getting called a Nazi at work, coworker didn’t tell me he was applying for a promotion, and more

by Alison Green on July 23, 2024

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

1. Getting called a Nazi at work

I work for local government in a region that is currently experiencing a drought. Part of my job involves working with people who break drought restrictions, with engagement ranging from education and outreach to levying fines or outright limiting their water. Sometimes people are not happy with this and call me a water Nazi. I am Jewish. I lost family in the Holocaust. This is an extremely homogenous population, many of whom have never met a Jew before. Can you help me come up with some responses that are professional but make it clear that this is not an okay thing to say? My managers fully support me pushing back and are willing to take calls if things escalate, but currently I just end up sputtering incoherently in rage.

I don’t think there’s a great response here. I mean, you could say “Nazis killed my family and that’s not an okay thing to say” … and some people might be chagrined, but others will just get defensive and escalate further. You could leave off the first part and just say “that’s not an okay thing to say” but lots of people won’t understand why or will think you’re being overly delicate.

But really, it’s an unacceptable thing to say to anyone, Jewish or not. So I’d argue you’re better off skipping the whole thing and moving straight to “I’m happy to work with you on this, but if you’re going to be abusive, I’ll need to disconnect this call.”

2. I’m in charge — how do I punish myself for a mistake?

I messed up. I’m the GM of a restaurant. There is no one above me. I constantly harp on my staff about responsibilities and paying attention to what they are doing. And I made a huge mistake.

I left a money bag out and stashed in a drawer. I went to fill in for someone who called in sick, and the opening supervisor forgot to load money in the drawers. So I hurried and loaded money in one drawer and made the change I needed. Because I had guests in front of me, I just quickly stashed the bags and didn’t put them back in the safe. Whelp, another supervisor found them and I had to fess up to the mistake. But how do I now create a punishment for myself so that they understand no one is above doing things the correct way?

As a manager, you shouldn’t be meting out punishments — that’s not the job. You should be ensuring people are well trained, coaching them when you see it’s needed, and holding people accountable for doing their jobs well. If an otherwise good employee did what you did, “punishing” them would be inappropriate. You’d talk to them, find out what happened, and talk about how to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future. If they seemed unconcerned or cavalier and you didn’t trust them not to do something similarly careless again, you’d address that part of it — generally through feedback and coaching — and if that didn’t solve it, you’d need to decide whether you could keep them in the job or not (which would be a natural consequence, not a punishment). Punishing really isn’t part of the job, at least not if you want to be a good manager.

If you’ve been managing via punishment up until now, you’re right to worry that you’ll seem to have a double standard for yourself. In that case, this should function as a humbling reminder that everyone is human and everyone makes mistakes. That doesn’t mean you should ignore mistakes! But your job is to talk with people when they happen and create systems that minimize/mitigate mistakes, not to punish.

3. My coworker didn’t tell me he was applying for a promotion in our sexist company

A long-time male acquaintance of mine, who I have known for 13 years, recently rejoined my industry after an eight-year hiatus and was swiftly promoted to the director of sales and marketing within just three months. Meanwhile, my male director was promoted to general manager. It has become apparent that my director has a preference for working with men, as he has openly expressed.

Despite my qualifications and proven track record of generating significant revenues for the company, I did not apply for the director position due to my aversion to male-dominated hierarchies.

I can’t help but feel that my friend should have checked in with me before pursuing the director position. I have been at the company longer and hold a senior sales manager title, he was hired at entry-level manager position, and I trained him. A simple conversation to gauge my thoughts or intentions would have been considerate and respectful. Instead, I feel as though he went behind our backs in an attempt to conceal his ambitions. This has left me feeling undervalued in the workplace. Should I be feeling this way or should I say something to him?

You should absolutely take issue with the fact that your new general manager says he prefers to work with men. That’s a declaration of intent to discriminate that gives you enough to talk with a lawyer if you ever wanted to go that route.

But your friend didn’t do anything wrong. He just applied for a job — one that you didn’t even apply for yourself! He may be merrily benefiting from a sexist system, but he didn’t really owe you a conversation before applying for the role. (That’s extra true if you are more acquaintances than friends; you used both words in your letter so I’m not sure which one is more accurate.) Lots of people don’t run their plans to apply for a promotion by friendly coworkers, and that’s not deceitful; it’s just that colleagues aren’t inherently entitled to that information. (There are some exceptions to that, like if you’d been open about applying yourself and he’d deliberately misled you about his own intentions in an attempt to gain an advantage or so forth.)

There are problems in your workplace, but your friend’s pursuit of the director job doesn’t sound like it should be near the top of that list.

4. References

I have two questions regarding being a reference. First is the “Is this person eligible for rehire?” question. I supervise student employees at a university, so as I complete their reference checks for their post-college full-time job, I am forced to answer “no” as technically they are not eligible for rehire once they graduate. I always try to add a comment if the form allows explaining why, but I’m wondering if this question is an automatic “no” for prospective employees, even if there is a comment explaining the logic behind the “no”. Should I be answering “yes” meaning “they parted on good terms” even if technically they cannot work a student employment position once they have graduated?

Second is something that I’ve started seeing, but I don’t know if it’s just one of higher ed’s many oddities. Some reference forms ask me if I would like to be contacted by the institution about future job openings at their institution. Is this just higher ed struggling to attract candidates? Is there any way I am hurting the applicant’s chances by saying yes? Would I be somehow unable to apply to work there in the future if I say no? It seems so strange to piggyback on someone else’s job search in this way.

You should answer that they’re eligible for re-hire. Because they would be if they returned as a student, right? Ideally you’d be able to explain, “We’d gladly hire them again if we could, but we only hire students.” But if you’re filling out a form and you’re forced to answer yes or no, answer in the spirit of what’s being asked, which is, “Is this person in good standing with you as a previous employee?”

Second question: It’s obnoxious for them to use a reference check to ask if they can spam you about job openings in the future, but that is what they are doing. Your answer won’t affect the applicant’s chances or your own in the future. No one is tracking your answer in a way that would reflect on anyone involved.

5. Who is on a “hiring team”?

I have a second interview with a “hiring team” and then the big boss. I’m trying to figure out who I might be talking to, or even how many, and realizing I’ve never seen a definition for “hiring team”!

This first interview was with people who would be more like my peers. When I hear “team,” I think of the people I’d be on a literal team with.

The hiring team is the group of people in charge of hiring for the job, whether than means making the final decision or just providing input. It will nearly always include the hiring manager (the person who would be your manager if you got the job) but from there it’s a crapshoot. The most likely options include would-be peers, others who would work closely with you, stakeholders from other departments, representatives of HR, and/or higher-level managers — but really, it could be anyone, just depending on how this particular organization handles hiring.

Related:
what does “hiring manager” mean and other work terms you might not know

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{ 407 comments }

{ 407 comments… read them below }

  1. Nodramalama*

    Oof yeah for lw1 unfortunately for some reason calling someone the “whatever” Nazi became a really common place saying and even a joke, like Seinfeld. Greys anatomy had a Black doctor with that as a nickname!

    I do feel like over time it’s been acknowledged that is wildly offensive – like Greys don’t use that nickname anymore, but I still hear people say it quite casually. I’m never sure what to do in those situations.

    1. Hiding From My Boss*

      I am an American of German descent, and I cringe at the way the word “nazi” gets tossed around, especially as an invective against people who need to be sticklers about rules, processes, or even their own preferences. I have been called a nazi because of my name, and I think it’s filthy.

      1. allathian*

        Yeah, “grammar Nazi” was a common one a few years ago, but it seems a lot less common now, which is good.

          1. KaciHall*

            I don’t know that the term has been replaced because we realize it’s bad to call people nazis.

            2. AL*

              I’ve noticed it’s colloquial/“joke” use decreasing with the rise in white supremacist groups & ideologies in the United States in the past 8-10 years, which includes people being more open about identifying ideologically with actual Nazis.

            3. Weaponized Pumpkin*

              As a data point of one, it is the reason why I switched to grammar police

          3. Half a Cupcake*

            I always like to tell people at work I’m not the Grammar Police, but I am the Grammar Paramedic. If you need me to come rescue your grammar, I’m there! But I’m not out here trying to catch people and punish them for their rule violations.

          1. mayflower*

            I’m not sure why you think that just because it’s a figure of speech it is now somehow completely detached from its other meanings. It doesn’t lose all offensiveness or inappropriateness just because you said the word “grammar” in front of it.

      2. NotARealManager*

        Yes. I am a blonde-haired, blue-eyed and of northern European ancestry (though most of my family has been in the US since before the civil war). I also speak and studied German and am often the person put in charge of the rules. This led to me, jokingly, being called a Nazi more than once in college. It was very insulting and I let people know, particularly because in the US it is sometimes thrown around in a joking way (a la Seinfeld), but if you study the German language and/or culture, you know that it is a far more serious offense.

        1. Unburdened by what has been*

          I have spent a lot of my career, at least until 2022, working in post-Soviet Russia.(I am American, with no Russian ancestry.) I have been called a communist, a spy (in both countries), etc. more times than I can count. Guess what: you suck it up and move on, or you don’t work in the field.

        2. not owen wilson*

          +1. I’m from a VERY Germanic part of the United States, and I’m also blonde haired/blue eyed/German speaking. I took the language for four years in high school and continued studying it in college — even my name sounds German. I wore Dr Martens into work one day and my coworker decided to tell me they were Nazi boots. When I went “they were invented in England” he googled it in front of me to PROVE they were invented by a Nazi. He sits three feet from me. We don’t talk very often anymore. I don’t wear my Docs anymore either, thanks to him.

          1. not owen wilson*

            And just to add- my family emigrated during the Weimar republic (1800s) due to military conscription laws. There are no Nazis in my family, except me apparently!

            1. Tierrainney*

              my German ancestors also emigrated around this time for the same reason. My Maternal grandfather’s name was Herman Goering. His family was in USA for several generations at that point, but not a good name to have.

              1. Madre del becchino*

                I recently learned that my birth surname (ending in -hart) originally was spelled -hardt, but the ‘d’ was dropped around WW1 to make it look less German.

            2. Polly Hedron*

              my family emigrated during the Weimar republic (1800s)

              The Weimar Republic was from 1918 to 1933.

    2. Miranda Bailey*

      I did like the way Grey’s Anatomy addressed it, though – rather than just quietly stopping the use of the nickname, they had an episode with a neo-nazi character and really just underscored why it was problematic (as well as outright saying ‘never call me that again’)

      1. i drink too much coffee*

        I was going to add this! When it was originally done, that was when the term was used so commonly. Doesn’t make it ok, but there’s context there. When that standard started to change, they directly addressed it. Literally a whole episode of why it’s so problematic. (Side note: George’s little speech to the neo-nazi is one of my favorite moments in the show ever).

      2. Rooby*

        Yeah that’s the thing, it really has become more problematic over time, because there wasn’t a prominent resurgent neon*zi movement when people were quoting the Seinfeld episode in the 90s. (Yes there were skinheads in some places, but not like today.) It was very much in the mode of, taking away their power to intimidate by making them a joke/punchline.

        In a post-2016 world, the context is very different.

    3. Sloanicota*

      This makes it tough, but I feel like OP would be justified in saying, seriously and unsmiling, “please never call me that.” They *don’t* need to provide these people any more ammunition by saying more. Then if for some reason the person says it again, send it up the pole. “I asked you to stop using that term. I’m going to send this to my manager now.” People can feel it’s a casual phrase but they can also danged well respond to a direct request to call people what they’ve asked to be called.

      1. Justme, The OG*

        I’m not even sure they need to say “please” when they tell people to not call them that.

      2. jasmine*

        I like this script a lot better than the given ones tbh

        Maybe it’s just my own experiences, but I don’t like when people use the word “abusive” nowadays as a synonym for “horrible”. It used to have a distinct meaning before it became a sort of colloquial term (though people often leverage it because they feel its not colloquial and they’re trying to introduce legitimacy to their point). And I don’t think its a helpful term to use if you’re worried about people being defensive

        “Never call me that” offers no explanations, no easy paths by which people can push the boundary, and makes the offense very clear.

        1. Unions Are Good, Actually*

          As someone who does client-facing work, often on the phones, “abuse” is a perfectly acceptable term to use in situations when a worker is being subjected to verbal abuse from a client. And that’s what it is: not just ~being horrible~. It’s verbal abuse. And I will call it out as such when faced with it at my place of work.

          1. jasmine*

            You put emphasis around “being horrible” as if to emphasize it as something that shouldn’t be taken seriously, which is kind of my point. People use the word abuse because simply saying someone is being awful to a human being isn’t “enough”. It sounds like the awfulness of the situation is exactly what you’re trying to draw attention to. Abusive is a specific type of really awful behavior but it is not the only one.

      3. Aerin*

        A lesson I learned this weekend from dealing with my alt-right stepmom-in-law: name the specific behavior and call it *rude*. They’re used to being called all kinds of things, but they’re also very used to thinking that their behavior is inherently Correct because they are the Right Kind of Person. When I told SMIL that her behavior (in that case, insistently misgendering a relative) was extremely [redacted] rude, she basically blue-screened on me.

        So, “Calling me that is extremely rude.” Just a flat statement of fact. Don’t get into why, that just gets them back on familiar turf. If they try to justify based on their thoughts or feelings or whatever, “That part is not my concern. Such behavior is not permitted in this forum.” The important part is not to convey any kind of anger that they can feed on. You are Stern Parent who is Coldly Unamused.

