my coworker saves hair, applying for a job with a huge salary range, and more

by Alison Green on August 19, 2022

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. My coworker saves hair

My coworker has a lot of odd quirks and strange things that she does in general. I’m incredibly bothered by one thing she does and am wondering if it’s as disgusting as I think? My coworker saves her hair anytime a strand falls out. I found out because one day when I looked her way I saw her taping a strand of hair to the side of her desk. Apparently she saves the hair and donates it. Normally I think donating is great, I think most people though go get their hair cut and donate it then. I looked one day while she wasn’t at her desk and found she essentially has a wall of hair taped to the side of her desk. Is this okay for the office and I need to get over it or is this gross and she should leave this activity for home?

This is strange and gross and she should not do this at work … but it also doesn’t rise to the level of something you have standing to intervene on. All you can really do is save it as an amazing story that you’ll forever be able to use to one-up your friends when they talk about their coworkers.

(Also, I am skeptical that she can really donate it — places that accept hair donations usually have stricter requirements than “a bunch of random hairs that I shed” — but who knows. Maybe that’s her cover story and she’s really collecting it all so no one can make a voodoo doll from it.)

Related (sort of): someone is leaving their fingernail clippings in my desk

2. Was I wrong to say I was glad to have time to figure out if a job was a good fit?

I was recently promoted to interim manager over my department. I had applied for the position but they decided to make me interim for 90 days while they decide if I’m the right fit. There are a couple of reasons: (1) We didn’t have a good pool of candidates and (2) on paper, I don’t have the credentials they are looking for and I don’t think my interview went as well as I would have liked to show my experience. I appreciate so much that they know me and have faith I can do this and are giving me the opportunity to try it out.

In a recent conversation with my grandboss, I made a comment about how much I appreciate this opportunity and that it also gives me the time to see if it is a good fit for me as well. It got back to me that she found this a bit offensive. I think she just wanted me to be grateful. I’m not super concerned as I have a great relationship with my direct boss (and she thinks grandboss already forgot) but I wanted your take on it. Is that an entitled attitude? I think it is normal to figure out if it is a good fit for the candidate as well but I know she is somewhat old school.

No, you don’t have an entitled attitude! Her attitude is the problem — you should just be grateful for the opportunity and not think critically about whether the job is the right fit for you? She should want you to be thinking critically about that — and if she’s not ready to commit to you for the job, it’s a bit much that she thinks you should be certain about it yourself. (I don’t mean that in an “if they aren’t sure they want me, why should I want them?” way, but rather that she clearly has some hesitations, so why wouldn’t it be okay for you to have your own questions about it too?) I’d rather hire someone who comes in well aware that a job could be a stretch than someone who just assumes their success is guaranteed.

3. Applying for a job with an enormous salary range

I’m currently employed but looking for new opportunities. My current salary is $125,000, and to take a new job I would need at least something in that general vicinity.

I recently applied for a job that included a very wide salary range in the position description. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say the range was $80,000-$140,000.

After two rounds of interviews and a reference check, they offer me the job at $105,000. I told the manager that the salary was less than I was hoping for and asked if there was any room for negotiation. Turns out the salary offer was firm, but they could offer a $5,000 signing bonus. Obviously I had to decline the position.

Had I known that the actual salary for the position was $105,000, I never would have applied in the first place, so I feel like I wasted everyone’s time, including my own. Is there anyway I could have figured this out earlier in the process? I have always heard that you shouldn’t talk about money and benefits until you have an offer. But that seems really inefficient.

It is indeed incredibly inefficient, and fortunately it’s changing / has changed. When you see a wide range like that, assume it’s possible that you could be offered the low end of it (in some cases because they’re listing the full salary band for the role even though they always start people at the low end, or sometimes because the higher end is only for unicorns, or sometimes because they have criteria for who lands where that they haven’t bothered to share). If part of the range would be a deal-breaker for you, ask about it early on (even as early as a phone screen). You can say it this way: “I saw you listed a range of $80,000-$140,000. I’d be looking for the higher end of the range — over $X — and wanted to make sure it makes sense to to move forward.”

4. Ghosted by a company that invited me to apply

I was recently invited to apply for a new position at a company I worked for 10 years ago. I left on good terms and am friendly with former colleagues – social media, chat when we run into each other in town, etc. I was interviewed by two of these friendly former colleagues who are now managers. I didn’t get the job, which is fine.

However, they ghosted me. I determined they had chosen another candidate based on the time that passed. Given the circumstances – they reached out to me – and the fact that I’m friendly with these people, I’m annoyed about being ghosted. I expected a polite “thanks for your time, we went another direction” email at a minimum. Am I out of line to be irritated about being ghosted? I could use an outside perspective. The ghosting makes me think I don’t want to work for their department in any capacity in the future.

No, you’re not out of line. Ghosting is rude when companies do it to candidates they have no history with (common, but still rude). Doing it in a situation like this, where they know you, have worked with you before, and asked you to apply, is even ruder.

However, a caveat: You’ve determined they ghosted you based on the amount of time that’s passed. But if you haven’t seen a hire announced, it’s possible you haven’t been ghosted but the process is taking a lot longer than expected or is on hold. They should still update you (and that goes double if you’ve contacted them and been ignored) but you can’t be sure they’ve chosen someone else. If you haven’t already contacted them to ask for an update, you should.

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{ 281 comments }

{ 281 comments… read them below }

  1. My Dear Wormwood*

    #1 coooould be collecting it for a hair rat – a net stuffed with your own fallen hair to use in hair styling. I don’t know of anyone who still does this though.

    However I’m still boggling at the wall of hair. It feels like something the protagonist finds in a horror movie just before they realise they can’t get out of the house.

    1. NervousNellie*

      People who are very into vintage and antique ways of dressing are into hair rats, and I wonder if this person doesn’t realize that this isn’t how you collect hair for that. You should clean it out of a brush, and only collect clean hair. Sometimes when you get deep into a hobby, you don’t think about how weird what you are doing really is.

      However, I hate to say that it seems far more likely that this is a manifestation of some sort of compulsive behavior.

      1. Chuck Norris*

        #3 Yes! I just had our recruiter do initial phone screens today and asked her to please make sure candidates are ok with the $18-20 range (entry level job, and it’s posted on the listing) so we don’t waste anyone’s time bringing them in for a interview. Both sides of job hunt are hard enough without wasting time.

      2. Lady_Lessa*

        I actually have an antique container that is designed for collecting hair. the lid has a wide hole in the center so that you can put the hair in and when full just lift the lid out. Mine is white with painted flowers on it.

        1. WantonSeedStitch*

          I have one of those too! Mine is silver, though, and all of one piece with no removable lid. I use it to store cotton balls. I think it was part of a set that my great-grandmother had, with a brush and mirror. My mom still has those pieces.

        2. WantonSeedStitch*

          And now this has led me to investigate my hair receiver more, and I’ve learned that it’s from 1923! That’s pretty neat!

        3. Elizabeth West*

          Yep, I’ve seen those. They’re called hair receivers. I think my mom has one as part of an antique dresser set.

          1. Humble Schoolmarm*

            I learned something today! I’ve read the term hair receiver and had no idea what they were, but they were never critical enough to the story to bother googling.

            1. Carol the happy elf*

              We have one from the 1800s from a greatgreat. It’s white porcelain with flowers and a woman in a wig, about the size of 3 tuna cans stacked. The hole has little nubby bumps underneath, and the estate appraisal notebook is really badly translated, so its item number calls it a “Rat Catcher”.
              When I was little, my mother used it for bobby pins and hair clips, and it sat on her dressing table.

            1. Lynn*

              And now I know what a piece that I inherited is. I never knew what it was for (and, to be honest, didn’t care much-I kept it for sentimental reasons, so the actual use of it didn’t matter). I keep hair elastics in in (or at least did when my hair was longer than it currently is). :>

        4. JustaTech*

          I just used a tupperwear container to hold my hair until I had enough for a hair rat (which I still haven’t used). But I sure as anything didn’t do it at work!

          If it’s all individual strands then maybe they’re saving it for hair jewelry, like those Victorian memorial broaches?

      3. Zoe Karvounopsina*

        Is she secretly the reincarnation of Elisabeth of Austria?

        (Elisabeth, known as Sissi, had many issues, but some were related to her famously beautiful hair. Apparently she used to have her ladies in waiting present any strands that had come out when her hair was being dressed on a silver tray, and reprove them)

        1. Teekanne aus Schokolade*

          If you look about online you may be able to find the 1955 film Sissi with English subtitles (Romy Schneider) it is so beautiful! Google the actress while you’re at it because she had some unique parallels to Sissi in her life and death. I live in Germany and here and in Austria she is the ultimate of princess stories, and her death is easily one of the coolest in history (sorry but it is! It is corset-related and fascinating!)

            1. Zoe Karvounopsina*

              Her corset was so tight, the wound wasn’t noticeable until they got it off.

              (Anyone googling further: Elisabeth had a fairly serious eating disorder, and obsessed about her looks and her body so…be warned, because that became part of her Myth)

              1. Pugetkayak*

                When I was at the palace, it was implied that she knew it was serious and did not tell anyone.

      4. Clorinda*

        I am saving hair from my comb for a rat to use instead of the plastic donut bun. Taping it anywhere seems inefficient for this purpose as you’d end up with sticky residue. Can’t maintenance just clean her desk, because ew.

      5. Where’s the Orchestra?*

        Personally, I would leave aside the collecting of the hair and focus only on how it is being stored. OP1’s coworker needs to find a better way to collect the hair than affixing it to the side of the desk or wall with tape – as doing that can make her office harder for the janitorial staff to properly clean.

