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It’s easy for a compliment to come out differently than you intended.

One employee learned that after a coworker showed up with a new hairstyle she clearly loved.

Since the woman said she thought it looked better, the employee agreed and told her it looked beautiful.

But later that day, HR called her in and said the comment had come across as racist.

Now, she’s not sure whether she actually said something wrong or if the whole situation got twisted.

Read on to see what you think about it.

AITAH for agreeing that my coworker’s new hairstyle looked better?

The other day at work, one of my coworkers was leaving early.

We joke around a lot, so I said, “You’re leaving already? Got a hot date?” She laughed and said she was getting her hair done.

The next day she came in with long, straight hair, and I told her it looked beautiful.

The woman had previously shared thoughts on her natural hair.

For context, she had previously told me she didn’t like her natural hair and that it was always a mess because she never took care of it. She was excited about getting it done, so when she said she thought it looked so much better, I agreed.

In my mind, I was just trying to hype her up because she seemed happy and more confident. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with her natural hair, and I wasn’t making a statement about Black hair or natural hair in general.

Later that day, I was called into HR.

The HR director had some choice words for her.

Apparently, HR had overheard her talking to another coworker.

According to HR, she felt I only liked her new hairstyle because it was more “white-passing” and that I was out of line for agreeing that it looked better.

The HR director told me racism would not be tolerated and that people in the office were talking about my comments. I wasn’t told exactly what had been said beyond that.

Now, she’s shocked and confused.

One thing that makes this harder for me to process is that our HR director has a reputation in the office for being very drama-driven.

There always seems to be some kind of issue or conflict surrounding him, and his approach tends to escalate situations rather than resolve them. Because of that, I don’t know if I got the full story or whether things were repeated with additional assumptions or exaggerations.

I was honestly shocked and mortified because that was never my intention. Looking back, I can understand how agreeing that one hairstyle looked “better” could have been interpreted differently than I meant it. At the time, though, I genuinely thought I was just complimenting her and agreeing with something she had already said about herself.

AITA?

Oh no. Situations like this suck because it doesn’t seem like she had bad intentions.

Let’s take a look at how the readers over at Reddit feel about her comments.

This person thinks she needs to be more cognizant of what she says from now on.

Great point.

This may not be the best idea either.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a contractor who flew along way and spent 3 days on a fix only to find a breaker that needed to be flipped.

Some people do talk like this.

It sounds like one big misunderstanding.

After all, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make your coworker feel good.

However, she should probably be a little more careful with how she words things from now on.

Even the smallest compliment can turn into something completely different once other people start interpreting it.