        1. STAT!*

          Good analysis of the thought process behind such obnoxious behaviour. Good approach to managing it too.

      4. DE*

        These are people already in conflict with OP. I don’t think they’re going to listen to her.

    4. SheLooksFamiliar*

      ‘…for some reason calling someone the “whatever” Nazi became a really common place saying and even a joke, like Seinfeld.’

      This is so true. Whenever a term or catchphrase becomes part of the cultural zeitgeist, I think people assume it’s harmless. Maybe they think, ‘Hey, the network wouldn’t have let Seinfeld use the term ‘Soup Nazi’ if it was offensive, right?’ or ‘No one meant that guy is a literal Nazi, don’t take it that way.’ Then there’s the timeless comment, ‘It was just a joke, don’t be so sensitive.’ But some terms are so negative as to be an invective, even if that’s not the intention of the user. Those terms should be called out whenever possible.

      Also: I admit I used to use Grammar Nazi, mostly to describe myself, but use Grammar Enthusiast now.

      1. Ally McBeal*

        There’s also the fact that Jerry Seinfeld is Jewish. There’s a big difference between a Jewish person making a joke about Nazis and almost literally anyone else making a joke about Nazis.

        (I also switched from Grammar Nazi to Grammar Enthusiast!)

        1. NottheBoomer*

          Ally- no – there is still no difference. Its horrific and wrong. Seinfeld was created in a different world then where we are now- back when folks still used other racial epithets for comedic value- which we now know is off the mark.
          I am Jewish and would take HUGE offense to anyone using the term “XX Nazi”. And yeah, I would say something which was probably not the most professional, but office decorum really doesn’t matter when you are dealing with someone who is that uneducated. A simple ” Do not use that word/saying directed at me please’ is probably all I could muster.

          1. Ms. Murchison*

            I think there’s room for recognizing that different Jewish people cope with our history in different ways and still acting in a circumspect manner and assuming the person you’re speaking to will find it offensive. We are not a monolith all holding the same opinions. An Evangelical Christian once told me that Messianics are the best kind of Jews. Of the six other Jews I told about it, five agreed with me that the statement was anti-Semitic and one just found it tactless.

          2. SpaceySteph*

            Another Jew here, although not descendant of Holocaust survivors (instead I come from pogrom victims who were driven out of Russia a couple decades before world war II)…

            I think lots of Jews historically and contemporarily use humor to handle their generational trauma and I hesitate to say they shouldn’t be allowed to do that. Of course, its still acceptable for you or me or OP to as not to be called a __ Nazi by even a descendant of a survivor.

            I do think it was a great disservice Seinfeld did to our culture by introducing the Soup Nazi because it has entered the lexicon and stopped being an in-joke.

        2. Fluff*

          I did think Jerry really missed on that episode.

          German, Jewish = me. Folks from all aspects in my background. Some Nazis, some fighters, etc. I hate it because simple use of it misses the political, beliefs, crimes of the actual Nazi.

        3. Yes Anastasia*

          Eh, not all Jewish/Jewish-descended people have Holocaust survivors in our family, so I don’t think we all get a pass. I fall into this category, and the only time I tell Nazi/Holocaust jokes are if the punchline is “actual Nazis suck.”

          1. Unions Are Good, Actually*

            Lots of Jews have non-survivors (that is, victims) in our families but never knew, interestingly. I thought my family was essentially untouched by the Shoah, but after doing some genealogical research, I now know that dozens of family members were murdered. This isn’t an argument for anyone “getting a pass” – in fact sort of the opposite, since many of us are more closely connected than we even know.

      2. Miss Muffet*

        Also, Seinfeld (as a show) is like, pretty old now. It ended 25ish years ago! So something could well have been “more accepted” back then that totally isn’t (for all the good reasons) now.

    5. jmc*

      I agree it’s a terrible thing to say, and I don’t THINK I’ve used it without thinking. I might have though. But can we please stop with the “it’s not ok” thing like people are toddlers? Just flat out say it’s rude and unacceptable, say it like it is.

      1. just some guy*

        “It’s not okay” is not a toddler-restricted expression. It can be used for all ages.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        I don’t spend my life expecting people to drop a slur into the conversation. Calling it out in the moment–even in imperfect language–is much more important than saying it in exactly the right way.

        Also, I think there’s a big difference between “rude” and “not okay”. Calling someone an asshole: rude. Calling someone a racial slur: that is not okay to say.

    6. Heffalump*

      OP1 could justifiably say, “You have only yourself to blame for breaking water restrictions,” but I don’t imagine the people they’re talking to would like that either.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        I once tried to figure out how one could even reconcile those two completely incompatible belief systems, which is obviously more thought than the people who used the term ever put into it.

    8. Beebis*

      I worked customer service at a bank during the pandemic and someone called my gen x African American coworker that over the phone before hanging up on him. He thought it was hilarious but people really will just throw it out at really weird times without caring how well it fits the person or the situation

  2. Brain the Brian*

    LW5: where I work, we have small departments (mostly 2-5 people), and a whole department is usually involved in one interview as part of selecting a new employee. In our case, “the hiring team” literally means “the team / department hiring someone new.” YMMV, of course.

    1. Putting the "pro" in "procrastinate"*

      LW5, you can ask your contact at the company, “Who is on the hiring team?” It’s not unreasonable to want to know who you’re meeting with so you can prepare. I know I would not be alarmed by a candidate asking that question — in fact, I often offer it up when describing the hiring process. I once had feedback from a new hire that she never knew who she was talking to during the hiring process and found it frustrating. I took that feedback to heart!

  3. Artemesia*

    You never say someone is not eligible for rehire if there is some technical reason why not. It is telling the reference checker that this person is a poor employee or dishonest employee. That is the question. To use a technical rule, like it is a student job so they can’t be hired if they graduate is to damage their chances of employment for no reason.

    1. Non non non all the way home*

      Yes, this question bothered me because I’m pretty sure a technicality like this kept me from being able to receive a major financial gift given to Canadian Ph.D. students. I was the top applicant from my major university with a 4.0 GPA (back when that was the maximum GPA possible) plus #1 in the country across multiple other measures. When I received the rejection letter saying only the top 23% of applicants were accepted I knew some wires had been crossed somewhere. I ended up pursuing another opportunity so didn’t appeal at the time.

        1. grumpy*

          yes. some uni’s have 4.0=A and 4.3=A+

          we already had a number scale out of a hundred, I don’t know why a second number scale out of 4 is needed.

      2. Ultimate Facepalm*

        Yes, how many people got screwed out of a job for no good reason because of putting ‘no’ on that form. That must be incredibly frustrating. I hope some people that the OP answered ‘no’ for were able to explain the situation. (facepalm)

    2. RCB*

      Exactly! The question is terribly worded because they are asking “Did you get rid of this person for cause?” but that’s not what is being asked, and literal people will have trouble with that.

      1. takeachip*

        It’s a very standard question and OP acknowledges that they understand the intent of asking it, because they try to explain the logic behind their “no” when they can. So they are knowingly choosing to give an answer that is technically correct to them, based on how they interpret the terms “eligible” and “rehire,” instead of an answer that serves the purpose of the question. The fault is not in the wording of the question.

        One reason the question is asked this way is that many employers will give only minimal, completely factual references (job title, dates of employment) and “is this person eligible for rehire” can be among one of the few questions that they will answer–because some employers have very strict policies about when someone can be designated as ineligible for rehire and this information goes into their official personnel file, making their ineligibility a simple fact. Asking if someone was terminated for cause wouldn’t suffice because employees can leave for other reasons (such as resigning before they are fired, or agreeing to a negotiated settlement).

        1. Despachito*

          I do think the fault is in the question, for the very same reason OP mentioned.

          If it is SUPPOSED to mean “was that person someone you would be willing to work with again” why beat around the bush and ask ambiguous questions instead? I am sure OP is not the only person struggling with the true meaning of the question.

        2. Falling Diphthong*

          I think there’s a lot of overlap in literal people and truthful people. People who reflexively tell the truth can get mired in badly worded questions.

          1. Emily Byrd Starr*

            True. Then there are people like me. I’m literal because I’m neurodivergent. I also work in a university and I am grateful for this question and answer, so that I will answer appropriately if I am asked to do a reference for a student.

          2. Slow Gin Lizz*

            Yes, like me! I was filling out a form recently where the question was “Would you like X before or after Y?” and the choices were yes/no. I had no idea what to do. (Luckily my answer didn’t really matter because I can easily change my mind later.)

          3. GreenShoes*

            But it’s not a badly worded question. Bob the student worker is eligible for rehire at the university. Just not as a student worker.

            1. MassMatt*

              IMO that you and the LW, who seems reasonable and wishing their students well, interpret the question so differently shows there is a problem with the question. Or at least, the specifics of this type of employment don’t fit it very well.

            2. Hannah*

              GreenShoes – I would have said the same back before I married an incredibly literal person who is fully committed to 1) following the instructions and 2) being truthful. I could see my husband bringing me the exact dilemma the LW has here because they see the problem, they just don’t see the way through that.
              Since there is a group of people out there who would struggle with the question, it is badly worded. It’s really no different than checking a graphic for color blindness – if you want everybody to give you accurate information, you have to present it in a way that everybody is on the same page as to what you are asking.

            3. ThatOtherClare*

              So then the question should be “Is [applicant’s name] eligible for rehire at any role in your organisation?”. Or something similar.

              When there’s this much argument about whether the question is confusing or not, it’s poorly worded.

            4. rebelwithmouseyhair*

              Actually the only thing preventing them from being rehired is that they have graduated. If they go back to study something else, they could well be rehired.

          4. Rooby*

            Taking things overly literally has nothing to do with how truthful you are. In fact, in some ways, it’s less truthful to choose one specific interpretation of the words asked of you, that you know doesn’t fit the context, when you know what’s really being asked. You’re choosing your commitment to disingenuously ignore the context of the conversation over actually communicating the right answer.

            You know that what’s being asked is: is this person eligible for rehire as a student, having not done anything worthy of dismissal? They’ve just dropped some of the wording.

            If you’re in a clothes store and the worker asks you “Did you find everything you needed?” You know full well that the rest of that question is, did you find everything you needed within the context of purchasing clothes from our store. If you reply with, “No,” because although you found all the clothes you wanted, you also feel like you need to find romance in your life, and you haven’t found that yet, that’s not “more honest” than saying “yes”.

            You don’t get a trophy for shrugging off the work of putting conversation in context. It’s like the other person is trying to dance with you and you’re flopping around like a ragdoll.

            1. Rooby*

              (obviously, this answer would be different if you genuinely didn’t understand that the question was asking something different than what it looks like. But that’s not the case here.)

            2. All Het Up About It*

              See – I always thought the question was “is this person eligible for rehire AT YOUR COMPANY?” Not necessarily for the same role. The OP is taking it to mean is the person eligible for rehire in the exact same role that you supervised them as and I don’t think that’s what the question is asking, as many have pointed out.

              Hopefully reframing will help the OP change their answers so they aren’t possibly harming job prospects for good employees. I

              1. Laura LL*

                Yeah, this is exactly how I’ve interpreted it (I’ve never had to answer the question).

        3. Beany*

          The fault is absolutely in the wording of the question.

          OP may be wrong to take it literally when they know the intention behind it, but that doesn’t make the question any better. If you want to ask “would your company rehire this individual if they could?”, that’s the question you should ask.

          1. Observer*

            But the actual question is not *would* you rehire them, but would the person be *considered* for hiring, ie eligible, if they fit all of the other criteria.

            The reality is that generally when a company marks someone as “not eligible to rehire” they do NOT mean “to be rehired in *this* position” but in the company (or division) as a whole. Like “we will not even evaluate their resume to see if they are a match.”

            1. ThatOtherClare*

              Exactly. What the question is actually asking is “Have you blacklisted [applicant’s name]?”.

              They’re simply using politically correct corporate-speak to ask it so that they don’t get in trouble, and so that they get honest answers because the answering company isn’t concerned about getting into trouble.

          2. Antilles*

            The fault may be the wording of the question, but OP answering no isn’t doing anything to change that. The company isn’t going to reword their question, change their process, or alter their standard list of default questions.

            The *only* outcome of OP’s practice of saying the Technically Correct “no” is hurting their former students. Just play the game and answer yes.

          3. takeachip*

            The term “eligible for rehire” has meaning in the employment field and is defined by policy at many institutions of higher education (and other organizations). OP has interpreted the question inappropriately, but that isn’t the fault of the question itself. There’s no way to word any question to completely prevent people from misinterpreting or inventing their own definitions for terms that have a commonly accepted meaning. If OP was unsure of how to answer, they could have asked a higher authority at their institution for guidance. Because “eligible for rehire” is a question of fact and may be defined by policy at OP’s institution, it is possible that students for whom OP supplied the factually incorrect answer could make a claim against OP/the institution if they knew they had been denied employment because of this false information that was given. Unlikely to happen, but that is how potentially serious this matter is.

            If a reference asked me, “How long did this employee work for your organization?” the intent is to ask for the amount of time they were employed by the company. That seems pretty clear, right? But let’s say that I want to take an overly literal interpretation–I could say to myself, well, they weren’t technically “working” during the times that they were out sick or on vacation, so I will deduct that time from my answer. And then I reply, “2 years and 9 months” instead of “3 years” because in my mind, if they wanted to know how long the person was employed, they should have used that word instead of “work.” And if my answer doesn’t line up with what the person put on their application, oh well, what can I possibly do about that? After all, they asked me how long the person worked for us and I was forced to be truthful and not say they had worked when they hadn’t.