        And yeah, hair can collect dust at a amazing rate – and also draw certain types of bugs. I remember touring some revolutionary war era homes back on the east coast that had hair art displayed on the walls – and it was all in specially sealed boxes to prevent it from attracting bugs that would destroy the pieces.

      6. Umiel12*

        I agree. The most obvious answer is probably the correct one, and I would bet money that she has a compulsive disorder. I think the tape says it all. Whether it’s a disorder or not, it’s gross. Even if I were just her co-worker and not her boss, I’d probably tell her it was gross.

    2. Squidhead*

      I’ve heard of hair mattings being used to absorb oil spills (in the ocean), but if that were the purpose I don’t think they’d need to be neatly taped…I think they get wadded up into a big absorbent sponge! However there’s basically no limit to the amount of weird stuff that makes sense to *someone,* and I’d probably leave this one alone unless the hair is truly and actively causing a hazard.

      1. Nobby Nobbs*

        You could sweep hair for that off a salon floor, I imagine. No need to collect it as it falls out! I agree with the commenter above who said it sounds like a compulsion. The bright side, I guess, is that it seems like a gross but harmless one.

        1. Orange Capybara*

          I always have to smile when I come across comments from you because of your username.
          First thing that came to my mind reading #1 was Goblins as described by Sir Terry Pratchett.

        2. Reluctant Mezzo*

          I thought she was trying to make sure nobody stole it for Polyjuice. :)

          It must be fun to be a Wizarding World hairdresser or barber, though.

    3. Emmy Noether*

      My first thought when I heard of collecting fallen hair was also a hair rat (I’ve never heard of donating fallen hair, only cut). I’ve thought of doing that myself, could be fun (at home only, obviously!!). But, as NervousNellie wrote, that’s not how you would collect for that (there are little jars called hair receivers for that). If she’s taping indvidual hairs with bits of tape… how the heck would she get that mess of tape off the hair once she’s done collecting? Or is she planning to give the hair curtain a “haircut” once she’s done?

      1. AntsyAntipodean*

        My hair sheds a *lot* all year round, and if I’m in a new space I try to avoid leaving a trail of hair behind me, collecting it in my handbag to dispose of at home. I imagine that looks strange to others, and I wonder if this bizarre behaviour somehow grew out of something similar?

        1. Covered in Bees*

          My first assumption when I read the title was spooning self conscious about shedding hairs. Then we got to the part where the hairs were taped to the wall and I just have no idea.

        2. ecnaseener*

          In an office I’d expect there to be a trash can nearby, if her real goal is just to avoid leaving hair everywhere.

          1. Laika*

            Yeah, I was feeling a bit embarrassed yesterday because an executive wandered past by desk while I was trying to collect/shove 5-6 stray strands of shed hair into the trash… But reading this letter makes me feel less embarrassed about that. I could have been doing much weirder things with my shed hair!!

            1. Elizabeth I*

              I find it easier to wrap a Kleenex around them in my hand, then throw the Kleenex in the trash. Too hard to get them off my hand otherwise!

          3. Very Social*

            Yeah, I sort of collect strands of hair at my desk… so I don’t have to walk 10 feet to the office trash can every time I find a loose strand. And I throw them out throughout the day.

        3. SheLooksFamiliar*

          Thanks to a bad thyroid I lose a lot of hair year-round, too, and I’m sympathetic to anyone losing strands at work for any reason. Me, I briskly rub the fleeing strands into a little ball, and toss it in a trash can.

          But carefully taping hair to a wall ‘to donate’? That’s distinctly odd behavior.

      1. Seeking Second Childhood*

        This is still a niche hobby and I once stumbled across a website where people were buying hair for the purpose. The quantities are much smaller than for wig making–and whether the purpose is wigs or extensions or art, the prices for long healthy untreated hair are surprisingly high. As a result I (with waistlength hair) wondered about saving combings to sell. I noped out the first day as I realized what a tricky material it is to keep in order. It’s directional, it’s slippery, and it’s going to take hundreds if not thousands to make a braid.
        Tape would definitely need to be trimmed off.
        And dang it’s REALLY not for the office.

    5. Pennyworth*

      Human hair is collected from hairdressers and made into devices that absorb oil spills, but I can’t imagine single person’s hair combings would be much of a contribution. Taping each strand to the desk is just weird.

    6. Despachito*

      I know of a Renaissance lady in whose tomb were discovered cushions with her own hair. It is unclear what was the purpose.

      As to the OP’s coworker, I find the wall of hair disgusting and not fit for a workplace (if she really needs to collect it, a little jar hidden in her drawer would be fine)

    7. Madame Arcati*

      I collect my hair for an Edwardian “rat” (have made a small one already). BUT I save only my hair off the brush, at home, and I put it neatly away in a container, in a drawer. I do not save it a strand at a time in the goshdarned office!
      This coworker won’t be able to donate that hair for wigs (hair has a direction and it all needs to be going the same way from root/cut end to tip to be combed through and ever look neat) but even if it were for oil spills or cushions or needle felted wombats, thr office is not the place to do this and certainly not to openly store it.
      Apart from the weirdness, hair is made of keratin like wool and other natural fibres used for clothing and guess what clothes moths eat? I’d be concerned about them and any other wee beasties eg fleas, mites, head lice etc having a playground-restaurant in your place of work!

      1. My dear Wormwood*

        Thank you for making me google needle felted wombats, those furry little cuties have made my day.

        1. Madame Arcati*

          Lol I just picked a cute furry animal out of my head as something one could needle-felt! But yes wombats are ace. The live sort have armoured bottoms!

        2. quill*

          I don’t think you could necessarily felt most human hairs… structure may be too different from wool.

    8. Not Gollum*

      I’m not OP1’s coworker, since I’m not doing it at work, but I’m currently collecting my own hair at home. I suffer from stress-related hair-loss, and I’m expecting a new bout later any moment (as it usually starts 3-6 months after the stressor). Collecting the hair helps me monitor the current loss, and it’s sufficiently long enough that (if I decide) I can make a fall/braid/rat to fill out my hair if my hair loss isn’t too bad. My hair color is hard to match, so this is a better option than store-bought.

      That said, the sorting process (hanging) does NOT belong at work.

    9. TeaCoziesRUs*

      This was my first thought, too. I love watching historical costumers on YouTube and have seen many of them using hair rates to create certain styles.

      1. Lydia*

        I didn’t even think of hair rats or anything like that. My immediate thought was that she might be a Wiccan practitioner and doesn’t want to out herself as practicing a less common religion. If I understand correctly, in Wicca hair and other things that shed from a person can used against them and she might be very cautious.

        1. DANGER: Gumption Ahead*

          There a quite a few cultures where you have to be careful about who gets your hair or fingernails and I know a lot of people who are careful to collect any shed hairs they find. However, they tuck them somewhere safe and take them home for proper disposal. They definitely wouldn’t proudly display them because that would defeat the purpose of collecting it in the first place, namely to keep away from anyone feeling cursey or spelly

        2. Friendly local witch*

          What? No. If you’re worried someone may take your hair (or fingernails, or other personal bits–it’s called a tag lock in spells) to curse you, you ensure it is properly disposed of, you don’t tape it to your desk.

    10. Clefairy*

      I saw someone on TikTok who did exactly what OP1 is describing- collecting fallen hair from EVERYWHERE, including her shower walls, and storing it on a strip of horizontal tape. After months and months of doing this, she actually had a completely stunning and normal looking collection of hair- it looked like healthy hair on a head, or a wig. But it was just gross random single strands of hair taped together over time. NOT saying what OP is doing is normal at all, it’s super weird, especially at work. But I wonder if she got this idea from TikTok or some other social media.

      1. this one again*

        I’m on that side of TT too, I was shocked it took someone this long to mention it in the comments!

    11. Canadian Librarian #72*

      Sure, but don’t do it at work, it’s gross and off-putting to others.

      Nothing objectively wrong with it (even if you brush your hair in the office washroom and save the strands into a plastic bag or something), but at your desk? No.

  2. Elitist Semicolon*

    Yeah, I’ve donated hair a few times and that is…not how it works. I’d believe the voodoo doll possibility before I’d believe any reputable hair donation program will take a bunch of taped-up single strands; I got a set of very clear instructions about the process, such as “hair must be freshly washed” and “hair must be bound in a braid or ponytail that is secured at both ends with a rubber band.” Besides, I am generally of the opinion that disembodied hair is nasty, so I’d be both highly skeptical and highly revolted if I saw a co-worker taping hair to her desk.

    1. TransmascJourno*

      So, vodun (or vodou) is a syncretic religion which originated from West Africa that’s gotten a lot of undue flack vis a vis white colonizers. I hope I’m not violating the AAM commenting rules with stating this, but it’s not really cool to invoke “voodoo dolls” in that respect.

      2. Emmy Noether*

        I could sort of see someone having a very misguided fear of their hair being used for nefarious purposes, because of the way “voodoo”* has been maligned and misrepresented. Which is what I think Alison meant? Not that actually making a doll would be a possibility.

        * scare quotes to mark the difference between the false representation and the actual religion.

        1. C’mon*

          I understand the commentariat are all fans of the blog, but “maybe she’s making a voodoo doll lol” needs more context if you’re making fun of appropriators and not the religion they’re appropriating.

          1. ecnaseener*

            But she didn’t say anyone *was* making a “voodoo doll,” she said this clearly-very-odd coworker might be afraid of the possibility.

          2. Observer*

            People aren’t actually saying that, not was Alison. The people who are afraid are thinking of the stuff that’s presented as “voodoo” (and generally have no idea of the wider religious background involved).

