In a viral video, a 19-year-old who works at Home Depot shared how she wards off creepy older men.
In the video, Lainie (@lainie.w01) stands in an empty room at work wearing a grey T-shirt, black knee-length shorts, and her orange Home Depot apron on top of it all.
“The key to not getting hit on at work is little boy shorts. the boomers HATE THEM!!!” the text overlay on the video read.
A screeching screaming sound plays over the video.
The video has nearly 400,000 views and hundreds of comments.
“Its like it wards them off they dont even look at me,” the caption read.
In 2022 Home Depot, which has more than 2,300 stores across North America, was the fourth-largest retailer in the United States and the country’s leading home improvement retailer, Business Insider reported.
The news site reported that the “typical” Home Depot shopper “is a middle-aged white man, who is married without children at home. They tend to live in the suburbs, have a college education, and earn more than $80,000 per year.”
According to Zippia, about 40% of the retailer’s half-a-million-person workforce are women. Though it is unclear what year this data is from. The site also reported that the majority of women—between 54% and 81%—experience some level of sexual harassment at work, yet most of this harassment isn’t reported.
Several commenters shared their own tricks for not getting hit on at work.
“My coworker used to carry a small print out of Dwayne Johnson in DOOM and told boomers it was her marine dad worked for her,” a person shared.
“My biggest defense was wearing men’s cologne and dressing vaguely masculine,” another commented.
“Black fingernail polish, too. my ex fil, a true boomer, confided in me, ‘that’s how you tell there’s something wrong with them,’” a commenter shared.
“Long basketball shorts work too, the ones with the Adidas stripe. Add in some Oakley sunglasses too,” a viewer suggested.
Others said that the harassment still happens no matter what they do.
“It happens anyways. I rock out like a whole middleschool boy and they ask if I’m married. in front of their wives,” a top comment read.
“The unfortunate loophole is your coworkers will still flirt with you (i worked at lowes and wore these),” a person wrote.
The Daily Dot reached out to Lainie via TikTok comment and to Home Depot via email.