            My point is that it’s not up to the person asking for information to get inside my head and imagine all the ways I could possibly interpret something, and figure out a line of questioning to try to prevent that. It’s up to me to use common sense, understand norms, and seek guidance or clarity where needed to ensure that I am providing the correct information that does not harm someone.

      2. Adam*

        Well, they don’t want to just ask that because lots of bad employees leave before they’re fired. The way I’ve been asked it recently is “Would you work with this person again?” which seems like it captures the essence properly, but I think in the US especially a lot of people would be uncomfortable answering no to that question.

        1. I don't work in this van*

          That’s not really the question though in most cases. As takeachip explained, it’s a much more technical definition. I may not want to work with someone again, but unless they were fired for cause, they’d probably be eligible to be rehired by my company. “Would you work with this person again” is quite subjective and opens the door for bias and a whole host of problems.

          1. Humble Schoolmarm*

            Agreed, I’m thinking of my least liked colleague who was argumentative, slowed down staff meetings by debating everything and flatly refused to uphold school rules in her classes (extending a staff meeting and being the subject of “but Mx __ lets me!” are cardinal sins to middle school teachers). I would absolutely not work with that person again if I could help it, but does that make her a bad teacher who shouldn’t get a job elsewhere? Not necessarily.

      3. Binky*

        OP understood that marking no could negatively impact students. No matter how literal they are, why didn’t they consult anyone to make sure they were answering correctly? Eligibility for rehire probably doesn’t lie with OP, so they’re not even answering from actual knowledge.

    3. learnedthehardway*

      Agreed – answer in the spirit of the question – ie. “IF they were eligible for rehire, would you want to rehire the person?”

      It’s completely understood that you are highly unlikely to actually rehire the person – in any context. The question is “Would you if you could?”

      If they left on good terms and were a good employee, the answer is “YES”!!

      1. ecnaseener*

        I think even that framing is slightly off from what the question is asking — the answer to “are they eligible for rehire” is still yes even if the person was just okay at their job and you wouldn’t really want to work with them again. If there’s not a note in their personnel file saying “do not rehire,” they’re eligible for rehire.

      2. ThatOtherClare*

        That’s close but still not quite it. What the question is really asking is: “Has the applicant been blacklisted by your company?”.

        (Or, technically, it’s asking “Has the applicant not been blacklisted by your company?”, but I didn’t want to confuse people by writing out the negation first.)

    4. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

      People at an old company I worked at got caught out by this. The company’s policy was that if you had quit, they wouldn’t consider you for employment again in the future. So most of the leavers, who had just left for a mundane reason like a better opportunity for growth elsewhere – were “ineligible for rehire” when asked about for a reference. This company also had all references go through HR, individual managers/colleagues if asked for a reference had to redirect the request to HR.

      1. I'm great at doing stuff*

        Seriously? I assume if you were fired you wouldn’t be eligible either. So you were only eligible for rehire if you were laid off or Mothra destroyed the building? That is just a new level of bonkertown.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          Agreed, that one is really weird. What if you quit to go back to school for awhile and then wanted to work there again? Or moved away b/c your spouse got a job elsewhere and then you moved back after a few years? What an odd policy.

      2. ChemistryChick*

        My previous place of employment was like this, too. Didn’t matter why you left, they Did Not Rehire, period.

    5. JM60*

      I interpret it to mean, “Are they eligible to be rehired anywhere in the institution, not necessarily rehired for their former job in particular. I think saying “yes” to this question could likely make it seen like they were let go due to bad conduct, and that the institution no longer trusts them.

      1. JM60*

        I meant:

        ‘I think saying “no” to this question” could likely make it seen like they were let go due to bad conduct’.

      2. Snow Globe*

        I agree. The LW might not be able to rehire them into the same student job, but presumably if there was a full-time permanent position open, the person would be eligible, right?

      3. ecnaseener*

        Exactly. Rehire doesn’t have to mean hired back to the exact same position, it means any position at the same employer.

      4. Beka Cooper*

        That’s how I would interpret it too. In the college admissions department I worked in, it was also fairly common for them to create a pathway to hire student tour guides as admissions counselors once they graduated. I know a few people in other types of positions that have been working there since they were student workers as well, including the lead in my position who now supervises all the student employees. They’re not getting hired into the exact same position, but the unique skills they learned as a student employee make them a good candidate for the full-time positions when they open up.

      5. Daisy-dog*

        Agree – it’s not asking if they would be rehired under identical circumstances. For instance, a company may close all operations in a particular state and have no intention of returning to that state (even for remote work). An employee lost their job because they cannot leave that state due to family obligations. Based on these facts, this employee is not literally eligible for rehire. But any number of things can change over time that may mean that they can work together again.

    6. Lab Boss*

      My company actually has two designations for when someone leaves: “Eligible for re-hire” and “Regrettable departure.” The first one is strictly for internal reasons and covers all the technicalities for why we might not be willing/able to re-hire someone, regardless of how good they are. The second is how we’d handle references, which is basically “is it a shame they aren’t here any more?” That covers things like student employees who can’t work post-grad, people who got a better job but we liked while they were here, people who moved away, all that sort of thing.

    7. Also-ADHD*

      I was really shocked by that LW not realizing… eligible to rehire is bad phrasing, but I thought this was common knowledge. I wonder how many other Higher Ed references are getting messed up if it’s misconstrued in that setting. We technically wouldn’t “rehire” interns where I am (as interns—they can only come through once—though I guess they might get hired into other roles) but it would never occur to me the question was about their eligibility on areas like that.

      1. Eldritch Ofice Worker*

        Academia/higher ed tends to be very literal. There’s reasons for this, one big one being that if you receive outside funding you can’t be lying on any official forms for fear of losing it. Another reason is definitely less literacy in “corporate speak”.

        Really reference checkers and anyone else communicating outside their company need to be more mindful that common knowledge isn’t always common and stop speaking in codes.

        1. Also-ADHD*

          Others have noted though that even if literal, there’s no reason the student is not rehireable in ANY potential role EVER within the institution, so even if literal, I think it’s maybe a leap, though I understand good people can get confused. But the question usually isn’t about the exact role.

      2. Dorothey Zpornak*

        The issue is — student workers are not eligible for rehire once they are no longer students. Student employment positions are subject to different legal restrictions (max hours, minimum wage, funding sources, etc), and so would not be legal to offer to non-students. If a student graduates, they are not eligible for rehire for. AND WHEN THEY GRADUATE, WE HAVE TO PUT “NOT ELIGIBLE FOR REHIRE” ON THEIR TERMINATION PAPERWORK. This is required so they do not have eligibility for unemployment when their student employment ends — it has nothing to do with performance. So it puts you in a weird bind to have to answer “yes — eligible for rehire” when you have marked “no — not eligible for rehire” on their paperwork, and that is what HR has on file.

    8. Person from the Resume*

      Some people are literal and answer the question being asked. It’s a bad question because it’s trying to get at something different (were they fired for cause or let go for poor performance?).

      I agree the person being asked probably need to read between the lines, but let’s blame the question asker for not being clear. It’s not like every single business uses a database that has a checkbox with “eligible for rehire” for former employees, but this is being treated like it has a defined meaning which it does not.

      1. JustaTech*

        I’ve gotten caught up on this question on an application where it was “are you eligible for re-hire at this previous position” and the literal answer was “no”, because that company had closed, but I took it to mean, if the company was still around/ before they closed, would they have considered me if I applied again, in which case “yes”.

    9. Ana Gram*

      I worked in background investigations for a decade and we certainly never held it against an applicant if the answer was “no” but with a reason. They graduated, they retired, the company doesn’t rehire anyone- if there was a reasonable explanation for the refusal to rehire, there was no issue on our end.

      Of course, any time the answer was “no”, we worked to find out why. We didn’t just let the “no” stand on its own.

    10. Seven If You Count Bad John*

      This happened to me. It took months of being turned down for jobs (even temp agencies refused to use me and refused to say why because “confidentiality”, which sucked because it didn’t let me provide any explanation for “someone said something negative about you” (that was literally what they said) that would have helped mitigate the problem.) Months and months of being stressed and scared and broke not knowing what was wrong. I finally figured it out and stopped using that particular reference (I spoke with a different manager who told me to use her instead) and got hired right away. I’m still pissed about it fifteen years later.

    11. Rooby*

      Yeah choosing the “well technically!” answer is probably really hurting those students’ careers! You know what the question is asking, so give the answer for that context! No one is giving out prizes for being more literal than you need to be.

  4. Certaintroublemaker*

    LW4, I’ve also been in the position of being a reference for student workers. I answer the question of whether they would be eligible for rehire as Yes. They could come back as a grad student, or they could apply for an FTE staff position in our department. I read it as “hired again in your organization,” not “hired for the exact same position.”

    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      The issue here is that the OP is thinking about a standard question like it is a customised question. It’s the same question for every reference they check – they’re not going to change it just because someone was a student employee.

      1. ecnaseener*

        Sure, but even thinking of it as a standardized question, Certaintroublemaker has the framing right. It’s asking if the person is eligible to be hired back at your employer, not specifically back to their same position — so you can still answer yes if their position was eliminated, or they were an intern, or their professional license expired, or the qualifications for their old position have changed and they would no longer qualify for it, etc etc etc.

        1. ferrina*

          Exactly this. Certaintroublemaker is right on– It’s about whether this person would be an automatic no, not whether they would be an automatic yes. And it’s at an organization-wide level, not localized. It doesn’t mean you’d definitely give them a job, it’s whether you’d consider them for the job (and not automatically toss their application in the trash)

  5. K-Chai*

    LW4— Just adding commiseration, I’ve run into this before, and definitely took it literally as in “no, because they’ve graduated” before I realized I should be checking “yes” for the reasons Alison explains. I think luckily though, it was always a reference via email (where I could explain) or in a couple instances, paper forms where I forced a written explanation next to it.

    (A lesser peeve is reference checks that want me to mark things from a list of attributes without giving me a “N/A” or “not observed” option. Sorry, job that heavily involves working with children and asks about that, I’m sure my former student worker would be absolutely fantastic for other reasons I’ll note, but in this environment there’s literally no one under the age of 18 to interact with.)

    1. Other Alice*

      Regarding your last paragraph, I would answer positively. I wouldn’t like it, because it’s not an accurate answer, but my reasoning is that answering negatively may impact the former employee’s chances of getting the job. It’s not their fault that the reference check is asking flawed questions, so yes, Jane was good at working with children in our manufacturing plant with heavy equipment! If I got the chance to follow up I would absolutely clarify but I’d hate for anyone to be caught out by a poorly thought questionnaire.

      1. K-Chai*

        Luckily on the occasions it’s happened, I’ve had either a comment section or had the direct email of the person asking (rather than a generic or noreply address) so I’ve always been very clear about “I think they’d be great for X reasons but that is a situation that never comes up in this environment.” And some of these forms allow you to just skip those, which also makes it easier because you don’t have to actually decide between a yes/no continuum.

        But I also try to save a copy (/PDF screenshot if it was an online form) of every reference I fill out so I have a record, and because when it’s possible/wouldn’t make things awkward, I like to send the student a copy of what I’m saying about them so we’re all on the same page (and because it feels great to know that your former/current boss says positive things about you).

    2. Sloanicota*

      It’s awful that employees are so beholden to references that a misunderstanding like this could have caused the OP to basically ruin the prospects of so many students. I feel like a good number of people don’t follow up to ask questions about automated-type references.

    3. Mo*

      In my university there are three passing marks for graduate students and they don’t correspond to the usual letter grading system. One professor was known for being an exceptionally demanding grader because no one had heard of him giving out anything other than the middle mark. It turns out he had spent a DECADE thinking that was the highest mark. Oops.

      1. NotBatman*

        An academic saying I love: Teachers need to be more willing to give out failing grades… but for that to happen, the world first needs to become more willing to forgive failing grades.

        Everyone shaking their head and decrying grade inflation has a point, but the entire world at this point is set up so that you can’t just be “good” but must be “above average” or “perfect” in *everything* in order to get a job.

  6. Kella*

    OP1: I don’t know if this is the right response, but I think what I would want to say is, “Setting aside the inappropriateness of that comment, [name of area] water regulations are listed clearly and publically [insert locations], you are given [insert any leeway or opportunities for forgiveness or appeal that apply] before [consequences that occur], and like any law/regulation/rule, it needs to be enforced when it isn’t followed. You have violated [list infractions], you have not opted to [list alternatives]. So, how will you be [redirect conversation to plan for addressing consequences].”

    And then fill in/adjust the language to be accurate to your specific details. Basically, I’d want to re-establish the fairness and clarity of the rules and reinforce the idea that enforcing rules is not the same as violent fascism.

    1. Snarky McSnarkson*

      This is a wonderful reply. I’m wondering, though, if a Jewish person who has just been called a water Nazi (or really any other person) would have the presence of mind to state it so clearly. The OP says they end up sputtering at the inappropriateness. Maybe OP can type this up to have on hand?

      1. Ally McBeal*

        It’s also such a technical response that people who are already mad enough to start throwing out insults like “Water Nazi” are almost certainly going to tune OP right out.

        1. ferrina*

          Some people aren’t going to listen no matter what OP says. This script is so OP can CYA and reach the people that are open to listening. It’s also a form of grey-rocking. The people that are looking to get a rise out of OP will be disappointed when OP simply recites the facts.