            It may also be worth noting here that Alison has actually hosted a few questions about this issue. You can look for the “Mayan Shaman”

      3. JSPA*

        I didn’t take it as flip, but only as a call-out to the prior letter where someone was threatening to perform nefarious rituals / make dolls.

        In that voodoo took on on a life of its own in the US (long before the internet), separate from its ancestral traditions– and has long had practitioners under that name–I am leery of drawing the line between “cultural appropriation” and “religious syncretization” in a work blog.

      4. Despachito*

        I think it does not necessarily have to be voodoo – there are much more believings that if your enemy gets hold of something from your body or even something you carried on your body, he can do you harm with this.

        1. Nea*

          As we all know, black magic is one of many occupational hazards.

          (For those who going “Wha-?” search that phrase on this site.)

          1. quill*

            We already had a link to the toenail clippings one, please don’t jinx us with more weird connections to prior letters.

        2. the once and future grantwriter*

          that was my first thought too! I’m familiar with several worldviews from disparate geographical areas where people are encouraged take special care with the disposal of hair, nails, old clothing, old accessories, etc out of concern that it could be used against the person who discarded them in this life or the next. I’ve worked in some places where we were told not to discard hair from our hairbrush while we were there because culturally it’s not considered okay in those areas to throw away that part of yourself. Plenty of American parents are sentimental about their kids’ baby teeth, and my mom saved a lock of my hair from when I was a baby, and I imagine they’d be rightfully upset if those objects were unceremoniously discarded.
          But yeah, taping loose hair on the wall in the office is not the way.

          1. Emmy Noether*

            My family traditionally saves baby teeth – I still have mine. Not because we are afraid of anything being done to them, it just sort of feels weird unceremoniously throwing bodyparts in the trash with the cheeserinds, empty yoghurt containers and socks with holes. Doesn’t seem that rare, there are jars one can buy for the purpose. We also do locks of baby hair taped into photo albums (one lock, the rest does just get thrown away).

      5. Elitist Semicolon*

        Ah, sorry – I didn’t realize! I was quoting the response to OP’s letter but will note this for the future. Thank you for the information!

      6. Kit*

        I agree that invocations of “voodoo dolls” are often suspect (although Alison started it, with an oblique callback to previous posts, so it’s not out of nowhere) – but Vodun/Vodou/Voodoo are all legitimate spellings and usually indicate the specific flavour of cultural origin/influence in question. Voodoo is the traditional Louisianan spelling, and is quite distinct from Haitian Vodou or extant West African Vodun in practice, even if they all share common roots.

        It’s deeply unfortunate that the phrase “voodoo doll” has become the common English parlance for the array of poppets used in assorted spiritual and magical practices, for a whole host of reasons, but the ‘voodoo’ spelling isn’t actually the problematic part.

        1. Nina*

          Yeah, the witchcraft/magic I’m conversant with is the English English from England kind, so I’m most used to ‘poppet’ as the catchall term for objects including ‘voodoo dolls’, vetulas, corn dollies, hoko dolls, and occasionally hex bags. This has led to interesting conversations with engineers who understand ‘poppet’ as a term for a specific type of vertically-seated valve.

          1. coffee*

            I am delighted to learn the many meanings for poppet! I’ve only heard it used as a term of endearment for children (“Hello poppet” etc.)

    2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I am pleased to see someone else using the phrase “disembodied hair”. I call it the same thing (because I find it irrationally revolting) and people give me weird looks for the phrase.

      1. Elitist Semicolon*

        I mean, what else is it? It’s hair that is floating around unattached to an actual body, which is the only appropriate place for hair!

        1. Carol the happy elf*

          Not really- my hair stylist collects the sweepings and puts them out for birds to add to their nests.
          She said that when the local zoo grooms some of the animals, they pile the hair for birds, and they add it to the animal dung they sell for fertilizer. It has nitrogen (?)

          1. Anon all day*

            I just want to add that long hair, and perhaps human hair in general, should NOT be left out for birds to make nests out of – the long strands can tangle on feet or wings and cause them to be severed.

    3. Everything Bagel*

      I’m really wondering if the boss can’t ask more about this. I think my immediate reaction to seeing the hair taped to the desk would be to ask, “Why not just put it in a sandwich baggie and keep it in your drawer to take home? Aren’t you afraid someone will come to your desk and get caught on it and tear it all down by accident?“

        1. Everything Bagel*

          Ah, yeah I glossed over that. Still, I don’t know if I could keep myself from asking the question anyway, not suggesting she should do it that way, but asking why she doesn’t do it that way.

    4. Falling Diphthong*

      It’s interesting how body parts are totally fine while attached to the body and icky the moment they fall or are cut off. Even those parts designed to be regularly shed. Perhaps it’s as well humans don’t have feathers.

      1. Be Gneiss*

        If a coworker was molting and taping the feathers to their desk, that would still be weird.

      2. Michelle Smith*

        I find other people’s hair gross when it’s still connected to their head, to be honest with you. Like the people who obsessively flip their hair around? Weirds me out. And please, don’t ever lean over in a meeting or flip your hair so it touches my shoulder when we’re sitting side by side. Gag.

      3. whingedrinking*

        There is a whole thing about the psychological attitudes towards things that are “part of the body” vs. “things that have been expelled from the body”. Consider: your mouth currently contains saliva. Even when you’re aware of that, you probably don’t think “ewwww, gross!” when you swallow it. Now imagine spitting in a glass and drinking that. Is your response the same?
        We have different levels of tolerance for it – most of us would probably be more comfortable touching a person covered in sweat than a person covered in vomit, for example. This seems to be more or less universal across cultures. The only exception to this “human fluids are fine until they’re outside the body and then they’re horrifying” is tears, and no one knows why.

        1. coffee*

          Maybe because you never really see or notice tears until they are outside the body, thus it’s in its “usual” place when it leaves the body? Interesting!

        2. the once and future grantwriter*

          I thought it was because tears have the lowest likelihood of any bodily substance to transmit communicable diseases? Tears CAN transmit disease but think about it: every other bodily fluid is worse. :)

    5. Sylvan*

      If you donate hair for oil spill cleanup, there aren’t so many requirements. Maybe she’s donating the hair to an organization doing something like that, not an organization making wigs.

      But anyway, making a lil miniature tinsel backdrop of floor hair at her desk is nasty. Sorry you’re sitting near this mess, OP.

    6. Teacher Lady*

      I was in the Peace Corps in the late aughts, and even at that time, there were many people in rural areas of the country where I served who believed that evil witchcraft is real and that witches may use hair, nail clippings, etc. to do evil against that person.

      I’d be willing to bet money that OP’s coworker is not collecting their own hair to guard against witchcraft of this variety, and instead is just doing it for some reason known only to them, but just saying…this belief is definitely out there.

  3. Sinlow*

    I HATE companies that can’t even be bothered to send you a quick email stating that they decided not to make you an offer. This has happened to me numerous times.

    1. Ridiculous Penguin*

      I had a company set me up for an interview recently and they ghosted me ***for the interview *** (after that took three weeks to set up an interview after I told them my availability).

      I sent an email making sure they had the correct phone number because no one had called.

      Crickets.

      Fast forward, I get an email that the position was filled.

      For better or worse, I emailed the recruiter expressing my disappointment — not because the position was filled but because of the way they wasted my time (I phrased it better than that).

      She replied that time, saying she was sorry I felt that way — basically sorry not sorry — and that, upon further review they had decided I was overqualified and “the system” should have sent me an email before my interview so she would “look into what happened.”

      I wrote a bad Glassdoor review about the whole thing.

    2. FashionablyEvil*

      I feel you. I did seven interviews for a job (seven!!!) and nothing. It’s really obnoxious.

    3. A Yellow Plastic Duck*

      I have been regularly ghosted by Amazon for years.

      An Amazon IT recruiter will contact me and we’ll talk or go back and forth on email. Then I tell them I’m not going to move (too many local family ties) and that’s the last I hear from them. No follow up; no promised extra details; no nothing.

      I talked to an Amazon recruiter last week on the phone. The job was right up my alley. They even stated the job could be 100% remote, but when I said I absolutely wasn’t moving under any circumstances I could hear the recruiter’s voice deflate. They ghosted me, even though they promised to send me additional job info.

      BTW, I have several former coworkers who moved to Seattle to join Amazon, so I’m sure I have at least one good recommendation in their system. But, I wish they would mark me in their system as someone that wasn’t going to move.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        It seems an increasing tactic by employers is to advertise the job as fully remote to “increase the candidate pool” and then reveal the hybrid surprise. If you won’t move, the surprise isn’t likely to work.

        1. voluptuousfire*

          True, but this is Amazon, not a podunk start-up or mid-size company. They don’t need to pull all the traps out like this since they have prestige.

          1. A Yellow Plastic Duck*

            Big organizations have big resource problems.

            I read an article on mega-churches recently. Once they reach a certain size they tend to have an increased amount of churn (members leaving). It gets to the point that just to maintain their size they have to focus on acquiring new members to replace the ones they lose. Hence the reason mega-churches tend to become seeker-sensitive churches (focusing less on a religious mission and more on just getting butts in the pews).

            You see this pattern with other businesses (cell phones, for example). They reach a certain size and have to focus on acquiring new customers (or employees) because of churn. No doubt Walmart’s employee churn is phenomenal.

            The FAANG companies are huge, and lately they haven’t had the best reputation as places to work. I suspect their employee churn is high, causing them to use to questionable tactics to attract employees.

          2. Fikly*

            Wait, Amazon has prestige?

