Male employee swaps email signature with female colleague, with 'shocking' results...

The prevalence of gender bias is an uncomfortable truth for many HR departments - and whilst strides are being made to minimise levels of discrimination, unfortunately instances, such as the following, only serve to highlight how far we have to go.

A male employee at a firm in Philadelphia, US, accidentally swapped email signatures with a female colleague. According to the Daily Mail, Martin Schneider was confused by the "rude and dismissive" responses he received from clients, only to realise that it was down to them believing he was co-worker Nicole Pieri.  

The pair then decided to conduct an experiment, whereby they swapped email signatures for two weeks. Whilst Pieri claimed she enjoyed the most successful stint of her career, Schneider said that his work life began to "f****** suck".

He claims that clients began to be rude to him, writing on Twitter that one such client said that "his methods were the industry standard (they weren't) and I couldn't understand the terms he used (I could)".