      2. Kella*

        Yup, I’d write it up and rehearse it, or potentially convert it into questions to slow down the yelling person and give OP time to think. “Do you know where the regulations are listed? So you know that [regulations] are publically available in [location]. Were you given [insert leeway]? So you have turned down the opportunity for flexibility we gave you. Are you aware that the penalty for breaking [regulation] is [consequence]? Then it follows that just like any rule, it needs to be enforced when it isn’t followed.” If the answer is no to any of them, you switch into education mode.

    2. Emily Byrd Starr*

      “reinforce the idea that enforcing rules is not the same as violent fascism.”

      Something that antivaxxers need to be told!

    3. MCMonkeyBean*

      That is a very thoughtful response, but if things have already escalated to the name calling stage it seems unlikely they’d let you get through all that without interruption.

      1. MsM*

        Which is where Alison’s “I am trying to work with you here, but if you’re just going to yell and call names, we can go ahead and end the call” script comes in.

      2. Kella*

        It’s certainly true that in a call where someone is already yelling and name-calling, they’re unlikely to listen to you but that also means that *anything* OP says in response is likely to be ignored and certainly any pushback of any kind is likely to escalate. I’m assuming that OP has tools for moving a conversation past yelling and insults and back to problem-solving, and this script is for when that opening shows itself.

  7. Heidi*

    So did LW3 expect the friend/acquaintance to ask if she was applying for the director position on the premise that he could only apply if she passed on it? I’m wondering what she would have done if he had done that.

    1. Chauncy Gardener*

      I don’t understand why the OP didn’t apply. And then is upset that her coworker applied?
      Frankly, it sounds like a totally toxic workplace and OP is getting her norms twisted up by having to operate in that environment. Flee, OP! Go forth and remember that living well is the best revenge!

      1. Also-ADHD*

        I understand why she didn’t apply—she feels the discrimination barrier is too high. I’ve been there and it can be exhausting. Sometimes it’s not worth the mental health toll. I don’t understand why the ire is directed at the friend, but I get why she didn’t apply, and why it sucks because it was more about a discriminatory environment than her actual career goals.

        1. Turquoisecow*

          I think this is a classic case of misdirected anger. It comes up a lot here where the OP is angry at some minor nothing when they should be angry about a bigger issue. OP should, and maybe is angry about the sexism in her workplace, but she can’t do anything about it, presumably being mad at the bosses for passing her over for promotions, but not able or willing to express her frustration TO the bosses. (And maybe angry with herself for not applying even though she seems certain she wouldn’t have been hired.)And maybe just angry at the unjustness of the world. But her friend is a much safer person to be angry at.

          2. Chauncy Gardener*

            Yes, I see that for sure!
            I still think she needs to leave though. It just sounds like the price is too high to stay.

            1. Turquoisecow*

              Yeah if she wants to advance I think she needs to go elsewhere for sure. It seems like she does but doesn’t want to do it here, so she’s just going to keep feeling resentful about not being comfortable being promoted.

          3. MsM*

            Yeah, I feel like maybe there’s also a sense that he should know better than to want to work more closely with the guy. But maybe he doesn’t know, and LW has a chance to encourage him to try and bring more equity to the department in his new role. Or maybe he does and doesn’t care, in which case it’s sad that he’s not the guy LW hoped he was, but an advance conversation clearly wouldn’t have done any good and she just needs to get out of there.

            1. L-squared*

              Even if he does know, I don’t think that means he is some bad guy. It means he is doing what’s best for his career. Its very possible that holding his nose and working for this guy for 2 years will open many more doors for him in the long run. That is a smart thing to do. She shouldn’t expect him to not advance his career in some kind of silent solidarity for her, when it doesn’t seem she is making any attempt to not work with this guy anymore either.

          5. WantonSeedStitch*

            This was exactly my thought. I hope the OP realizes that so she can take action that will result in being happier where she works (i.e., leaving and finding another role elsewhere).

        2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          The only way to change all male hierarchies is through non-males getting into higher positions. But I get not everyone wants to be the first.

          But, then you don’t get to be upset that someone else applied for a position you didn’t apply for. Someone was getting that job, whether internally or externally. It doesn’t matter if you have more experience, better qualified, whatever, they applied, you didn’t. No they don’t owe you a conversation first.

          Would you have discussed your plans with your coworker first? If you wouldn’t don’t expect the same of them.

          1. B*

            Right. There are three reasonable options here. Try to advance in the organization and change it; accept that you’re not going to advance; or quit.

            Expecting your acquaintances to sabotage their own careers to — what? Show solidarity with your vaguely expressed strike against the patriarchy? — is really not reasonable.

          2. T.*

            This! It’s not his fault you thought applying was a waste of your time. 3 options: You can choose to break the glass ceiling or you can choose to suck it up or choose to leave. Your reaction here may be exactly why he didn’t tell you. You’re judging him! Maybe he thinks if he gets promoted he can advocate for hiring more women. Someone has to be an ally because the likelihood of a woman being able to champion herself sounds unlikely in that role. Good luck!

            1. MigraineMonth*

              You can choose to *try* to break the glass ceiling. You may end up with a lot of bruises and fail to do so, or you might succeed and end up with a lot of cuts. Neither are a lot of fun, and you may or may not achieve any lasting change.

    2. SheLooksFamiliar*

      I think she did expect him to ask, she said, ‘A simple conversation to gauge my thoughts or intentions would have been considerate and respectful.’ And I also wonder what she would have done if had, because she also said, ‘Despite my qualifications and proven track record of generating significant revenues for the company, I did not apply for the director position due to my aversion to male-dominated hierarchies.’

      I think OP is upset with this fellow because he’s it’s easier to be angry with one person than her boss and the work environment itself…or to be angry at herself for continuing to work in it.

      1. Bossy*

        Yes this is classic and typical – people putting up with toxic bs in an area of their lives lashing out inappropriately at others yet never saying a word to the person/ppl who they allow to treat them poorly. Misdirected anger is so real.

      2. Observer*

        I think she did expect him to ask, she said, ‘A simple conversation to gauge my thoughts or intentions would have been considerate and respectful.’

        Yes, she clearly did have the expectation. And it’s a ridiculous expectation. There is simply no reason he should be thinking about her thoughts on the position.

        And I also wonder what she would have done if had,

        Yeah, that’s a really good question. Like, even if he did feel like he owed her something (though I can’t imagine what), what exactly would she have done? What “thoughts” would she have that would bear any relevance to his decision?

    3. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      Now would also be a good opportunity for OP to talk to friend/acquaintance about whether he can do anything to thwart the boss’ discriminatory behavior.

    4. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

      On a little further thought, I think the LW thinks that IF she had applied for the job, the co-worker should have declined to apply for the job knowing that the sexism would give him an unfair advantage when she was clearly much better qualified.

        1. Eldritch Ofice Worker*

          Agreed. I understand why the overall situation is frustrating to OP, and agree some of what they’re describing is actionable – but putting that aside, there’s some entitlement shining through here. You can’t control the career opportunities other people take and you are not owed information about their intentions.

          Hell I’ve had close friends at companies not tell me they were going for promotions simply because they were nervous or unsure and didn’t want to make it too public. It’s private information people can handle however they want.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          I’m not sure if it is unfair to ask a coworker to bow out of a contest that they would only win due to prejudice. If I found out a much more qualified coworker of color was applying for the same promotion as me but I was likely to get it just due to racism, I hope that I’d bow out.

      2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        Sure if she had applied, she would have every right to feel miffed. Especially if he got the job over her. But she chose not to apply. Now she is miffed that coworker didn’t read her mind as to the reasons she wasn’t applying and decline to apply himself.

      3. Silver Robin*

        Yeah, I am wondering if there is a feeling of a missed chance at solidarity here. Not immediately clear what that was specifically supposed to look like, but I get the sense that LW might feel like a friend had joined who would (should?) see what she saw about the sexism and then went ahead and benefitted from the sexism without acknowledging what was happening.

        Maybe (maybe!!) something like: if she had not specifically made it known that she was *not* applying, then he should have assumed she was, due to previously stated qualifications and tenure. And/or, going for a promotion a few months in is pretty ambitious even without the sexism, so it would make sense for him to check in with his acquaintance/friend who has more tenure and experience about the merits of applying. Instead, he skipped over talking to her. This does two things. 1) Not seeking her advice in a situation where it would be natural could feel like he does not value her perspective and experience; in an already sexist culture that can have an extra sting to it. He was supposed to be one of the not sexist jerks kind of thing. 2) A conversation would have given LW an opportunity to go into why she was not applying and the issues at play. Friend and LW can then potentially talk about how to coordinate pushback or some form of support for her, or even just a chance to vent to somebody who can see what she sees and is emotionally “on her side”.

        But the conversation did not happen and the vague swirls of what could/should have been turn into even more frustration. Add in some misdirected anger, and I think I can see where this is coming from.

  8. RCB*

    OP 1: I need to disagree with Alison, but only because the world is not perfect. Because the word Nazi is used so cavalierly, at least here in the U.S., people don’t really think anything is off by using it, and thus would just think you are awkward for saying they had something offensive or inappropriate and/or threatened to end the call, I legitimately think they’d be completely floored about what just happened. Because of that I think your context IS important, even though it does mean you have to “trauma dump” on them in a way, and it’s not fair to you to have to relive that, but I think it’s the only way that people will fully understand just how hurtful it can be. I think even a simple “as someone who lost family members in the Holocaust I need to ask you not to use that word around me or directed at me” response will be effective, get your point across, but also not come off like a jerk. For the most part people aren’t saying it to be mean, so if you have this less confrontational way of making it known that they can’t say that around you then it’s a win-win for everyone that avoids some awkwardness.

    For what it’s worth, I now understand just how much I throw that word around too, and while there is unfortunately adequate and appropriate political utility for the word right now that I hope is short-lived, the more casual way it’s often used is definitely not appropriate, and I never stopped to fully think that through, and will make sure I am better about that in the future. I am sorry you are dealing with this, and I am sorry that I was ever part of that thoughtlessness.

    1. Awkwardness*

      I disagree. While one could choose to add a personal dimension when discussing this with friends (think of a situation where they cannot understand being upset over certain words), it is not recommendable to make yourself more vulnerable than absolutely necessary in a work context because some people/customers/co-workers/clients absolutely do want to hurt you if they do not get it their way.
      And in this case historical facts do the talking and show the inappropriateness. LW does not need to add personal context.

      1. ferrina*

        Exactly this. Some of these people are looking to hurt OP or try to get a big reaction out of OP. While some people may be embarrassed, others would take it as an invitation to personally attack OP. I think the best action is for OP to disengage, not personalize it.

    2. r..*

      To be blunt, fuck that.

      I assume you have had at least a basic history education in high school, hence you know that the word stands for a party that engineered one of the largest mass murders in human history.

      If you normalize that by cavalierly using that word, even though you could have known, and arguably *should* have known, then all the consequences are entirely on you. The rest of the world has no obligation to cuddle your ignorance.

        1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

          I don’t understand the point of this comment. Hogan’s Heroes is completely irrelevant to this discussion, because 1) it was made in the 1960s, almost 60 years ago, when a lot of social norms were drastically different from today’s, and 2) it was set in a German POW camp run by ACTUAL Nazis.

          If you were trying to get a real point across, please try to state it less cryptically. Otherwise, thanks for playing.

      2. BikeWalkBarb*

        “The rest of the world has no obligation to cuddle your ignorance.” is an absolute gem.

    3. bamcheeks*

      I legitimately think they’d be completely floored about what just happened

      I don’t really think that’s LW’s problem! If I were LW, my goal here would be to get myself out of an abusive situation, either by drawing a boundary with the customer that they can’t use that language, or terminating the call / appointment. They can figure out why they can’t go around calling peoples Nazis on their own time.

      Sharing personal background risks giving the customer MORE ammunition for abuse. Whilst it’s nice to think that everyone would be chastened by realising they’ve just called a descendant of Holocaust victims a Nazi, there are also many people who’d just change tack and move onto deliberately antisemitic abuse. It’s horrendously high-risk for no benefit to LW.

      1. littlehope*

        Oh yeah, telling people that you’re Jewish will make a whole lot of them go harder on the Nazi stuff. It’s sweet to think that would make them stop and feel bad, but…no.

      2. Yellow rainbow*

        If this is a common occurrence, and LW responds by ending the call/conversation “because the customer abused them” – I could see problems arising when groups of people, possibly with demographic similarities*, are hung up on with claims of abuse. I’m not sure if a higher level review would support that sort of response as a first action. Customer facing staff should not be abused, but when you have an enforcement role learning to diffuse tense situations is a key work skill. Remember, LW might be taking enforcement actions, or threatening actions, that have an enormous impact on the person (at least where I am they fine people into homelessness for minor offences) – these are likely going to be unhappy, upset and stressed people. There’sa good chance they don’t really understand the rules they’ve been told their breaking.

        I think it’s important to consider the intent of the comment, and it likely is a complaint about rules – not a genuine accusation of being basically a mass murderer. If LW responds as if they’ve just threatened her, or hurled intentionally racist insults her way – it’s going to escalate tensions.

        A simple calm response – personal history not required – that using the term nazi is offensive and they’ll need you to not use that language is all that’s needed. If the person then starts using it to deliberately offend – that’s when you trigger the abusive language is not tolerated options.

        1. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

          The intent of the comment is to personally attack the LW. That’s not ok. There is no benign intent of verbally attacking someone. They can express their dismay in ways that are not personal (how can you do this? This is America!–just as misguided but not personally attacking the LW).