            Amazon is well known as a cesspit of an employer who treats its employees terribly. They need to pull out all the traps in order to get all the employees they need, because of their reputation.

            They’re trying to create company towns, for crying out loud.

            1. Ampersand*

              Yep, fully agree. It’s the one company I had strong (not positive) feelings about when my husband was looking for a new job. They wanted to interview him but thankfully he wasn’t interested.

        2. A Yellow Plastic Duck*

          It’s an old sales tactic to never talk about the price until you have the buyer hooked on the product.

          Once someone is mentally or emotionally committed (can’t you just see your self driving this car) they often do dumb things they would never do otherwise.

    4. Elizabeth West*

      Me too. I don’t expect it from an application, but ghosting after an interview sucks. I put those companies on a naughty list and don’t apply there again.

  4. Angrytreespirit*

    Lw 1, I am sure your coworker believes that she is helping someone out there with her “donations”. she probably sends it ten strands at a time to Locks of Love. And every time they get an envelope from her, they say “this is from the weird hair lady” and throw it straight into the trash.

    3. o_gal*

      LOL at that comment! And Locks of Love doesn’t even use the hair that is donated. What they do is act as a broker, of sorts – they take the hair and sell it to other places that can use it. It mostly does not get made into wigs. Most “western” hair is actually not well suited for wig making. It’s too clean or damaged by chemicals. LoL can sell that hair to other places that use it (maybe the oil collecting devices?) Then they take the money from selling it and buy wigs for people with conditions like alopecia.

      1. Venus*

        I’ve been thinking about donating my hair once it gets a bit longer. I don’t use chemicals, but would like to know what you mean by “too clean”.

        1. Not Your Rapunzel*

          Hair requires some natural oils to stay healthy. But many people wash their hair so much (like every day) that it strips the hair of everything it needs to stay strong and tolerate being worked without breaking. That kind of over-cleaned hair is too permanently damaged to be used for wigs. (But maybe still good for soaking up oil spills? I don’t know much about that, since I only heard of it recently.)

          1. quill*

            I would imagine that the less oil the hair has, the more it would be able to absorb from an oil spill…

          2. Venus*

            I wash my hair maybe weekly so that’s useful to know. I spent a lot of time away from good showers when young so only wash it when my scalp gets itchy. Thank you for clarifying!

          3. Curmudgeon in California*

            Yeah, if I wash my hair every day it gets frizzy and unmanageable. Shampoo weekly only.

  5. Worldwalker*

    If the hair isn’t gross when it’s attached to her head, it doesn’t become gross when it falls out. If it IS, there are bigger problems than loose hairs. Definitely not the OP’s circus, though.

    1. Emmy Noether*

      Mh, a lot of things that aren’t gross when properly attached to a living thing are perceived as kind of gross or creepy once they aren’t (fingernails, teeth, any bodily fluids).

      Hair tends to attract dust and dirt, it has to be cleaned regularly, or enclosed in such a way that it can’t. Otherwise, even if it isn’t gross itself, it will become dirty-gross soon.

      1. rubble*

        fingernails rarely come off of their own accord – you have to make the effort to cut them. hair just falls out randomly and you can’t really track it or control it. I don’t think it’s really equivalent.

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          Oh, I wish that were true for me! At least once a month, one of my fingernails randomly breaks or is torn off.

      2. UKDancer*

        Also things are more gross when they are other peoples’ than one’s own. So I tend to shed heavily and don’t mind if I find an odd hair in my dinner when I’ve cooked because it’s mine and it doesn’t bother me. Likewise I moult when I wash my hair and cleaning that up doesn’t bother me either. I do object to finding someone else’s hair in my food when I’m at a restaurant because that’s gross to me and indicates the restaurant doesn’t have good hygiene rules.

        I guess it’s not entirely logical but then many of the ways we feel about things aren’t entirely logical.

        1. londonedit*

          See also: a post-dinner plate is not gross if it’s on the table, but once it goes into the sink it becomes gross.

        2. metadata minion*

          Yeah, I have the same reaction. There’s also the part where if I saw a random strand of hair on a coworker’s desk, that would be fine. I’m not even particularly grossed out by random fingernail clippings so long as someone isn’t making piles of them. But *lining up your shed body bits and taping them to the wall* combines Weird and Vaguely Gross and the two somehow compound each other to make something that is no longer either the type of minor gross stuff everyone’s body does nor a harmless and ignorable personality quirk.

        3. nona*

          I briefly kept a ponytail of my own hair when I had a big chop (6-7 inches?). That got creepy real fast.

    3. Ellis Bell*

      So, I’m someone who has collected for their own hair rat before, so it’s not that I think fallen hairs are disgusting. However strands of hair are hard to keep clean unless put away immediately and they’re definitely personal items… Not for the office I would say.

    4. Asenath*

      A lot of bodily products are viewed differently when part of the body and when removed, and even such (usually) not-smelly things like hair and nail clippings do gross a lot of people out. I doubt it’s really due to their use in ancient cursing rituals (in many parts of the world, as someone noted above), but it’s a very common personal reaction. I would probably think the hair stuck to the desk thing decidedly weird but not particularly gross and nothing I need do anything about (inappropriate, but not enough so to result in a complaint). But I find hair – or anyone brushing or combing or fiddling with their hair – anywhere around food to be really gross, much more so than sticking it to a desk, even if I admired such hair while still attached. I put this down to my mother’s very strict rules on hair in the kitchen, and covering it when cooking or baking.

      1. JustaTech*

        I mean, I’d rather have hair stuck to a desk than other things I’ve found (boogers, but that was in college so standard were lower).
        And now that I think about it, I might have had a couple of really long hairs taped to my desk, but that was 1) at home and 2) in high school. (At the time I had blond hair but every once in a while I would grow a really long, very curly red hair. So I saved them to show my mom. It made sense when I was 15.)

        1. Summer*

          JustaTech,
          It’s so funny that you mention that because I just had a flashback to high school when I was playing with my hair and found one strand of hair that was very thick and black among the medium-thickness strawberry blonde hair on my head. It freaked me out so much and I yanked it out. That’s the only one I’ve ever found like that but your comment brought that memory back :)

    6. I'm just here for the cats!*

      a lot of people are grossed out by fallen hair, regardless of the condition when its on the head. Its like seeing hair in the bathroom sink, you just kind of gag at it.

      But there isn’t really anything the OP should do.

    7. Just Your Everyday Crone*

      Grossness is subjective. And it’s not at all unusual for people to find disembodied bits gross (hair, fingernails).

    8. Lydia*

      That is not really the case. Most people are hardwired to view things that should be attached to the human body as profane when they become unattached. A really great example of this is saliva. Most of us don’t think much about it when it’s in our mouths, but as soon as it leaves, it changes.

    9. mreasy*

      I don’t know about that. Dust is mostly skin cells which aren’t gross when they’re on our bodies, but nobody likes it once it’s dust.

  6. Rafflesia Reaper*

    The hair lady may actually may be donating it! There’s at least one nonprofit that takes hair in all forms – bundles, clippings, pet hair, etc – and uses it to absorb oil. I don’t know much about them, and reviews are mixed as to whether or not they’re currently accepting donations, but it’s plausible!

    1. Prefer my pets*

      The irony of collecting hair with plastic (tape) to clean up spills from society’s petroleum dependence would honestly make me question her sanity and intelligence more than finding out she was afraid of someone cursing her using her shed hairs.

    3. MechanicalPencil*

      This is exactly what I was thinking. Something like Locks of Love probably would not accept random gift donations, but Matter of Trust (pretty sure that’s the name) seems to take any and all donations.

    4. Generic Name*

      Maybe so, but wouldn’t it be more efficient to collect the hair in a bag? She’d have to spend time peeling the tape off the desk and then extracting the hair from the tape. I’m guessing the hair collecting in this way is a kind of compulsion and she says she’s donating as a socially acceptable excuse.

    5. Delta Delta*

      This is handy to know. I have a ponytail of mine in a ziploc bag that I cut during the summer of 2020 and wasn’t sure if I could donate it. Now it’s just in a bag in a drawer and I don’t want to throw it out but it’s probably no good for a wig. But it might be good for an oil spill! I’m going to check it out and see if I can put it to good use.

  7. Witty Worker*

    LW #3 : I was a hiring manager in a large organization who had huge salary bands based on the company wide position grade level. But our department also had an internal salary band within that we couldn’t post for some reason? Drove me insane!!!

    We did ask candidates to name their desired salary during the screening process and that saved a ton of time. If you really won’t take a role for less than x, don’t say negotiatable! Say $125k and above.

    And yeah, a broad range like that says their target salary is likely mid-point or below.

    1. Starlike*

      Yeah – to me, when you’re coming from $125k, this is an “I’d need the offer to be higher than my current salary” and not a “this isn’t what I prefer.” It’s perfectly fine and reasonable to not want to take a pay cut!

    2. This is Artemesia*

      Nothing more frustrating as a hiring manager to have stupid rules like this. I could not actually accurately describe what we needed because of baroque internal politics so half of the applicants, many of them with sterling resumes and who quite rightly assumed based on context and the ad that they would be good candidates were simply discarded straight off. And we could not post the salary although it was rather low for the field and qualifications and thus tended to be attractive to people looking for one last gig before retirement, having retired with a nice pension, rather than people starting out. And I could not reject until we had someone hired — which meant stringing along finalists far too long. I did finally insist that all those who were eliminated from consideration early get an email, but it is a difficult position to be in to not be able to do what is the right thing by candidates.

