When a Smile Becomes a Risk

In today’s work-from-home world, we sit behind screens polished, muted, professional. But one small smile during a virtual meeting recently went viral for all the wrong reasons.
A tech employee shared that his manager found his smile during an onboarding call “insulting.” That smile almost cost him his job.
It made me wonder: how did we reach a point where even warmth needs permission?
Work once meant collaboration, connection, and shared energy. Now, through digital windows, we measure tone, posture, and even facial expressions as though they’re part of performance reviews.Maybe it’s time we ask
Are we becoming too mechanical?
Is professionalism starting to erase personality?
Remote work gave us comfort, but it also took away something subtle the freedom to just be.
As someone who balances work, life, motherhood, and self-expression, I find this story deeply relatable. Because behind every muted mic, there’s a real person trying to stay both professional and human.
Ending Thought. Let’s bring back empathy  even to our video calls. Because kindness, not stiffness, keeps workplaces truly human.
Workplaces don’t need perfection; they need people  kind, expressive, alive.
So if smiling makes you “unprofessional,” maybe the problem isn’t your smile.
Maybe it’s the world forgetting what being human really means..