        2. OP1*

          OP1 here, to clarify. No one is remotely facing homelessness due to this. We have tons of diversion programs to avoid fines and even when levied they tend to be in the $50-250 range and can be paid in payment plans lasting up to two years. I would definitely agree that they are a population that doesn’t understand the rules, which is why we lean towards warnings and education for first and second time offenders. Preemptive outreach is 50% of my job while enforcement is closer to 10%.

          I really appreciate all of the commenter’s responses! Seeing different ways I can word things and discussion on how customers might take them is very helpful.

    4. Yes Anastasia*

      I disagree with one of your points – in most cases, calling people Nazis to their faces in a public service context is an intentional act of hostility. I agree that people who make jokes about “grammar Nazis” in a social context might be surprised by pushback, but anyone using that word to address a service provider is likely being intentionally abusive, even if they don’t understand the full impact of that word – it’s a pretty unhinged escalation to be name-calling. So I think Alison’s script is fine.

    5. Thinking*

      Sorry, but no.
      1. Where does that leave non-Jews who object to the word? Stop it or else is all that is needed.
      2. “Since it’s used so freely” isn’t the right test. In my childhood, the N word was used freely by some people around me. In public. Out loud. When speaking directly to a melanin-enhanced person. As a melanin-deficient person, was I supposed to wait until the world changed before objecting? Then how would it change?
      3. Praise for your reflection and changing your behavior because of learning from the post.

      1. Lab Boss*

        I’m a white Catholic who has been called both the n-word (with a hard r) and a Nazi (I was the one from a few posts back who got complained about for “goose stepping” because I was pacing off distances). In both instances I made it clear how absolutely unacceptable it was to call me those names in anger, regardless of any personal connection they had (or didn’t have) to me.

        1. ferrina*

          It really depends on the situation. When I’m in a personal situation, I will absolutely have a conversation about the inappropriateness. It’s usually accompanied by a lecture in history and politics (I’ve found that people are much more discerning about what they say around me when they know resulting to slurs will turn me into a professor). I also have family that was on both sides- a German that fought for Germany (not sure whether he was technically a Nazi- he conveniently never talked about politics) and Jews who fled Europe to escape the pogroms (they left right as Hitler was taking over). People have no idea what to do with that.

          But when I’m at work, it’s a different matter. I don’t share personal information with an aggressive member of the public for my own safety. At that point I’m just trying to deescalate or grey-rock until they calm down and/or my manager arrives.

      2. Darth Smiles*

        Is it me or do “melanin-enhanced” and “melanin-deficient” seem like one of those examples of something being so “enlightened” that it actually comes right back around to being racist??? Like, you could have just said Black person or POC.

        2. SnackAttack*

          Yeah agreed. I’ve literally never seen those descriptions used by any POC lol.

            1. Weaponized Pumpkin*

              Agreed! It’s all over social. Melanin enhanced, melanin poppin, melanated beauty…

            2. Zeus*

              I thought that sort of language was to avoid content filters, rather than because people think it’s a kinder or more appropriate word? Like “unalive”.

          2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

            I’ve heard black women talking about their melanin-rich community so…

        3. AL*

          Eh, I don’t see that. It doesn’t really smack of “enlightened PC-ness” in the way that many other terms (like Latinx particularly) do. To me, at least, it speaks (in a fairly joking way) only to what someone’s skin color is, vs the cultural connotations that come with “Black” “POC” “White” etc.

          1. Thinking*

            This. I prefer to turn my privilege on its head by noticing that the thing that’s praised is actually not all that great in the natural world.
            I didn’t know it was a thing on Tik Tok, but I love that those sisters are claiming their beauty.

        4. MigraineMonth*

          Nah, “melinated” is slang used in the community (though melanin-deficient is new to me).

    6. I should really pick a name*

      These people are responding to an official that they’re annoyed with.
      They are most likely being offensive intentionally.
      If they’re floored by getting pushback, that’s a good thing.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        And it sounds like they have failed to comply with water restrictions during a drought and then responded to sanctions by…insulting those implementing them. That doesn’t make me think these are people likely to be reasonable. Reasonable people would either follow the rules or accept the sanctions in the first place.

        1. Observer*

          That doesn’t make me think these are people likely to be reasonable.

          Very true. And there is nothing to say that these folks are not also actively racist or bigoted. Which means that there is a significant chance that providing a backstory would *encourage* further use of the word, or other slurs.

      2. Genevieve*

        Yeah, this. I can get plenty angry with people in positions of power/people I’m interacting with as part of their jobs *without* resorting to name-calling of any kind. These people are choosing to escalate. OP gets to shut them down, and their emotional response is not OP’s problem. Especially since her bosses have said they will support her!

    7. ecnaseener*

      Just to clarify a little, you seem to be thinking of this as if the word Nazi is itself offensive, like a swear word or slur. That’s not the issue. Nazis existed and exist, that is the correct word for them and we definitely shouldn’t act like it’s taboo to mention their existence. The issue is with drawing false equivalencies that imply Nazi just means “someone who’s too strict” or “someone who polices people’s behavior” or etc. We don’t want the world to forget what Nazis are or what they did and still want to do.

      1. Never the Twain*

        This is so true, and people often forget that an equal sign works in both directions.
        So if you deliberately exaggerate to say ‘Trying to tell me how to use my water supply is the sort of thing the Nazis used to do’, you are implicitly also saying ‘Josef Goebbels was as bad as someone who tells people not to waste water’. Which misses several points.

        1. Silver Robin*

          Yes, thank you! For some reason it was always hard to crystalize that in my head (not that I had a lot of people making those false equivalences anyway, fortunately).

      2. Lily Rowan*

        Yes, that’s exactly it. (And, I would have thought, why so many people have moved away from using the word lightly in recent years.)

      4. MigraineMonth*

        Such a good point. It isn’t “rude” or a “slur” to point out how similar the goals of White Christian Nationalists are to those of historical Nazis.

    8. Escapee from Corporate Management*

      Please, no. Instead of saying we’ve dumbed down horror so that “Nazi” is a common word, let’s work to make it what it should be: a sign of horror. But if you’re okay with making it common, ask yourself what words that bother you–if said about you–should also become common. It’s different when the shoe is on the other foot, huh?

    9. PayRaven*

      Plenty of people DO realize it’s not something to be used cavalierly and that it IS deeply offensive, and we don’t have to be delicate with the feelings of those who don’t.

      2. RCB*

        You’ve just made my point. Plenty of people do, but that also means plenty of people DON’T. And those people who DON’T are either using it because they are jerks, or because they don’t know better, and those who just don’t know better won’t get better if we don’t try to correct them. The whole “everyone’s not perfect so why try” stance is defeatist and just misses the point entirely of not going straight to the nuclear option. In most cases (not just with this situation, most situations) we should assume that people are ignorant, not malicious, so we use it as a learning opportunity. After that if they still do it then they are being malicious, and it’s a totally different scenario, but to go directly to “this person is saying something that a lot of us have said casually throughout our lives but now realize is offensive but they haven’t gotten the memo yet but it doesn’t matter because they are evil” does no one any good.

        When I was growing up the R word was used freely, to mean “stupid”, but by the time I became an adult we realized how hurtful that was and most people stopped using it. One of my colleagues, who was the same age as me, kept using the word at work because it was just reflex for her (she has 2 masters degrees in international relations related fields, before anyone tries to insinuate that this is a problem with low-educated, less worldly people) and she had no idea she was doing it. If I followed most of the advice here I’d have reported her to HR and gotten her fired, but instead I had a quiet, private talk with her, explained that I understand why it’s a reflex for her because it was something we grew up with, but it’s not acceptable to say anymore, and she stopped doing it immediately and I never heard her say it again. It was that simple.

        I know we’re all burnt out seeing a large chunk of the country not act in good faith, but let’s not add to it, let’s be the bigger people AT FIRST and give people a chance to be better, and then if they don’t then we can act like fools too, but let’s try to be decent first, seems like the least we can do.

        1. PayRaven*

          Saying “That isn’t acceptable” and following it up with action isn’t indecent, and it’s a little weird to act like it is.

        2. Eldritch Office Worker*

          I think you’re getting overly defensive because you think this is an attack on something you do (r word wasn’t acceptable in the 80s or 90s either for the record and plenty of us have been saying so the whole time). Just telling someone something isn’t cool isn’t aggressive and you’re convoluting the conversation way more than is necessary.

        3. Katara's side braids*

          Your relationship with your colleague is vastly different than the relationship between OP and the customer. You’re reading a lot into a suggestion to politely and professionally offer an opportunity to deescalate and end the call if that’s unsuccessful. It doesn’t mean the customer is “evil” or beyond redemption, or incapable of learning/doing better. A customer service setting simply is not a safe or appropriate venue for the kind of self-disclosure/emotional labor you’re suggesting. Not to mention the issues with your “it’s not fair, but you have an obligation to dig up your trauma to show this person how bad it was” framing. I honestly don’t even know where to begin with that.

          The kind of comment/conversation you’re suggesting is appropriate for people we already have some level of established trust and/or community with (for example, your colleague, that one uncle at Thanksgiving, a neighbor). Being overshared to by a public works representative after calling them a N*zi is not going to be the impetus for self-reflection that you envision – again, not because they’re inherently evil or irredeemable, but because a) they’re already emotionally activated and on the defensive, and b) the person they’re speaking to is a faceless representative of a government agency, not a peer.

        4. Statler von Waldorf*

          No, PayRaven didn’t make your point RCB. You seem to believe that we are morally obligated to educate people who throw out slurs out of some sense of taking the high road. I don’t, and I think anyone who does is effectively carrying water for fascists.

          Tolerance isn’t a moral virtue. It’s a peace treaty. I firmly believe that if you tolerate intolerance you are not a moral person, you are simply a coward who is afraid of confrontation.

          1. BikeWalkBarb*

            Not for LW1’s situation or the word “Nazi” but a more general question: How is taking one shot at informing/educating someone who uses a slur “effectively carrying water for fascists”? As opposed to “standing up for this value I hold by giving you information you may or may not have about a particular term”? That’s quite a sweeping generalization. You’ve created a dichotomy where one doesn’t need to exist.

            As one example I regularly comment in a variety of formats and settings that use of the word “lame” is ableist and recommend that people come up with another way of saying “ineffective” or “insufficient” or “not enough for what needs to happen here” or “not very good”, which is usually what they’re seeking to convey. If they haven’t been paying attention to their own sloppy usage or the discussions about ableist language this can legitimately be new information they can then act on. And by speaking up I’m stepping into the potential for confrontation, not fearing and avoiding it. I’m simply doing so in a way that makes room for them to grow, if they’re going to.

            If they double down I don’t tolerate it. But if I don’t start from the belief that people actually can and do change I’m living in a pretty dark world where I may as well not say anything, ever. Too nihilistic for me.

            1. Statler von Waldorf*

              Because as Sartre put it, “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”

              By trying to “educate” them, you’re just playing their game. I sincerely believe you are doing it with the best on intentions, but that doesn’t change a thing.

              And just to be clear, I am not saying that everyone who throws out slurs is a fascist. But when the specific slur is to call people Nazi’s .. well, there sure is a lot of overlap on that Venn diagram.

            2. Wow*

              That is not what Statler von Waldorf said. They said that RCB seems to “to believe that we are morally obligated to educate people who throw out slurs out of some sense of taking the high road.” I agree with them.

              If you (or RCB) want to expend your efforts on “educating” people on ableism or anti-Semitism or whatever other ism is coming up – feel free. The problem and the “carrying water for fascists” lies in the expectation that the OP or anyone else *should* be doing that in all cases and at all times.

              It is 20fucking204. I am sick and tired of the expectation that I “teach” men to stop being sexist. That I “teach” straight people to stop being homophobic. That I “teach” white people to stop being racist. That I “teach” TABs to stop being ableist, etc, etc, etc. These people don’t need educating. They need shunning and deplatforming and silencing.

              I’m sure you’ll claim that I’m “dark” and “nihilistic”. To that I say, look around. And stop being naive.

    10. Hyaline*

      I also can’t imagine anyone throwing any insult out there without already being belligerent and abusive. Like—can you imagine someone calmly calling someone from public works a Nazi?! Nope. So they should not be shocked at all when the LW says “I will mot tolerate abusive language” or whatever terms they choose—the conversation is no longer polite or professional regardless. LW can choose to essentially educate these people on the inappropriateness of the term, but they’re not obligated.

      1. Frieda*

        Someone I volunteer with (ie, I didn’t choose this guy and have no authority over him) casually referred to the police as “the Gestapo” in a context where he was telling a story that was explicitly racist. He’s not anti-police. He’s aggressively pro-white people. And yet, there we were! I think some people honestly just choose to be oblivious about the language they use.

      2. OP1*

        OP1 here – They can be surprisingly casual about it. Some are intending to attack me but others seem to just have it as part of their everyday vocabulary as a synonym for strict.

        Thank you for your thoughts! It is very helpful seeing how others would approach this.

    12. Eldritch Ofice Worker*

      There are plenty parts of the US/segments of the US where this is not common, and “that’s the way it is” isn’t any kind of excuse that should change how OP handles the situation. They are not obligated to trauma dump or otherwise put themselves out on a limb, and people without that personal context can also correct this kind of language when they hear it. We do not need to put this kind of onus on people who are already dealing with marginalization to put a spotlight on themselves in order to make a point.

    13. Harrowhark*

      Welp, now I can add “Defending the use of the word ‘Nazi’ as an insult” to my list of Things I Thought I’d Never See on AAM.