    3. Sloanicota*

      Listing a huge range when you actually plan to offer the lowest number is so weirdly counterproductive. Why put that number $140 in anybody’s head? And if it’s actually only for unicorns say something like, “We would go much higher for a candidate who can also do X and Y,” or whatever. I assume most companies are putting the big range to net more applicants, in the hope that their job/office/culture will be so “awesome” that they’ll feel invested in working for the lower amount after they get through the whole application process, but I can’t think that works out very well for them.

      1. eastcoastkate*

        Yes! I can’t remember if it was a post from last week or this week but there was a discussion around putting phrasing like “The range is x-y, we will go up to z for this or that reason” which I like- emphasizing that generally they’ll stay in a middle range but would go up to the top for a unique/top candidate.

    4. Michelle Smith*

      If you can’t post it, I would suggest disclosing it verbally in a prescreen or by email privately to a candidate before the interview to make sure it’s a good fit, rather than putting the onus on the candidate to come up with a number. The “what is your preferred salary” question puts candidates who aren’t used to those questions, who are prone to anxiety, etc. at a disadvantage. Just say what you’re willing to potentially pay and make sure they’re okay with it.

    5. fhqwhgads*

      Don’t ask them though. If you can’t post the real range, tell them the real range in the first phone screen.

    6. MCMonkeyBean*

      From the candidate’s end, I feel like 99% of the time if someone says “$125k and above” they will be offered $125k. I don’t think that’s a good way to start if they know they may want more depending on what they learn about the job. I would definitely not want to say that in a screening call.

      1. mreasy*

        Our company annoyingly asks for salary requirements, but when I was hiring I asked for a salary $10K above what the candidate asked for because I knew they were selling themself short.

    7. sam_i_am*

      We have to tell HR what we’re planning on paying the position, but we can only list the “grade” of the position, which gives a huge salary band. We’re super restricted in general about what we can put into job postings, and it’s incredibly frustrating. I guess that’s what you get for working at an old academic institution!

    8. Lydia*

      I did wonder why the OP didn’t say she couldn’t take less than $125k or whatever number she wanted that was at minimum what her current salary is. The nice thing about working for government is they tell you exactly what the band is, it’s not a huge stretch from low end to high end, and you know you’re going to fall somewhere in there based on the scoring.

  8. Seven hobbits are highly effective, people*

    I’m just glad that the coworker in #1 is saving *her own* hair and not, like any hair she is able to collect from around the office by pulling it off of chairs and such. Try to look at it as at least her shed hair is all in one place, and it’s not a place you will have to deal with it?

    1. Dark Macadamia*

      This is what I was expecting and yeah, at least only collecting her own hair is better than plucking a strand off a colleague’s sweater or something. But then I also assumed it was contained, so the individual taping makes it worse again :(

    2. Seeking Second Childhood*

      Ah chair wheels… one reason I cut my hair. I got tired of it jamming chair wheels and vacuum cleaners, and then I got tired of braids & buns.
      (Also? The experience made me truly appreciate that restaurant kitchen staff cover or tie back their hair!)

      1. londonedit*

        Yep…I’m chopping all my hair off again this weekend (after yet another of my ill-advised ‘maybe I should grow it! It would be so much easier if I could just put it up in a bun!’ periods – next time I express this wish someone seriously needs to remind me that I will hate it, my hair will annoy me for six months and it’s too heavy to do anything decent with once it’s grown long enough anyway) because I’m sick of having long hairs all over the carpet, clogging up the hoover and being all gross in the hair catcher in the plughole. What this person is doing is clearly weird and she really shouldn’t be doing it at work, but I suppose at least she isn’t leaving hair all over the place!

        1. Eater of Hotdish (fka jitm)*

          Oh shoot, I’m in exactly the same place with growing out my hair, and it’s been annoying me for longer than six months. It’s about shoulder length at its longest right now, and I’m shedding all over the place and I can’t even get it into a decent ponytail and I had a dream the other night where I chopped it all off into a cute little pixie and have been wondering ever since if I ought to do that for real.

          But, on the up side, at least I’m not collecting it and taping it to my office.

          1. nona*

            I’m the flip side – I chop it off (almost waistlength to collarbone). I enjoy it for a month, because I can wear it curly, but it still takes forever to dry and the curly gets boring/annoying and then I just want it long again so I can throw it up in a bun to let it air dry.

            This time I didn’t even cut it that short (collarbone) and I still want it just a little bit longer, because I know what to do with it at that length. Takes all kinds :)

            The vacuuming bit is still a total pain, and I am very familiar with how to clean my beater brush, but I find using the pet-hair attachments help some.

            1. JustaTech*

              Yup, I finally got my semi-annual haircut and it went from almost-waist length to mid-shoulder blade and while I’m sad it won’t do crossed over the head braids anymore, I’m also amazed that it’s taken like a full 5 minutes of my hair-washing showers! And I seem to be shedding a lot less.
              (My house cleaner uses my vacuum and he must clean the beater every time because I haven’t had to cut my hair off the vacuum in months and months.)

        2. mreasy*

          Maybe the colleague’s spouse told her, I bet you shed 100 hairs a day, and she’s trying to prove them wrong?

    3. GingerNP*

      First of all, big round of applause for the username, I love it.
      Secondly – the only thing I can imagine is that she’s collecting her own hair to prevent anyone from making a voodoo doll out of it. Which, depending on worldview, might just be good practice.

  9. Waving not Drowning*

    OP2 – I had a similar senario – I’d applied for a manager role, but, was lacking experience at that level. My manager was aware of my ambitions, and when he went on leave for 2 months, appointed me as his replacement (yay to higher duties pay!). At the end of the 2 months – I was happy to give the role back. I liked ABC parts of the role, but didn’t like the XYZ component, and I hadn’t realised how big XYZ was in the duties. So yes, it is very much a chance to see if you like the role too.

    1. learnedthehardway*

      Definitely agreeing.

      OP2 – perhaps tell your manager about the situation and clarify that you feel that the grandboss misunderstood, and that you need to be sure that the role is a good fit for your skills and abilities. I expect that is what you meant, and for the grandboss to interpret it as something else is just odd. If anything, she should have taken it as an indication that you aren’t being over-confident or arrogant that you’re totally qualified / the obvious candidate, etc.

      1. RebelwithMouseyHair*

        The way I see it is that grandboss just doesn’t want OP2 in the role and thought she was presumptious to even be thinking of herself in it.

    2. Drago Cucina*

      Absolutely. There is no shame in saying “This role is not for me.” At previous job I had a department head ask to step-down. Not a problem. She was happier and we were able to promote from within and that person flourished.

      My husband had been chief nurse anesthetist at a couple of hospitals. When we moved and he was offered the position he said, “No thanks. I have two children and don’t want to sacrifice more time away from them.” People were aghast that he chose his home life over a promotion that was going to be filled with paperwork.

      1. JustaTech*

        Given how often I’ve seen good lab scientists promoted to management-type positions where they spend all their time in meetings and no time in the lab, I am always happy to see an organization that will let people stay in the job they want to do.

        There are few things quite as inefficient and unhappy as a person who’s been promoted away from the work they like and are good at to do stuff they don’t like and aren’t good at. At the very least it means you end up with the Big Boss lurking around the lab and getting in the way while you’re trying to work.

  10. Lilipoune*

    OP1, it is actually possible to donate hair in that form. Of course they must be neatly arranged and not a bunch of hair tangled in a ball so this is quite an intensive process but if she doesn’t want to cut her hair but still donate then this is the way to go. It is of course gross to do it at work (although i undeestamd because it takes time to get enough hair to make a nice braid from fallen hair), but the hair itself is just the same as if it was cut. I think she should keep her hair up in a pony tail, bun, because them fallen hair will stay on her head, stuck in the bun of the pony tail and she should collect the hair when brushing her hair afterwards at home.

  11. Hairdly Working*

    For those wondering about the hair – if you are EXTREMELY diligent in saving hair this way, strand by strand at the end, you can make a weft out of the strands. That weft, combined with a bunch of other wefts (presumably also from the hair she saves) would make a human hair wig. Theoretically this can then be donated. But I do know in the wig community this is not exactly common, but it IS a technique. I considered doing it because my hair falls out like crazy, but I couldn’t be bothered really. But I do save my hair from haircuts and sew it into wefts to use as additional hair pieces since I have a specific color.

    But yeah not at work. Not unless she can hide it in a drawer or behind a shelf or something.

  13. STEPH*

    I’ve seen videos of people on social media who do this with the hair. Saving it one strand at a time and then adding it to tape to collect it all up, to either donate it or make a wig from it. Takes absolutely ages to get a decent amount of hair for donation but i think this is what this person has seen and is doing.
    She’s not the only one out there doing it but she could find another way to store it at work and then take home and add to the hair collection, not tape it up on the wall at work.

  14. Lyngend (Canada)*

    I applied for a job, did their screening process. And kept getting emails inviting me to apply. Ended up emailing them yesterday to ask them to remove my emails from their automated email system because I’d applied for the job but didn’t get a response from them, and had found a new job already.

  15. Not Always Right*

    I once knew a woman who would look for and put her hair strands in a baggie to take home to dispose of it. This wasn’t just at work, but every where she went. I once asked her why she did that. Her reply was to make sure none of her DNA was around just in case there was a murder or assault because she was afraid of the possibility that she would be arrested for said assault/murder. Turns out, she had a brain tumor and that was one of the ways it manifested itself.

    1. EPLawyer*

      I do wonder if the coworker in #1 has a compulsion of some kind. Not necessarily a brain tumor but something else. The donation is a just a cover story. Or not necessarily voodoo, but she doesn’t want any of her body bits out there. There are some people who are very strict about that.

