant defense mechanism completely backfired when one of her boyfriend’s colleagues started spreading a rumor. When office gossip blows up your significant other’s reputation, what’s a girl to do?
This 26-year-old woman and her 29-year-old boyfriend have been together for a couple of months now, and it’s important to note that in the office, it comes across like she’s a married woman.
You see, she wears a fake wedding ring at her job, and her intention is to stave off the attention guys give her, because it’s unwanted on her end.
All of her coworkers are aware of her ring being a decoy, and she works with other women who employ the same strategy for making men leave them alone.
It just so happens that one of her boyfriend’s coworkers came to her office, and she’s terrible at remembering people, so she didn’t recognize this man.
“Plus, I wasn’t expecting to see any of his coworkers at my work, so I wasn’t even looking out for them, and that part of my brain was just turned off,” she explained.
“Apparently, they remembered me from when my BF took me to one of his work events. I remember the work event – there were so many people there, and I shook hands and said hi to person after person after person, and I just can’t remember everyone.”
“So, of course, I treated them professionally like I would any other stranger, offered to help them, etc. When they pointed to my wedding ring and asked if I was married, I lied and said I was.”
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Well, her boyfriend’s coworker left and went around telling everyone else at their company that her boyfriend is romantically involved with a married woman.
Her boyfriend’s coworker stated that she acted shady when confirming that she’s married. But that is only because she didn’t remember meeting this man, which is why she lied about her marital status, since that’s normal for her to do in a professional setting.
Her boyfriend became enraged later on, but she did step in to clarify the misunderstanding, which ultimately calmed him down some.
“But now he’s demanding that I stop wearing the fake wedding ring in case I ‘mislead’ more of his coworkers and damage his reputation further,” she continued.
“I don’t want to because it makes my work environment so much better. I told him he can just explain it to his coworkers if they ever ask, because it’s super easy, literally just a sentence like ‘yeah, that’s a fake ring to avoid unwanted attention.’ I think people would find that a super understandable thing to do??”
“He thinks that he shouldn’t have to explain anything to his coworkers and that it’s entirely on me, and is just super paranoid that something like this is going to happen again and someone is going to think less of him.”
She’s left wondering if she’s a jerk for not taking off her wedding ring at work, although it’s causing problems for her own boyfriend at his job.
Her boyfriend is acting like a wimp, if you ask me. It’s really not a big deal, but he overreacted big time. She’s right, it literally is as simple as informing people that she wears a wedding ring so men don’t hit on her. Who could take offense to that?
There’s nothing wrong with trying to keep men away from you with a fake rock because they can’t respect boundaries or professionalism.
What do you think?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
