Sometimes, a term of endearment can be anything but endearing.
“I had this manager who … started referring to me as ‘honey,'” recalls May Snowden, former chief diversity officer for both Starbucks and Eastman Kodak Co. (one of Fair360, formerly DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies), who is now president and CEO of Snowden & Associates, Inc. “[It was] when I took my first director position. I was in a male-dominated job in the telecommunications industry and I did not want to embarrass him in front of his peers, so I invited him to my office and indicated that ‘I won’t call you sweetie if you won’t call me honey.’ We had that little conversation and he stopped. He was really embarrassed, [and because] he calls his wife, his daughters and other women ‘honey’, he did not even think about it.” Audio clip.