      It is weird, but as a coworker, you don’t have any standing to say anything unless it is impacting your work.

  16. Madame Arcati*

    LW#2 I feel ya. I once found out, when I was just starting as let’s say a vet nurse at a baby bunny rescue sanctuary, that someone thought my reasoning for wanting to work there, which was largely to develop my experience in veterinary medicine, was wrong and it should be because I wanted to dedicate my soul to the cute ickle baby bunnies. I mean I wanted to help them I’m not a monster, but in her eyes I should have been devoting myself to the Cause and heaven forfend I should consider how the work would benefit me in any way…. Roll your eyes and move on; this is a job and you spend a lot of time doing it – so of course it needs to suit you!

  17. Trichotillomania anon*

    I have trichotillomania, an unfortunate anxiety coping mechanism. I’ve heard of others who collect the hair they pull or regular hairs that fall out to clean up, sort of covering the shame of doing this weird-ass thing in the first place. No clue if that’s what’s going on with LW #1’s coworker, and even if that were the reason it’s still not something to do at work, but it might help the LW reframe it.

    1. ecnaseener*

      Displaying it all on a wall hanging from your desk seems like the opposite of hiding it though? If she were too embarrassed to put it in the trash can I’d expect her to shove it in her pocket or something else out of sight.

      1. brjeau*

        I got the impression that the “side of her desk” wasn’t necessarily obvious to a passerby, considering that the LW only saw it when they went over there and looked more closely. And compulsive behaviors like hair pulling and resulting disposal/storage don’t always make rational sense.

        1. OP #1*

          OP here – The hair is on a side of her desk not readily visible. With that being said I’d forgotten she does this and moved on from thinking about it until very recently I had to fill in for her and use her desk. I and my other coworkers use her desk when she’s out, she encourages this as it’s significantly easier to do her job at her desk than ours. When opening her upper drawer I accidentally touched the hair because I’d forgotten it was there.

      2. brjeau*

        That said, in a work environment I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to ask her to store her hair out of sight entirely (others have suggested a baggie) regardless of her reason for doing it!

    2. Another Trich Anon*

      Fellow trichotillomania sufferer here. The anxiety & shame about the hair pulling is very real; to hide it, I’ve balled up the hair and put it in the trash, then placed other stuff in the bin on top so that no one can see & question it. I couldn’t imagine placing the hair anyplace someone else could see it, let alone taped to my desk….

  18. Onwards and Upwards*

    I think my comment got lost so please excuse if I’m double-posting.
    I wanted to say the hair collector’s actions could be a manifestation of extreme anxiety (perhaps amounting to even an more significant condition.) I know someone with actions similar to this and their everyday life is far, far more difficult than the average life. It makes me a bit worried, to be honest, to see it being characterised here as simply “weird”. People can be odd, but that can be a coping strategy in an extremely challenging life.

    1. OldAdmin*

      Well said. I also see the possibility of psychological well being as a factor here.
      Don’t want to belabor the term “mental health” – what if it’s just a misunderstanding on the collector’s part, or a soothing ritual to deal with pressure?

    2. Laika*

      For what it’s worth, a lot of my own anxiety manifests in ways that I *hope* people dismiss as “oh they’re just a bit weird”. I’m a pretty functional human being but only people close to me know how severe my anxiety actually is.

      Thinking someone is “simply weird”, when it’s associated with no other judgements/assumptions, is a grace many others have extended to me, and it’s one that I usually try to give to other people who behave in ways I don’t except or understand.

      2. Ellis Bell*

        Yeah it’s perilous to expect everyone to subscribe to exactly the same definitions of words, but weird is one of my favourites and to me, just means a little offbeat or someone who is working from a different perspective. I can definitely roll with the word; tone and context is everything though I suppose.

      3. JustaTech*

        To add on to your point: someone can have behaviors that are both a manifestation of a brain thing (mental health, neurodiversity, brain injury) *and also* just be a bit weird.
        I have a coworker who had a traumatic brain injury that caused a few non-standard behaviors on her part (she could have trouble swallowing, she got cold very easily), but also there were things that were just her (being super rigid about rules).
        For my part I just took it as a whole package because it really didn’t matter why she did a weird thing (unless that weird thing was an actual and genuine work issue, and then it did matter if it was something she had some control over or not).

        In this case it doesn’t really matter *why* LW1’s coworker is saving hair (donation, compulsion, fear of cursing), the end request would be the same “hey, can you put those out of sight please?”, and I would feel more weird about it if I assigned a diagnosis.

        1. Laika*

          Yes, exactly! Maybe I am just misreading Onwards and Upwards’ comment but to me it seemed to imply that a person acting “weird” should have a clear source, whether that’s due to personality or a mental health/neurological/medically-attributable concern. I agree it doesn’t really matter why they do the weird thing. It is just a thing they are doing. It’s relatively harmless even if a it’s bit squicky, but that becomes a different thing when it starts directly impacting other people (like how OP1 said they touched it by accident when covering at the desk…eek!). So imo it’s meaningless to try to figure why it’s happening. It’s only because it’s happening at work that it’s a “problem”, and even then it’s really only an issue if it’s affecting coworkers (or potentially Hair Collector’s reputation?), in which case the kindest way to approach it is just a straightforward and judgement-free “oops, this isn’t working for the folks who cover for you at your desk, do you mind relocating it?”

    3. BFRB*

      I have one of these body-focused repetitive behaviors, which include compulsive hair-pulling, compulsive skin-picking, nailbiting, and so on. They’re generally considered an OCD-spectrum problem, and are resistant to treatment/there aren’t good treatments for them.

      Most people who suffer from these conditions experience a great deal of shame around them, and don’t advertise their behaviors. Many go to pretty extreme lengths to hide them, in fact. Perhaps the hair-collector from that letter is doing this because of a compulsion, but I find it unlikely. And I still think it’s gross and weird to collect hair at work, even as a person who’s lived with a BFRB for 20+ years.

  19. Irish Teacher*

    LW2, my current job began as three week cover for a colleague doing a course, but the deputy principal told me right at the start that there were hours coming up for the rest of the year if things worked out and he specifically added that “it depends on you too. You might decide after a couple of weeks that it’s not for you.”

    I think your grandboss’s attitude was kind of weird and makes it seem like she wanted it to be a case of you really wanting the job and her holding your future in her hands. Like she wanted you to “prove yourself” to her.

  20. cncx*

    I’m from New Orleans and i was shaking my head “nooooooo” at #1

    as long as it’s her own hair and not her coworkers’ hair, i guess…

  21. OP - for saves hair*

    OP here for co-worker that saves hair. Wanted to post as there has been some great speculations as to the real reason for saving the hair. While my co-worker has some strange habits I do find her to be truthful so I take her word at face value that she saves it to donate. I don’t believe she can donate it from what I’ve read but I think the more likely scenario is my coworker can be pushy and so as a result there is a hairdresser out there taking her hair and then throwing it away after she leaves just to keep her happy.

    1. OP- saves hair*

      I should have read all the comments before posting. Looks like a reader knows for a fact that she can donate it by saving it in this fashion. Good to know! I still wish she wouldn’t tape it to the desk though, I like the idea of in a baggie in her purse.

    2. PsychNurse*

      Thanks for the update! But yes— It shouldn’t be taped to the desk!

      Even if there is a legit reason for saving it. The equivalent idea for me (I work in healthcare): Sometimes people have to do a 24-hour urine test. So each time they pee for a whole day, it goes into a big jug, which they later return to the lab. Maybe there’s nothing “gross” about this (urine is a clean substance, we all urinate, and the test is a medical procedure) but I still wouldn’t expect someone to keep the jug out in a public place. Right? They’d keep the jug somewhere that their coworkers can’t see it and don’t know it’s happening. Which is what hair-lady needs to do!

      1. o_gal*

        There is another equivalent situation that does happen fairly freqently in an office environment – pumping. Women who pump breastmilk almost always keep the product in a closed bag in the fridge. They usually don’t have the bottles or whatever is holding it right there out in the open. Although some do and then we get to hear the stories about food theft that did not go the way the thief planned it!

      2. Elizabeth West*

        How in hell would you keep a pee jug around secretly for 24 hours if you have to be at work? I am baffled by this (and fervently hope I never have to do it).

        2. KoiFeeder*

          There’s also a collection “hat,” assuming things haven’t been updated from the last time I had to do one of these tests. You might be able to hide the jug, but eight sterile hats ain’t easy to hide.

      4. WellRed*

        I’ve done the 24 hour thing. I did it on a weekend. Otherwise I would have taken the time off work. It involved more than a jug.

  22. Chereche*

    Two thoughts regarding LW # 1.

    1. She’s going to donate the hair to an organisation that uses hair for non-wig purposes, for example to clean up oil spills.

    2. She say that one video on TikTok of a woman who saved her hair strands like that for a year and ended up with several hair tracks that she could use as her own personally made hair extensions.

  23. Hiring Mgr*

    What’s the big deal about taping the hair? A little odd for sure, but certainly nothing OP needs to concern themselves with.

    1. londonedit*

      If she wants to save her own hair, fine, but I do think it’s gross to have a ‘wall of hair’ taped to her desk! And that might not be a 100% logical reaction, but human reactions often aren’t 100% logical, and I think a lot of people would have an ‘ewww’ reaction if they saw that a colleague had a load of old hair taped to their desk.

    2. This is Artemesia*

      I think it is the wall of hair taped to the desk — it is creepy to many including me. I wouldn’t like a small shrine of fingernail clippings on the corner of the desk either.

      2. L-squared*

        What makes in inappropriate? I’m being honest.

