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Can I see your ID please?

Can I see your ID please?

Small Budget, Big Style posted earlier this month about age bias. She has difficultly being taken seriously at work because she looks young. Looking young can be a serious handicap at work. Those of you rolling your eyes and snorting at the thought of having such a “terrible” problem should imagine these scenarios:

  • You make a cold call at a place of business, and you’re asked “How can I help you, young lady?”
  • You’re stopped in the hallway by someone in upper management, and asked where your parents are.
  • A coworker asks “How old ARE you? You look 12.” and then tells you you should be grateful that you look so young.
  • You’re told that you won’t be considered for an internal promotion if you apply, because you’re too young and inexperienced. When you apply anyway, you don’t get the job, even though you have more experience and education than the other applicants (who are about your same age), you dress and act professionally, your customers love you, and you’re consistently beating everyone else’s numbers.
  • People ask if you had your high-school aged child when you were 13 — and they’re not really joking.

These kinds of things are problematic because they negatively impact salary and career prospects. Who takes a 12 year old seriously as a salesperson? Who thinks that someone that gets pregnant at 13 should be given a lot of responsibility now? Who can advance within the company if they’re thought of as someone’s kid? Who can be respected if they look like they’re playing dress-up?

I’ll just say it. Looks really do matter, at least at first.

So what can you do if you look too young? Trying to look older is a given. You’re probably already dressing “older” and professionally, wearing conservative hairstyles, etc. Here are some additional things that I’ve found helpful:

  • Be an outstanding employee. Volunteer for extra projects, get your work done ahead of schedule, and exceed expectations whenever possible. This isn’t always enough, but it can help.
  • Get to know people with the ability to promote you and find something in common with them. Try to help them. Networking helps everyone.
  • Talk about stuff that happened in the past. (Oh yeah, I remember back in the 70s…) This only helps though if you are CERTAIN the people you’re talking to are around same age as you.
  • Work at a progressive place that welcomes new ideas and believes that youth is an advantage.
  • Work at a place where most of the other employees are 10-20 years younger than you, and then do not make references to things that happened before they were born.
  • Be flexible and easy-going about age-related things. When you’re stopped in the hallway and asked about your mom or dad, try to put the other person at ease instead of letting it turn into an awkward situation.
  • Be confident and positive. Those are traits that everyone appreciates, and they help build respect.
  • Speak clearly, and audibly. Consider Toastmasters or learning about voice projection if you have difficulty speaking in meetings or being heard.
  • Don’t get hung up on how people perceive you. Yes, you will want to scream if one more person says you’ll appreciate it when you’re older. Yes, it is a problem at times. But it’s not an insurmountable problem.

Remember that people WILL eventually respect you for who you are, regardless of your age or appearance. It’s just a matter of helping them get to know the real you — the one who is confident, capable, and has the company’s interests at heart.

View Comments (6)
  • Great post. I can relate to this. I’m 27, but most people assume I’m fresh out of college. I regularly get carded and people will go to great lengths to “prove” I have a fake ID! I remember when I was in college and said I was a senior, people would reply, “Are you planning to go to college next year?” Now, 27 is not old by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a lot of education and experience under my belt, so the assumptions about inexperience and age can be frustrating. Despite having a master’s degree and a supervisory role, I still get those looks that can only mean, “How is this girl going to help me? She’s too young to know anything.” I just remind my clients that I receive the same training everyone else does, and that looks can be deceiving.

  • I always assumed I would go directly from looking like a little kid to looking like a cute little old lady. Actually, at age 45, I just look like a regular grown-up. (Only dorkier.)

    I found that wearing make-up or high heels or anything else that I thought of as grown up actually made things worse. I got a lot more comments about how young I looked when I did those things. I think it just made me look like I was trying to look like a grown up.

  • This is a funny post because this happens to me all the time too. I teach elementary school and I am always buying glue and markers…and get carded all the time like those kids who sniff these things.

    I was a manager in retail for a while and it was horrible because not only was everyone taller than I was but most of them were older and saw me as one of the high school kids who worked over the summer.

    On the other hand this youthful face gets me to pay kids price at certain events so it is not all bad. :-)

  • Thank you for writing about this. Now that I’m 28 and in grad school, I often get mistaken for someone in her late teens, rather than someone in pre- or early teens as I did a couple of years ago. Things that I found to help on the job were:

    * working in smaller places, where people quickly learned what my abilities were

    * becoming the “expert” on new areas and policies–everyone realized I was the go-to person

    * working in academic areas where young people get a lot of respect; it’s not so bad to be mistaken for a student if students are seen as near-colleagues to start with and you can laugh it off together

    * dressing a little nicer than everyone else, especially at first

    * taking the initiative to speak first, introduce myself, etc., to avoid people putting their feet in their mouths. This also works at the liquor store–I usually pay when my partner is with me. He’s three years older than I am, but often gets mistaken for my father.

    * having a sense of humor about it, even if I need to “vent” about it later

    If you meet someone who seems “too young,” I totally agree about not saying how the person will “appreciate it later.” (Frankly, I doubt that I will unless I start processing my hair–gray hair trumps all else, and my mother was already completely gray in her 40’s.) Better approaches are to just apologize (“So sorry, thought you were younger….”) and maybe compliment the person in the here-and-now (“you do have such nice hair, though”) or joke about it (“guess I need to get my eyes checked”). Best one I’ve heard: “Oh, you look so young, you must be keeping yourself really healthy!” And please don’t try to convince me my driver’s license is fake–no, really, I was there. It scares me that this might happen with the police or someone similar.

    Fitwallet, when I was in college, I went back to visit my high school, and they thought I was a visiting 8th grader!

  • I also look young. Most people I meet at work seem to be initially under the impression that I’m about 5 years younger than I am, but I think that’s partly because they know that I have a degree. I still get ID-ed when buying alcohol and the legal drinking age in the UK is 18. So unless you look at more closely and see the lines around my eyes, I think that I can often pass for about 10 years younger.

    I don’t really attempt to counteract it too much. I dress and act appropriately for work, I’m good at my job and I hold and give intelligent opinions. The biggest problem is that I sound like a 12 year old on the phone. I think that disturbs people, but I’m not really sure how or whether I want to change that.

    Fortunately (!) I’ve started going grey, so I guess this will wear off in a few years. Unless I take my sister’s advice to just pluck all the grey out.

  • I have the same problem. I once got carded on an international flight when I was 23!!! I don’t blame them, I looked like I was 15.

    but putting on 40 pounds really helped fix that! But I still get carded even when I tell the waitresses that I’m older than they are.

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