      This part of your comment is so amazingly wrong that it’s astonishing: “For the most part people aren’t saying it to be mean…”

      Holy wow.

      The people saying it to the OP are saying it *explicitly* to be mean! They are angry and are taking it out on the OP. They are grabbing for a convenient insult and their worldview is such that they think *this particular* insult fits perfectly.

      The only people who should be called Nazis are actual Nazis and anyone who agrees with their political and social agenda.

  9. WS*

    LW3 – I think it’s really common for people experiencing discrimination to get angry about people close to their own level while accepting the bigger system at work because they feel powerless to change it. Being mad at your coworker benefitting from the unfairness feels like a safe target; being mad at your boss for causing the unfairness in the first place is too much to deal with. But this is an opportunity to assess why you’re still there, knowing that this won’t change without major upheaval and stress to you.

    2. Lab Boss*

      I think it’s also easier to feel like you should be able to rely on your friends. OP experienced an unpleasant situation, a friend was involved, [insert subconscious logic jump], friend should have helped prevent the unpleasantness. Beyond just being a safe target as you say, I think our deep-down primate brains just assign “friendly = helps me” to people we’re close to, and then if they don’t help with some incident (even if it’s not reasonable, or possible, that they could have) we instinctively take that as a personal betrayal.

      1. Ally McBeal*

        What unpleasant situation, though? LW just says she declined to apply because she loathes male hierarchical situations. She was completely outside the hiring/promotion cycle she detests. Nothing happened TO her.

        1. Lab Boss*

          She is in a job with management who openly prefers to work with/promote men. That’s still an unpleasant situation to be in, even if nothing was directed at her, and even if she voluntarily chose not to apply for a position. There doesn’t have to be a totally logical cause-and-effect relationship for human instinct to kick in under stress.

        2. Also-ADHD*

          The discriminatory environment was what made her not want to apply—the friend is the wrong person to be mad at but something did happen to her regarding this, she just decided not to engage further but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t damaging and it doesn’t suck she felt she couldn’t apply due to discrimination.

  10. Lorikeet*

    LW1 – best answer in my experience is to politely inform the caller that off they persist in being abusive you will terminate the call, then simply do it. They’ve no right to your personal information, especially information like that.

    While I have never been called a Nazi, I have been told that I caused someone’s cancer and made a different person bankrupt through my actions. I’m a town planner, it comes with the territory, sigh.

    1. HonorBox*

      I think you’re right. Whether the customer is calling the LW a Nazi or another four-letter (or adjacent) word, simply stating that continued use of abusive language will terminate the call, the customer’s interaction with the LW needs to be professional. No one deserves to be subjected to abusive language, especially in a situation in which the person delivering that garbage is in the wrong in the first place.

    2. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      I agree this is the only response. Trying to educate them just gets into a back and forth and prolongs the situation.

    3. DE*

      This sounds like a situation where OP is calling them to levy fines. They WANT the call to end.

  11. Myrin*

    #3, I have to admit that I don’t really understand what the perceived problem is with your friends behaviour.

    You say “This has left me feeling undervalued in the workplace. Should I be feeling this way […]?”, to which I say – yes, you absolutely should, but not because of what you’re referring to here! I’m astonished that the fact that a friend and coworker applied for a big promotion made you feel undervalued but apparently the fact that your boss openly favours male employees didn’t!

    As I’m writing this, it occurs to me that maybe you meant it in the sense that you got the feeling your friend in particular undervalues you? In which case, I can understand that a liiittle more – in the sense that you thought, having been colleagues and also work friends for such a long time, he would value what you have to say about this position/the company as a whole – but also not really, to be honest.

    It sounds like you’re taking this very personally – you say “Instead, I feel as though he went behind our backs in an attempt to conceal his ambitions.”, when, objectively speaking, he simply didn’t tell you something. It’s possible that there’s more to the situation but as it stands, I don’t see why he would be actively and intentionally hiding his application in the first place instead of just, for example, simply never thinking about it when he talked to you.

    Like Alison says, it sounds like your company has much, much bigger problems than an old friend and coworker not telling you about an aspiring promotion, and I feel like that’s where you should be directing your annoyance and anger.

    1. learnedthehardway*

      Agreed – the coworker IN NO WAY owed a colleague notice that he was applying for a job. That was none of the OP’s business. Nobody owes it to a team member to inform them that they are thinking of applying to another role. It’s kind of baffling that the person feels offended that they weren’t informed.

      Now, if the OP decided not to apply because they knew they were going to be discriminated against illegally – well, it’s understandable that they were demoralized. But that’s something to take up with the company leadership or HR or the labour board in your area.

    2. Green great dragon*

      Yeh, I don’t share the ins and outs of what I apply for with friends or colleagues. In most cases most applicants won’t get the job, and I don’t need anyone trying to be sympathetic or offering pity. It’s really normal.

    3. a clockwork lemon*

      LW has also given a pretty good argument in favor of the coworker NOT telling her. Coworker (friend or not) is doing what he feels is best for his career. LW doesn’t say that he’s not qualified or give any tenure-based reason he shouldn’t be eligible, just that she’s got more tenure at the company and that she trained him in the entry-level role he first started in. LW doesn’t say that he’s not qualified or give any tenure-based reason he shouldn’t be eligible, just that she’s got more tenure at the company and that she trained him in the entry-level role he first started in. It’s a great illustrative example of one of the many reasons why someone may want to keep it under wraps that they’re going for a promotion.

      It sucks that LW’s GM is a crappy and sexist boss, but LW self-selected out of the role and is now taking personal offense that coworker 1) didn’t do that; and 2) APPLIED for the job without consulting her. I would be very curious to know if this is a one-off that just happens to hit differently, or if this is part of a pattern of LW taking personal offense at things that aren’t really her business.

      1. Acronyms Are Life (AAL)*

        I get more the impression that LW expected that as the most senior qualified person, the leadership would come to her to apply for the role, however, her maybe slightly less than her qualified coworker applied, thus they had no need to come ask her to apply. Obviously, most roles don’t work that way, if there are qualified people, they’re not going to go hunt down the ‘absolute best candidate’ (let’s just assume the LW is that person) and beg them to apply.

        LW, next time just apply if you want it, unless it’s a super niche job/reason, no one’s going to come ask you personally to apply.

        1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          I think this is it. She’s miffed that she wasn’t asked to apply so she could explain in detail why she wouldn’t. Instead of reporting what the boss said to HR, if they are decent, or going over the boss’ head.

          OP your colleague did not owe you any conversation about his plans. Just like you don’t owe him one.

      2. blah*

        Also, does coworker know about these grievances that LW has for the company? As someone who’s benefitting from the sexism, he might not see the issues! (Obviously that doesn’t make the workplace sexism okay, but sometimes people are blind to these things.)

        Frankly, if any of my work “friends” got mad at me for receiving a promotion, I’d probably stop being friendly with them.

  12. Nonym*

    LW4: if these ex-students went back to school in another discipline and applied, would their application be automatically rejected based on their past work behavior or performance at your university? if these ex-students applied to a non-student position in your university (presumably the staff isn’t made up a 100% of students; you don’t mention being one yourself), would their application be automatically rejected based on their past work behavior or performance at your university? I’m guessing no, so they are indeed eligible to rehire.

    It’s that simple. The forms are asking if the university blacklisted these people as potential employees. In other words, did they have a performance or attitude so poor that when they left, the university said “never again”?

  13. Yev Kassem*

    1,
    “The nazis enriched themselves by plundering resources, depriving their neighbors of them. As this is the behavior I am currently acting to prevent, I am the opposite of a nazi.”

    2,
    If you have punished someone for a similar behavior, apply that same punishment to yourself. If you have formerly found it egregious enough to have someone fired because the behavior showed the person could not be trusted, the only fair thing is to quit.

    1. Brain the Brian*

      Frankly, this proposed script for LW1 would be entirely inappropriate for a local government employee, who is probably required by to stay carefully neutral in anything they say as part of their job. The LW is better off asking the caller to keep it professional on *their* end and telling a rude caller that they will have to escalate the call to a manager if the behavior continues. If the LW is hesitant to bring up their Jewish heritage themself, they might consider telling their boss that it’s okay to discuss that with rude callers whose calls they redirect — but only if they truly are okay with it.

      1. DJ Abbott*

        I don’t think it’s a good idea for LW to make themselves vulnerable by revealing personal information either directly or indirectly. There are a lot of haters and actual Nazis out there who might decide to target LW.
        Also, I think it would be more fun to just say “do not call me that, that is abuse”, or something to that effect, and send to the manager if they don’t comply. If they really don’t understand why the term is abusive, it will leave them befuddled and wondering.

        1. TeaCoziesRUs*

          Sadly concur, particularly since it’s sounds like LW is in a white bread town. Does LW really want to be known as the token?

          1. OP1*

            OP1 here: I am already the token and visibly look different :(

            I appreciate your and DJ Abbott pointing out the risk of targeting. Coming from a much more diverse area I sometimes forget to worry about things like that.

            1. DJ Abbott*

              I grew up in a place dominated by ignorant fundamentalists. Never underestimate how bad they can be.
              It’s better to be too cautious, than not cautious enough!
              Also, have you considered moving back to a diverse and supportive area?

            2. TeaCoziesRUs*

              I hate that you have to worry about that, and that it has to be on your radar at all. Internet hugs to you, if you want them.

            3. Brain the Brian*

              I likewise grew up as one of very few people of Jewish heritage in a very white and Christian town. (Only one of my parents is Jewish, and that was more than enough to stand out when nearly everyone else has blonde hair, blue eyes, and the same face shape. I digress.)

              I completely agree that you should only disclose your heritage if you’re comfortable with it. One thing I’ve found about small-town power dynamics is that if you have someone of the majority group mention your minority heritage in a way that makes it clear it’s no issue for *them* personally, others in the majority group are more likely to be accepting and understanding as well. My late father used to do this when people would make comments about Jews and Nazis — something like “I gotta say, I think my wife would be offended by that. She’s Jewish, you know, and some of her family didn’t survive World War II in Europe.” He’d lived in my hometown his whole life and had a *lot* of personal capital built up, so he could pretty much deescelate and shut down whatever B.S. people were throwing about my mother with a raised eyebrow if he wanted to.

              Obviously, LW, you know your circumstance better than we do — but a similar strategy of asking trusted proxies like your manager to intervene *on your behalf* when you need them to *could* work for you (no guarantees, of course). Tell the caller you’ll need to transfer the call to a supervisor, put them on a temporary hold to tell your manager what’s going on, and ask your manager to tell the caller that for personal and family reasons, you find language about Nazis really upsetting and then ask them to keep things civil with you. See if your supervisor can handle the actual doling out of fines for that individual, too, so it becomes obvious to the caller that it’s not a personal vendetta you have but just an application of laws over which you have no personal control. Depending how much personal capital your manager has in town, that might work. Might. It’s a gamble, of course.

              Whatever you do, I don’t recommend trying to escalate further yourself in the moment. You have a job to do, and the caller getting angrier over something that might not even register to them as offensive isn’t likely to be useful in accomplishing it.

    2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

      Nah you don’t want to start arguing as to whether the term Nazi should be applied to you. That’s dangerous ground indeed.

  14. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP2 (punishment for general manager) – thinking of it as punishment is no doubt going to generate a lot of responses about how a manager shouldn’t “punish” team members, and I do agree, but I think there’s a broader point here.

    As a manager, especially the “top” manager so that you don’t really have your own boss around d you day-to-day (the boss of the GM will be the owner or a regional manager, who is often quite hands off) – how do you keep yourself accountable, and just as importantly, your staff see that you are holding yourself accountable. Because with the mistake OP mentioned, even if you don’t “punish” a team member who made that mistake, you would have a conversation with them: “this was a serious mistake that could have had severe consequences; going forward you need to be more careful and ensure that you check xyz every time; repeats or more incidents like this will result in a disciplinary process” etc. I don’t know the answer to this one, but I think it is an interesting discussion. If you would “write up” an employee for doing this, perhaps you should somehow get a write-up onto your own record? I am a big believer in applying the same or more stringent standards to yourself as you do to others and I think OP also senses this. How many times do we see managers applying double standards to themselves or others…

    1. Awkwardness*

      Good question. Maybe get help of a high- ranking peer to discuss ways in which a mistake can be avoided, have an external consultant to discuss processes?
      But this should be about the process and understanding why you messed up, not so much about showing that you punish yourself too.

    2. Green great dragon*

      Yeh, the ideal response isn’t punishment but to ensure you don’t do it again. If you shared with your staff, eg, I’m going to ensure I never put down a money bag anywhere but the safe, even for a second or whatever, that’s you doing to yourself what you should be doing with your staff, ie changing the process to avoid future problems.

    3. bamcheeks*

      I think fundamentally a manager should be closer / more exposed to the natural consequences of mistakes– so they should have a stake in the success of the business, whether that’s directly through profit-sharing or a annual bonus based on meeting KPIs or whatever. If a cash bag had been left out and got stolen, or some money went missing and it wasn’t possible to reconcile the till, the workers should be protected from that loss, and the manager should be carrying it. (Not necessarily in the sense of having to eat the loss themselves– although obviously if they own the business/franchise, they would be– but if they are reporting up a larger business structure, they presumably will have to explain to their area / regional manager where that money went, and they might get written up anyway.)