        Its not something I’d do, but that seems like an extreme reaction

    4. Falling Diphthong*

      Once the body part leaves the body, it becomes icky and we don’t want to touch it.

      As an example, if there’s hair in the drain when I shower at the pool after swimming I don’t touch it. I recognize that’s illogical, but the disgust portion of my brain is unimpressed by this logic, and will continue to emotionally tag things so I don’t expose myself to dangerous food, contaminants, or ideas. (Nod to Inside Out.)

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        (To clarify–other people’s hair in the shower drain triggers the don’t-touch reflex.)

    5. Risha*

      I was about to comment something similar to you. I tend to mind my own business at work so it wouldn’t bother me unless she was taping hair to my desk, or saving my hair, or anything that involves me.

      It’s a strange thing to do for sure, but it doesn’t seem like this coworker is making a huge event out of it. OP even said they looked at the desk when coworker wasn’t there. I’m not sure why it matters what coworker does at her own desk. I would be pissed if I found out that my colleague was snooping around my desk when I stepped away. OP, I would let it go unless she’s bothering you about your hair or encroaching on your space with her hair. We all have our weird quirks (I twirl my hair when I’m anxious) and at work it’s best to not concern ourselves with what others are doing if it’s not directly affecting us.

      1. OP #1*

        OP here – I had actually forgotten my co-worker does this and had moved on until just recently. My co-worker stores paperwork in the locked cabinets at her desk that me and my other co-workers need. We all regularly open several of her drawers to get paperwork she is ok with this, we would be bugging her frequently if we asked each time. Also, my co workers and I use her desk when she’s out. It significantly easier to do her job at her desk than ours and she encourages us to use her desk when she’s out. When I was filling I. The other day I opened her top drawer and accidentally touched the hair because I’d forgotten all about it. I’m not going to say anything to my boss about it I just wanted some other opinions and maybe some reassurance that it was ok to be uncomfortable with this.

        2. River Otter*

          Perfectly ok to be uncomfortable!

          Not at all ok to expect her to do anything differently. The absolute most you can ask of her is to move it a little so it doesn’t interfere with opening her drawers.

          Consider working on your own emotional management so that your coworkers quirks are not occupying so much of your attention. You say you forgot about it, but the second you remembered, you wrote into an advice column rather than managing your reaction.

          Try to researching the South Korean wig industry and Victorian hair Art. Understanding how other people view hair that is no longer attached to the scalp might help you be more accepting of the wide range of attitude that exist so that your coworkers habits do not cause you as much distress.

          1. Emmy Noether*

            I think this comment is unkind. People write to this site for all kinds of minor “is this as weird as I think?” moments. It doesn’t mean OP isn’t managing their reaction or that it’s occupying all of their attention.

    6. Ellis Bell*

      I would probably mind my own business too, but is it going to be an entry in my own personal human behaviour encyclopedia? Yep.

      1. Clisby*

        This is where I am. First, I don’t see anything gross about hair, so there’s that. Taping it to her desk seems weird to me, but I don’t know why that would be any of my business. I think the weird things humans do are kind of interesting. Now, if she works in some public-facing position where customers/clients are likely to see the tape-wall of hair, that’s different.

  24. Zap R.*

    The hair lady thing is weird. Full stop. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. It is absolutely bananapants and there are no mitigating circumstances that make it less bananapants.

    1. AnonyMouse*

      I can’t understand how people are justifying this as not totally and completely weird. She can collect donations however and for whatever she wants on her own time, but there is no way it’s appropriate for work.

      1. Hiring Mgr*

        It is weird, but it’s on someone else’s desk, not the OPs… It just doesn’t seem like it’s her business.

      2. Zap R.*

        I’ve seen people float anxiety and OCD as possible reasons and as someone who has those disorders to a serious and life-altering degree, I feel like I have some authority to say that neither are an excuse to tape your hair to your desk.

        There may be *reasons* that someone does things, but reasons are not excuses. Reasons don’t make things magically okay. Reasons provide us a framework for which to understand and sympathize with someone who is suffering; you can sympathize with someone who is behaving disruptively or unhygienically without condoning the behaviour. I don’t know what’s going on in this woman’s life that causes her to behave this way but taping your hair to your desk is objectively Not A Great Idea.

        As for the people who are like “Lol, it’s just hair. What’s the big deal?” Maybe consider that everyone has certain boundaries and that part of working in an office is being respectful of said boundaries? I wouldn’t hoard my own hair at my desk for the same reason I wouldn’t hoard used tissues or clip my nails: people might reasonably be squicked out and since they do not get to choose to share this space with me, I have to be respectful of that.

  25. L-squared*

    #1 This is honestly one of those things where I may silently judge the person as weird for, I can’t see really caring much about it. Unless I have to share the desk at times, its not my concern. I’m not sure what is so “gross” about it.

    1. Risha*

      I replied something similar to your comment. Why does it matter? OP was also snooping around this person’s desk when she stepped away, which is weird to me. OP wouldn’t have seen all the hair taped if they weren’t looking for it. If she isn’t bothering me directly, I would not care. I would probably laugh about it with my husband, privately at home, but then I would forget all about it.

      I’m not trying to be harsh on you OP, it’s just that I don’t see why it really matters. Let the woman tape hair. It doesn’t prevent you from sleeping at night or living your life. If she starts taping hair to your desk, then tell her to knock it off since it now is your problem.

      1. Clisby*

        +100.
        I would definitely be laughing about this with my husband, my children, and probably other people. Just like I would be laughing if someone had Hello Kitty decorations alll over their office. Neither would not *bother* me.

  26. Probably not popular*

    LW3. We post some jobs with huge salary ranges because we are open to anyone with our minimum requirements. It is engineering, we only have one position open and we add something like “depending on skills and experience to the add”. Bare minimum met gets offered the lower end. If their experience and skills are more senior, they will get offered the higher end. It is impossible to separate the ranges because people of all sorts apply and although we try to be a great place to work, we are small and not a giant corporate machine. If someone doesn’t like the range listed and the possibility that they don’t meet the qualifications for the higher range, they probably aren’t the person for us.

    We have had completely unqualified candidates ask for ridiculous salaries. We put the range because we don’t want to scare off anyone with more experience.

    It’s a shame you spent so much time to find the salary wasn’t what you needed but I think rather than hoping for the higher end, asking early on where you fell would have solved that.

    1. Anya Last Nerve*

      Agreed. I think what many people are missing is that a lot of people without special or extra skills/experience think they deserve the high end of the range and human nature is to feel slighted if you get the low end, even if your skills just meet the minimum criteria for the job. For jobs where salary will depend on multiple factors and it’s not a very set number, I don’t see any good answer.

    2. kiki*

      My company does something similar (small company, open to juniors but want more senior people to apply too). What’ we’ve found helpful is laying out what somebody on either end of the spectrum would look like. So if the range were $80k-140k, we’d have something in the posting like this:

      We’re looking for software engineers who will add to our team and know that can come from a wide range of experience and skills. For transparency, here are a couple sample profiles of what pay would look like:

      $80,000
      – self-taught or bootcamp grad
      – 6 months to 1.5 years of professional experience
      – primarily familiar with one language and one framework
      – can work independently, but still needs occasional guidance from more senior engineers

      $140,000
      – 5+ years of experience
      – experience with several languages and frameworks
      – has held a team leadership role
      – has been responsible for major architectural decisions
      – experience being the go-to technical person for a product with live users

      I think this is especially helpful for junior candidates. Junior candidates really don’t have much insight into what the company is probably thinking AND don’t want to leave any money on the table. And while it seems clear on our end that $125k for a junior engineer is a wild ask in our market, juniors just don’t have as much insight and figure they might as well shoot for the moon and land in the stars.

      1. Don't Call Me Shirley*

        And even with this detail, people don’t always assess their skills accurately. We do tech assessments to level people – someone with 10 years experience may or may not have the skills for the 10+ year category, either they can demonstrate the skills and knowledge or they can’t, of they can’t, we can’t have them mentoring juniors in skills they don’t have. If they want to work for us, we will have to place them in a lower category.

        Maybe they don’t think it’s fair, but I have found a wide range of skill demonstrated in people with identical resumes. Some dismiss the questions as academic stuff that shouldn’t matter more than experience, but we need people who understand these topics well in the senior positions.

      2. StrangeNewStar*

        While the breakdown is helpful I can’t think of a single company I’ve applied to that would offer a high end of a range. If I said I need at least x that’s the offer. It I say x-y it’s still x.

        My last change I refused to even give a range and I faired far better. “What are my skills and experience worth to you?” Did I upset teams of jobs I turned down? Or the HR department that wanted a number? In the end it honestly didn’t matter. For the comparison I work in software.

    3. Nanani*

      Why don’t you just post the range you actualy have budgeted and let the open room for experienced people be a pleasant surprise? Seems a lot easier than pretending you’ll pay more than you do.

  27. CheesePlease*

    little birds love hair to build their nests. I will sometimes take the hair I brush out and put it on our bushes outside. But even then, it’s not random strands that fall out at work. I think it’s an odd quirk but easily ignorable if nobody shares the office or hosts clients there etc

    1. PhyllisB*

      Yes!! When my girls were young, they used to clean out their hair brushes and throw it on the shrubbery. One year we found an abandoned bird nest lined with soft blonde hair.

    2. Em*

      Be careful with that — the Audobon Society specifically advises against offering birds human hair as a nesting material. From their page on “What Nesting Materials Are Safe For Birds”

      “Human hair: According to Gordon, human hair is a triple threat for birds: It’s long, thin, and strong. These characteristics can be a deadly combination, allowing the hair to easily ensnare a bird’s leg or wing and sever it. “You can wrap [hair] around your finger and cut your circulation off,” she says.”

      (I don’t normally yuck people’s yum, but if you are the type of person to care enough about birds’ wellbeing to provide them with nesting materials, I suspect you are the type of person to want to know.)

  28. I should really pick a name*

    LW3
    Is it possible that they would make a firm, but higher offer to someone with different qualifications?

  29. #3*

    I knew they were unlikely to make an offer at the very top of the range, but based on my experience and skills I hoped to get to $120. It’s good to know it’s ok to bring this up in the future, but in this particular case I don’t know when I could have – without making it a big deal. The process was two panel interviews, which were scheduled by a receptionist. I never had the chance to speak individually with the manager or an HR person until I received the offer.

    1. I should really pick a name*

      I agree it’s tricky to figure out when to ask about pay if they don’t bring it up themselves, but they might not have figured out where you fit in their range until they’d gotten the info from those two interviews.

    2. Eldritch Office Worker*

      In general I find ranges like that to be a yellow flag – not necessarily a deal breaker, but a proceed with caution.

      I don’t know that you had great options in this case, and I don’t blame you for taking the gamble. Alison is correct though that these conventions are changing. It will of course depend on your field, your area, and the company, but definitely don’t feel like you have to wait until the offer stage if you have an opening to insert a “by the way….” sometime in the initial conversations. As you note, it will save everyone a lot of time and hassle.

    3. Anonymous Educator*

      I think it’d be okay, without throwing $125k out there yourself, to even just ask something like “I noticed the salary range listed is quite broad. Can you talk a little bit about roughly how you’re determining how you’d offer a candidate the lower end of the range, the middle of the range, or the upper end of the range?”

        1. StrangeNewStar*

          I agree! If not in the first phone screen then definitely after the first technical round.

  30. Person from the Resume*

    LW#2: I think your attitude is perfect. Not entitled. Not everyone gets the interum opportunity to figure it out, though. And I’m trying to stretch my brain to make your grandboss’s statement less frustrating. I’m not really coming up with it. If they are not ready to commit to you, it’s fair that you’re not ready to commit to them. I feel that’s a two way street. I think he’s coming from they’re giving you a shot and if they think you work out, you should be grateful you even got the shot but that’s a gross characterization leaning into the power dynamic of companies usually having lots of applicants/choices and applicants having much less choices (but not no choices).

    1. EPLawyer*

      There is no less frustrating way to figure out Grand Boss. GB wants OP to be grateful they are deigning to give her a chance. She wants to be solely in charge of determining fit. OP should NOT be allowed to turn down this FABULOUS opportunity.

      GB is clearly from the loyalty is a one way street school of thinking. Along with a higher degree in be grateful you have a job at all.

    2. Weaponized Pumpkin*

      I do have one possibility that is still annoying but less of a power thing. My grandboss would not have been pleased either — not because she expects fealty and gratitude, but she’s an everybody-should-be-positive type who would want to hear my commitment and enthusiasm for the opportunity. Me saying I was trying it out would have seemed negative or not fully “in”. So I’d have had to say only the first half of the thought, that I’m excited to see where this goes, without vocalizing the second part that indicates I’m not sure it will.

  31. Lilo*

    I’ve covered a management role for someone who was out on a work project and then declined to apply for the full job. It was just too many hours. It’s perfectly fine to try out management and decide it is not for you. The idea that the trial is all one way is very strange.

  33. I don’t post often*

    Op1 I’m having a terrible day and your letter made me laugh out loud. Where DO these people come from?!?
    I have no advice. Just wanted to let you know your letter served as a good distraction for five minutes- which I needed.

  34. Parenthesis Dude*

    #3 – In general, that’s something you should ask the recruiter about before you get to interviews. There should be someone facilitating your interview, and they can answer your question or tell you that they don’t know.

    In some cases, they have a large scale because they give different salaries based on years of experience, education and locality pay. For example, I recently applied for one position with like a $60k salary range. I asked the recruiter about it, and she was telling me how they have a whole formula to determine a salary. She looked up the formula for that position, and a few seconds later told me she thought I’d probably get an offer for x salary give or take a few thousand. In that case, getting the top of the range wasn’t just about your skills, but also if you lived in San Francisco.

    In other cases, they don’t have enough salary bands. I worked at one place that combined extremely different positions in the same band. The idea was that everyone inside that band got similar bonuses, pto and other benefits but not necessarily the same salaries. So, some jobs in the same band would get higher pay than others and therefore they needed a large salary range to fit both bands in. This is definitely not ideal, but not much one can do about it. But there were some people in my job band that had been with the company forever and were working that job because they didn’t want to manage. Those people got the high end of the band, even though it wasn’t open to everyone.

    In other cases, it’s just because the company is a mess and don’t know what they’re going to offer. That sounds like your case. You just have to go through the process then.

    1. Anonymous Educator*

      In general, that’s something you should ask the recruiter about before you get to interviews.

      I work for a place that I love working at but that (infuriatingly) does not list the salary range in the job postings, but I’ve encouraged people applying to positions in our department to ask the recruiter about the salary in the first conversation, and the recruiter is amenable to it.

      So, yeah, even if the company policy isn’t to list “We will actually hire in this range, even though we listed whatever in the public job posting,” it’s okay to ask the recruiter about it in the first conversation (if you’re shy, ask toward the end of the conversation).

  35. One of the Spreadsheet Horde*

    LW4 – I had a former friend reach out to have me apply for a promotion to his organization a few years back. The interview was great but then he ghosted me as well and it wasn’t until 6 months later that I got an automated system rejection. I still don’t know what happened.

    I’m still a bit annoyed by that. But it probably also means that he wouldn’t have been the best person to work for anyway. If he couldn’t handle a slightly awkward conversation with grace, he probably couldn’t handle the tough conversations either.

  36. DogTrainer*

    #4 – I had this issue recently! I was invited to discuss whether a position at a place I currently work part-time at under the person I currently work for (but only see/interact with maybe once per year – ah, academia) would be a good fit.

    The person who had reached out to me asked me to send them my CV and my proposed salary range. I sent it to them and asked them to let me know if we were or were not still discussing based on this info. They simply never responded to me. I sent them two follow-up emails, and they just never responded.

    I still work there and have my contract to teach next semester, but my mind is totally blown about being ghosted by a place where I currently work by a person I currently work for. I almost can’t help but laugh at how bizarre human behavior is.

    1. DogTrainer*

      To be clear, this person and I actually had an entire 45-min phone call about the position, which is when they asked me to send my salary proposal and CV. They ghosted me after the email.

  37. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

    Speaking of ghosting, I just got a “sorry, we won’t be proceeding with your application” note for a job I applied for in September 2021.

    September.

    2021.

    Fortunately, I found a lovely new job in October of that year, but honestly.

    1. Relentlessly Socratic*

      Haha, I got a similarly “well-aged” rejection from Summer 2021, and I got it around the New Year, well after I had secured another position. At that point, why bother?

    2. Nanani*

      I had a place I applied to as a summer job (during my uni years) get back to me in september when the new semester was starting. They knew I was applying for seasonal work and this had been abundantly clear in all contact before that.

  38. MozziesMom*

    I actually think the hair collector comment is from someone I worked with! Or just an eeriely similar experience. I worked with a lady who did that same exact thing, and claimed she was collecting it for hair donation. She also grew her fingernails extremely long. At first I was really weirded out by it, but then I realized what a nice person she was and I just let it go.

  39. Bookworm*

    #4: My sympathies. Somewhat similar situation happened to me (applied for an internship, decided it wasn’t the right fit, was invited to apply for a job a few years later and then never heard back). Not quite the same as yours but still obnoxious all the same. I didn’t have deep ties to the organization (just that prior interview) but it’s really annoying when companies do this. Sorry that happened!!

  40. yuck*

    Hair collector is gross and unsanitary. She can wear a hair net if she wants to collect her hair and remove it at home. Yuck, if you were my employee and brought this to my attention the situation would be resolved the same day. No collecting hair in/on any office equipment or furniture or using office supplies to do so. Would someone storing nail clipping on their desk be allowed?!?!?.

  41. Nicki Name*

    #3 – I was once quoted a huge salary range for a job at the phone screen step, and the HR person doing the screening explained that it was because the company had offices all over the US and it depended in part on location. They were in the centralized HR office at company HQ and didn’t know what the range would be for my area. (This was pre-pandemic.)

  42. AnotherLibrarian*

    A woman I used to know had been a hair dresser in rural Louisiana and she had several regular clients who would not allow her to throw away their clipped hair. Instead, they would ask to take it with them. They told her that this was because of concerns about potential black magic. She opted not to pry much deeper. So, there maybe a sincerely held religious belief here; however, hair is also unsanitary and that’s a conflict that might get interesting. Either way, I am inclined to agree with the advice that as icky as this may feel, it is not your problem OP. Try to let it go.

  43. Lorraine*

    LW3 – it could also be due to geographic tiers. Our company has always been forthright about salaries (posting when possible, discussing during phone screens), but we’ve had a little trouble recently as we’ve moved away from posting some positions as tied to particular cities to being available anywhere in the entire state. Our salaries are determined in part by level and experience, but also in part by location (adjusted for cost of living). I just had my first hire like this, and the range I was given covered 5 possible salary tiers. It was so broad as to be useless for posting. I was upfront with candidates during my screening about how we approached salary, but it was very different from being able to say, we can offer $X. I did have to guess a bit about, ‘well if you’re in city A, our range is somewhere around this, and if you’re in town B, our range should be about that’.

Comments are closed.