      Generally speaking, I am in favour of natural consequences rather than punishments– this is my parenting philosphy as much as a life one! A write-up makes sense to me in the context of “we need to keep a record of this in case it forms a pattern, and if it happens again, X will happen”. But a lot of businesses seem to use them as a “Consequence” in itself, which I just think is weird. If you think your staff need a threat of Consequences in order to perform well, why are you employing them? What’s wrong with your work environment, your pay, your recruitment, your pay, your candidate attraction, and also your pay, that you aren’t hiring people who are motivated to do a decent job?

      In this situation, I think the way a decent manager should hold themselves accountable is by saying to the team, “Wow, I screwed up here and got really lucky– the fact that the cash bag wasn’t in the safe means that XYZ could easily have happened, and I could have lost $12000 or an entire time period’s takings. I am so thankful that didn’t happen! I’m going to look at what happened around that incident to see whether our processes work and whether there’s anything that could be improved so that it’s harder for anything like that to happen again.” But that’s also how they should be handling it if one of their workers made the same mistake.

      1. TeaCoziesRUs*

        I agree that holding themselves accountable to their team is the way for GM to go here. “I messed up by leaving the money bag out. I’m grateful that nothing was stolen, and that _co-worker_ brought it to my attention quickly! In the future, if you see me with the money bag, please wave me down if I’m needed, but give me the extra minute to put it away. If you see it in the till, on the counter, etc, please bring it to me right away. I am incorporating X into my own routine to ensure this is not repeated. Thanks for having my back.”

      2. RM*

        I’m going to look at what happened around that incident to see whether our processes work and whether there’s anything that could be improved so that it’s harder for anything like that to happen again

        You said that another supervisor found it and brought it up to you. I would ask around in the team meeting if anyone else noticed it. Reiterate that people need to speak up about cash handling mistakes as soon as they notice them, rather than defaulting to “they’re the boss they get to decide how things are done” or “I don’t want to seem condescending/be yelled at for disrespect for telling a superior they are doing something wrong.” Remind people that safeguarding cash is part of everyone’s job and how much you appreciate everyone keeping each other on the straight and narrow with it.

    4. Irish Teacher.*

      While I think this is a good point in general, I think writing herself up could come across as a bit performative, given that there would be no real consequences to such a write-up. Nobody higher up would see it and it couldn’t really be used against her in any way.

    5. Snow Globe*

      The OP has a boss somewhere, even if it isn’t on site and isn’t very hands on. It would be reasonable to make sure that the boss is informed of the incident, and that boss can decide how to handle it. That is consistent with the OP telling their staff to take responsibility.

      The second thing is that the OP should think about ways to prevent this in the future, and perhaps come up with a new process for handling the cash drawer – and then share this with the staff, along with the reason for instituting it. Again – taking responsibility publicly.

    6. ferrina*

      When I saw “punishment,” I pictured self-flagellation (literal). It’s amusing in concept, but it’s not realistic of effective.

      I think OP is getting confused between discipline and punishment. Discipline is a process of building rules, expectations and consequences (both positive and negative); punishment is causing hurt as an artificial consequence of actions. Discipline should be tied to results and impact; for example, write-ups shouldn’t exist as a note to say “you are bad”, but to collect information that will impact promotions, raises or other business decisions. And if you aren’t using write-ups to inform decisions, then it’s just a form of humiliation. That doesn’t belong in business.

  15. Awkwardness*

    #1: I think I would choose something that contrasts your situation with the war to make clear that this is not comparable at all. “Nazis systematically killed millions of people. I am asking you not to refill your pool/comply to regulation 234.9/whatever. Please stick to appropriate language when discussing this matter. Thank you. “

    1. learnedthehardway*

      I like this one – it calls out the complete inappropriateness of the language, but also firmly refocuses the discussion on the issue at hand.

      1. D*

        I also like this one–if LW chooses to address the issue at all, which they are more than allowed not to.

        1. Me, I think*

          It’s factual, but that doesn’t stop a lot of people from arguing that it’s not. I suspect that the pool of people who ignore water use restrictions from their local government has a fair amount of overlap with the people who think the Holocaust was either a lie or else a good thing. Sigh.

          1. Acronyms Are Life (AAL)*

            Nah, I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. Throughout the past few years we’ve repurposed the word ‘Nazi’ to mean something different, like the Seinfeld ‘Soup Nazi’, Dr. Bailey, the ‘Nazi’ doctor in Grey’s Anatomy, grammar nazi’s, the list goes on. It’s lost its immediate connotation to the Holocaust and more of a person who is a hard-ass and/or toes the line without real meaning or reason to do so other than to follow policy/rules. Reminding people that the word does have a meaning that is much deeper and quite painful is helpful to prevent it from continuing to be used so informally.

    2. A. N. Other*

      Good response. The only thing I’d change is that I’d leave off the ‘thank you’ at the end. Alison often recommends statements which end with ‘thank you’ and I have to say that it always sounds officious and more than a little passive aggressive to me, just as a retail worker sarcastically saying ‘have a nice day’ through clenched teeth to a difficult customer would. I just can’t imagine it having the calming effect so often attributed to it.

    4. Hyaline*

      I love this. I’d only add “please stick to appropriate language or I will have to end this call” setting a clear expectation up for the abusive caller.

    5. TeaCoziesRUs*

      That was my thought, too! “Sir, I am not lining you and your family up to ride in a cattle car to an execution chamber. I am telling you the consequences of failing to heed multiple warnings concerning your water usage. Cease the abuse so we may proceed.” – said in my most stone cold voice

      1. BikeWalkBarb*

        That’s an incredibly personal and painful first line for someone Jewish to deliver, or anyone else from one of the targeted identities.

  16. Stoli*

    Your coworker has no obligation to run applying for any job by you. No one does. Remember, work friends are situational.

  17. Stoli*

    I am a higher level healthcare provider and have been called almost every name in the book. People who behave in this deplorable way will not be educated by any kind of pointed response by you. I suggest, “I don’t make the rules.” My skin has become thick.

    1. coffee*

      Great suggestion. What’s the saying – something like, don’t wrestle with pigs, you both get dirty and the pig likes it? They’re trying to get a rise so they can pivot the conversation from “thing I don’t want to do” to “I insult someone until they go away”.

      There’s a very high chance someone will go the “I’m offended you’re offended” route, which you really don’t need when you’re trying to get stuff done at work.

      1. coffee*

        Sorry, a bit unclear there – if you discuss their choice of words, there’s a very high chance someone will go the “I’m offended you’re offended” route, which you really don’t need when you’re trying to get stuff done at work.

    2. linger*

      But “I don’t make the rules” is unlikely to work very well, as it echoes the historical (unsuccessful) war trial defense of “only following orders”.
      Far better to refocus on the specific issue, as suggested by Awkwardness above.

      2. a clockwork lemon*

        “I don’t make the rules” is a factually accurate statement for someone who has to do something mildly unpleasant that is legal, socially acceptable, and frankly critical to maintaining a functional society.

        We actually don’t need to compare it to war crimes just because other people use similarly-sounding words in a radically different context.

        1. Enai*

          Yes, thank you. “I’m just following orders / I don’t make the rules” is unacceptable only if the orders/rules demand blatantly inhumane things like murdering civilians by their hundreds. It does not apply if the person says essentially “Yes, the rule to not park in the fire lane is annoying and usually there is no fire to get to. In the event there is a fire however, we can’t afford to waste the time necessary to have you and ten others move your cars, the entire highrise might burn out before we found the last of you. So, kindly! Park! Somewhere! Else!”

        2. Lab Boss*

          Chiming in to agree- one of my pet peeves is “Because someone bad used this argument disingenuously or in a way we don’t like, nobody can ever make the same basic argument in a totally different context.”

        3. ecnaseener*

          I think the point is that if you want to stop the person from continuing to call you a nazi, this is unlikely to be an effective because you’re giving them an obvious opening.

          1. Katara's side braids*

            Yes, that’s what I got as well. I think linger understands that the analogy actually doesn’t work at all. But when you’re in a back-and-forth with an irrational consumer who has just compared you to war criminals, a simple “I’m going to end this call if you continue to be abusive” is really the only way to go. Otherwise they will take anything you say and twist it around with the intention of drawing out the “discussion,” which just makes things messier and wastes more of your time.

          2. sparkle emoji*

            These people aren’t making a logical argument that LW is a Nazi, they’re throwing a tantrum. They’ll take anything as an opportunity to behave badly. I don’t think there is a perfect reply, but one like this or Alison’s suggestion that doesn’t dignify the tantrum by taking it seriously is better than some of the other suggestions from commentors recommending the LW explain why they shouldn’t call her a Nazi.

        4. Peanut Hamper*

          100% agree. This is a false analogy similar to the “you drink water? You know…insert name of bad guy also drank water” kind of argument.

          I might be tempted to respond “I don’t make the rules. Our elected officials do.”

          1. sparkle emoji*

            Yeah, very “you know who else was a vegetarian…” These aren’t serious people making rational arguments for why the LW is a literal Nazi, they’re whining about consequences for violating rules and trying to throw out whatever hurtful language they can as they lash out. End the call, use some bland response that makes it clear you don’t care, transfer to a manager, etc. can all communicate “Your bad behavior won’t get you what you want”. Arguing with them on the merits treats their bad behavior as if it deserves respect and it really doesn’t. People who work in customer service, especially a grievance department, may have more specific advice if LW knows anyone like that.

      3. Stoli*

        Over-reach. OP has a set of rules company must abide by. OPs job is to enforce them. They don’t have a choice. You can never win with name callers. They are dysfunctional.

  18. Ju*

    LW1: Am I the only one a bit confused about the work? I thought they were out in the field, checking that the regulations are followed and then talking with people face-to-face, but then the last line says that the manager could “take a call” so that implies that LW is in an office and not in front of the people? The job is split up between someone checking in the field and someone else later calling the homeowner?

    1. Myrin*

      I think it’s like you say in your last sentence, with OP being the person responsible for the office work with others simply reporting wrongdoings; maybe she’s going out to check on reports, too, but that very often doesn’t even involve talking to the perpetrator.

    2. Mighty K*

      I think it means that if the manager will back up the OP if the member of the public phones the manager to complain about the OP pushing back on being called a Nazi.

    3. Drinking Solution*

      As someone in drinking water regulation (though not in an area where drought regulations come into play, so it’s possible lw’s job could be very different from mine), my job can cross paths with the public in an unpleasant way due to someone in the field passing along info, but there are other ways too. The other ways involve concerning data (e.g. your lab samples had lead so you’ll have to overhaul your water system), no/late data (e.g. you never sent the monthly report detailing how much you chlorinated your water to disinfect it), and failure to follow instructions (e.g. we told you to warn your customers not to drink any unboiled water from your system but you never sent us pictures of the notice because you somehow thought boil water orders didn’t apply to your highway rest area). There are often ways to trigger contact with office-based regulators without contact with in-person ones.

    4. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      I read it the same way (that LW was in person). It was the detail about how some of the offenders may never have met a Jew before; I wouldn’t use “met” for a phone call. (Not nitpicking LW’s language, just saying where that impression came from.)

    5. Phony Genius*

      The most logical explanation to me is that the LW fields calls from people who have received a notice of violation, and they call the number printed on the notice.

      1. Drinking Solution*

        That was my thinking. Maybe I jumped to that conclusion since that’s a large part of my job, though.

      2. OP1*

        This is correct. Some people visit in person but most are phone calls in response to letters.

        I included the part about having never met a Jew to give context that they have likely never thought about their language use and would not expect the attack to land with me in quite the way it does.

    6. fhqwhgads*

      I interpreted it as the call the manager would take is from people calling in after speaking with LW1 to complain about LW1.

  19. English Rose*

    #3 – I agree with others that your friend/co-worker didn’t do anything wrong in not letting you know he was applying.
    The larger question though is about your own future, whether with this company or elsewhere.
    I completely get that as a woman it’s difficult to progress through a sexist organisation (or perhaps simply a sexist director in this case?). But you don’t make it clear whether you would have wanted the promotion. You didn’t apply because of your aversion to male-dominated hierarchies, but they will always be that unless qualified women put themselves forward.
    If what you want in your own career path is progression to director level roles, then you need to put those plans in place and look either within your current organisation (which sounds like it might be tough) or start mapping out alternative organisations which better align with your values and ambitions. Good luck!

    1. Just Thinkin' Here*

      Exactly! OP is undervalued because she is undervaluing herself: she fails to put her hat into the ring and apply for a promotion she is qualified for. If she doesn’t like the management team, she needs to leave for someplace where the management team is more aligned to her values. But you can’t blame others for applying to the opening.

  20. Varthema*

    LW2 – Apart from punishment, I think the thing to really focus on here is the degree to which you harp on your employees to pay attention etc. It sounds like till now you’ve treated it as something which someone deliberately chooses to do, and by the same token, deliberately chooses NOT to do. And this is a super common belief! That attention is only about trying hard or not.

    But what you’ve just discovered first-hand is that attention is all about cognitive real estate – it’s there or it’s not, and exhorting people to pay attention has zero impact on the outcome.* Some people have more cognitive real estate to spend at the same time, and some people have less. But even for people who have more, if that load is full, it’s full, and adding an extra task into the load means your brain is going to jettison another task.

    Imagine carrying groceries. Pretty much everyone can pick up two bags, one in each hand. Some people who have good upper body strength can pick up two more, and some people can even loop those bags over their arms and use their hands to carry a large box as well. But at some point, if you go up to that person and say, “Hey, can you hold this carton of eggs for me please?” they’re either going to drop the eggs or they’re going to drop a bag or the box. It’s not because they weren’t trying, it’s because they were overloaded. And telling them that they have to be better at carrying all the things isn’t really going to help.

    That’s why actions like writing things down, establishing processes that can become second nature, redundancy in duties, automating certain tasks, etc. is so critical – it’s not just a safeguard, it frees up mental load and allows people to operate at full capacity. You can do a lot more when you’re using a grocery cart. (And now I think I’ve ground this metaphor into the ground.)

    Some people have neurological conditions and have a LOT less capacity, but may have other things to bring to the table, like the ability to turn a customer from fuming to purring, or creative problem-solving, in which case you lean into those strengths and find ways that they don’t have to carry too many bags at once OR decide that attention is too crucial to that specific job and that it’s not the right fit. Not unlike jobs requiring people being able to lift a 50lb box – sometimes there are workarounds and those workarounds are worth it to keep that individual for their other strengths, but sometimes it’s a hard requirement.

    *And sure, sometimes there’s limited cognitive real estate because the person has zero motivation or interest in the job at hand and they’d rather replay last night’s football game in their head or stare at their phone. But I think you’d agree that the issue here won’t be fixed by just telling them to pay more attention – the issue is the fact that they have zero motivation or interest and either that’s addressable, or it’s not and in that case they probably shouldn’t be in that job at all.

  21. Dog momma*

    #3. I am not sure why this is LW’s business. I realize LW stated that the friend/ co worker said he preferred working with men..maybe they misheard, or not. LW did not apply for the director position, so its not their business. If they did I’d change my answer.
    Even if it was brought up to management, what does LW expect them to do? Renege or fire that person? I’m detecting jealousy/ sour grapes here.

    1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

      It wasn’t the friend who said that egregious thing out loud. It was the LW’s boss or grand-boss who said it. (“It has become apparent that my director has a preference for working with men, as he has openly expressed.”)

  22. Dog momma*

    #1. we are so far from the Holocaust/ WWII that it doesn’t resonate with people anymore. as a nurse, I I had a fair amount of concentration camp survivors I cared for. My cousin’s husband is German and was 5 yo when the bombed Dresden during the war. He escaped East Germany in the 60s. I met a wonderful couple traveling that were very proud American citizens, & she confided in me what happened to her family during the war.. tragic and horrible things ( they were not Jewish, they also didn’t support the new regime).
    When I was in HS, there was a mandatory series where we watched file footage of Auschwitz and other concentration camp liberation. It was not edited. Doubt there was parental permission & they wouldn’t have had a problem with it. Many were immigrants or 1st generation Americans.
    Maybe schools should bring that back…so we never forget.

    1. Lady Lessa*

      I agree, and think that we, as a society, should reduce the casual use of the term “Nazi”. When I was teaching 4th graders religion, I noticed that the boys were drawing swastikas, so I promptly changed my lesson plan on the spot and the whole class got a lesson on what the Nazis did.

      1. Anon 4 now*

        That makes me wonder what people who love the swastika *as is intended religious symbolism* have felt with it becoming a symbol of inhumanity. It was used in everything from Hinduism and Buddhism to pre-Christian faiths. I’m Christian and I can’t fathom the entire world turning against the cross / crucifix. Have they simply walked away from the symbol? Is there an attempt to reclaim it?

        1. sparkle emoji*

          The bad one was changed and tweaked in ways that look noticeably different from most of the religious versions(often has dots and rounded corners, there are plenty of side by side comparisons if you’d want to see examples). AFAIK, there are still versions used but the different look and context usually signals the intent. Same with the various symbols from Northern European religions that the Nazis coopted.

    2. BellaStella*

      I am 55. My father was in WWII and based in Italy and Germany. my cousin’s husband is 70, Jewish and his family is very small as almost all of his family was murdered in these camps. I have other family who were also part of the war effort who saw these things first hand.
      For many people my age it is not that far in the past, but I do see your point that it is bandied about willy nilly without thought for actual meaning and significance. I hope the film footage you watched was helpful to form your world view and I do think people these days have lost these images in our collective memory.

    3. Peanut Hamper*

      I saw those same (or similar) documentaries when I was in high school history class. We also watched one about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that was equally enlightening. (This was in English class, because the history curriculum was very much “Rah, rah! America good, everyone else bad”.)

    4. Nonsense*

      Good luck with that. I graduated high school in 2010 and we never even made it to World War 1 in history, let alone WW2 or the Civil Rights movement. An uneducated populace is easier to manipulate, after all.

      1. K8T*

        I also graduated HS in 2010 and had extensive coverage of the Holocaust/WWII/etc my entire life. While it makes me sad you never covered that, no need to paint everyone with that broad of a brush just because your school didn’t care enough to teach it.

      2. Delta Delta*

        Same. Graduated high school in the mid 90s and I have zero idea why World War I happened because we spent six weeks playing Oregon Trail in my history class. I didn’t die of dysentery, so there’s that, I suppose.

    5. Emily Byrd Starr*

      But that’s exactly why people use the word “Nazi” in the way OP is referring to- because they know how offensive it is.

    6. jmc*

      I agree, this should never be swept away by and forgotten by anyone. Especially when I am sure there are still revisionists around who claim the whole thing was fake!! People need to remember how awful it was. A great book about the experience is Aimee and Jaguar.

  23. Irish Teacher.*

    LW1, this is a difficult one, especially as the people saying that, in this case, are probably quite angry and possibly a lot of them aren’t the most reasonable, since they’ve already been breaking rules about water conservation in a drought and insulting you for doing your job.

    I think I’d be inclined to keep it somewhat impersonal, like “please don’t use that term when calling us. It’s very hurtful to those who lost family members because of the Nazis.”

    LW2, I don’t see a point of punishments for mistakes. Not that management should be about punishment anyway, but even in situations where punishment can be necessary, it’s for things that are deliberate, like the kid who sits with his arms folded and tells the teacher “you can’t make me do any work” or who tells his parents, “I’m not cleaning my room.” Then consequences like “well, you’re not getting your pocket money until it’s clean” or “if you are not going to work, you can just go to your year head and explain why” are appropriate, but if a kid has genuinely forgotten his homework or to clean his room, then a punishment doesn’t help.

    Consequences are meant to be about preventing the thing from happening again. Like in the examples I gave, the kids were misbehaving because they thought they could get away with it or they were testing the parent or teacher to see “how far can I push it before they draw a line” and the punishment was to show them “nope, you’ve crossed the line. This is not something you can get out of doing just by saying so.” They are generally most helpful when somebody has done something they know is wrong and did it intentionally because they didn’t care and/or thought there would be no negative consequences to them for doing so.

    Even then, in the workplace, the response would more likely be speaking to them, making it clear why it was important to do it correctly and possibly firing, if this was an ongoing thing and it was obvious they either didn’t care about doing their job correctly or didn’t respect your authority.

    But in situations like this where the person made a genuine mistake, knows they made a mistake and is probably going to be more careful than most about this, at least in the immediate future, punishments serve no purpose. You aren’t going to be any more likely to make a similar mistake again if you punish yourself than if you don’t, so…what is the aim? As a teacher, I always feel there needs to be an aim to a punishment. The student in question or other students or the school community needs to have some benefit from it. Most usually, the benefit is that this kid’s maturity level means that “the teacher will be cross” is a bigger incentive to say improve his or her literacy or numeracy than “not understanding this will be a major disadvantage in my life”. On rare occasions, it’s that the kid is bullying somebody and does not seem to understand why it is wrong, but does understand it’s not a good idea to do it if it will be punished.

    And if I was one of your staff and I saw you punish yourself for a mistake, my thought wouldn’t be “boss is so fair. They hold themself to the same rules as everybody else and this is a company where ‘nobody is above the law.'” It would come across as kinda performative since obviously, you are not going to be fired or lose out on promotion opportunities or get less shifts and therefore less pay in the future and those are the kind of things that people worry about when they mess up at work, that their boss will trust them less and therefore that they will be first out in a layoff or less likely to get a promotion, not that the boss would punish them.

    And to be honest, it would make me a bit uncomfortable both just because it’s awkward and because it would feel like the boss was sort of showing what would happen to us if we made a mistake. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is what you are doing. It sounds more like you are feeling guilty for making a mistake you would criticise your employees for and you want to show them that you understand that you have messed up and aren’t making excuses for yourself. But I don’t think this is the way to do that.

    Thanking the supervisor who found your mistake and apologising would be far more likely to make me think, “boss is willing to recognise their own mistakes and hold themself to the same standards as the rest of us.”

    1. BellaStella*

      I am concerned tho with your suggestion to reply, “please don’t use that term when calling us. It’s very hurtful to those who lost family members because of the….” This may identify the LW as Jewish and make them a further target and the person calling them names is likely friends with others who would say this stuff too. Many of these people are, in my experience, very much aligned to the way of thinking that they are special and exempt from rules and that rules are for the little people etc. The cognitive dissonance I have seen with people who name call like this is astounding.

      2. Lab Boss*

        I would add, while OP being Jewish probably makes that insult more offensive to them personally, it’s not really necessary that OP be Jewish for it to be 100% inappropriate to call them a Nazi. It can, and should, be shut down without OP’s specific personal details needing to be mentioned at all.

      3. Anon 4 now*

        I agree. It’s also too soft. You don’t need to soft-shoe with people like that. A very firm, “Cease the abuse / name calling / yelling and we will proceed” followed by hanging up the minute they start spewing again if how I’d handle it… with an immediate transfer to the manager when they call back yelling even louder. Your manager has your back, remind the customers you are human!

        Side note, I AM that customer occasionally – NOT to the level of name calling, but I get loud when I get frustrated. I’ve learned over the years to apologize in advance when I am heated about a situation (i.e. “I’m angry about the situation, but not at you. Thank you for trying to help me fix this.”), thank the rep for whatever help they can provide, and compliment them to the people they transfer me to (i.e. “Thanks for working with me. Alex was very kind in trying to help, too, and I appreciate their efforts to resolve this and their willingness to pass me on.”). If there a survey at the end and they were professional, I’ll mark them all perfect for their customer service. It’s not much, but I hope it does help.

        1. Bitte Meddler*

          A couple of decades ago, I made a conscious decision to make any customer service rep laugh or at least hear a smile in their voice when I had to call in because of a problem.

          They didn’t cause it but they can help fix it; and I know they get lots of abuse all day long. Hopefully my call can be a bright spot in their day.

          It has also reaped *huge* rewards for me. Like, instead of getting a small credit on a future purchase because something I paid extra for overnight shipping didn’t show up for a week, they just gave me the [$1500] item for free.

          Ditto for quick refunds on things like internet service outages, and quick, free product replacements for defective items (with no requirement to send back the faulty device).

          I’ve also had customer service reps leave notes for themselves to follow-up on my issue if they have to transfer me to someone else or create a ticket to get a resolution, and then call me in a day or three to make sure I’m being taken care of.

  24. Ellis Bell*

    OP1, I know your request is termed as “make it clear that this is not an okay thing to say”, but it might be worth sorting out what other outcomes you want and prioritising those. Do you just want to ease your own spluttering rage/get out of the conversation/deliver the message you need to deliver/simply make sure you don’t let the moment pass over unremarked upon, as though the word is meaningless? One thing to ponder is that it’s probably not possible to express the full force of your feelings and still remain professional and you’d also be pretty vulnerable to further hate speech if you did. Sometimes it’s okay to just do the most minimal pushback in the world, just enough to make it clear you are not okay with it, to not be part of the moment, without using your entire arsenal of rage and/or personal history. Something like: “I’m not okay with that term being used lightly”, “I’ll need this conversation to remain free of name calling.” “From my understanding of what Nazism was, and is, that term isn’t really appropriate”, “I’ll need this discussion to remain civil, and that’s a pretty serious word”, “That’s not considered an appropriate term”, “If we could stay focused on what’s actually happening, I’d appreciate it.” The key is to not let the insult land personally, but to make it clear they are (maybe unintentionally!) using the wrong words to make a civil case and that’s all you’re willing to listen to.

    2. OaDC*

      I think these are all good, and I like keeping it simple. The person likely does not have his listening ears on and the fewer words the better.

  25. BellaStella*

    LW5, my organisation creates interview panels which we call a hiring team. Usually it is the line manager, director, an HR rep, a senior level colleague, and maybe a team member but not always.

  26. A Book about Metals*

    Maybe I’m a total jerk, but as a Jewish person myself I thought the Soup N**i on Seinfeld was funny and don’t see a huge problem with it.

    However it’s definitely not appropriate in a work setting – i think the advice is perfect here.

    1. HailRobonia*

      Also there is a HUGE difference between what characters say in a scripted TV show to each other vs. interaction in real life and having it directed at you.

      I like Seinfeld but if anyone called me a whatever Nazi I would take umbrage with it.

      1. Eldritch Ofice Worker*

        A scripted TV show written by and heavily featuring Jewish people, no less.

        The direction you’re punching makes a lot of difference.

  27. El l*

    OP3:
    Any thoughts about the friend and what a conversation with them could’ve done* are a distraction from the real issue.

    Namely, what is OP going to do about the GM?

    Lawyer up and go after the GM. Or find another job. That’s the only thing that matters here.

    *Nothing.

    1. KateM*

      Lawyer up and go after GM for what, though – not offering OP the job she didn’t even apply for?

      1. el l*

        True, that’ll undercut her case. And if that’s enough to torpedo it, then it’s time to go.

        1. B*

          There is nothing actionable here because LW3 is stewing internally about the injustice of her workplace but neither verbalizing it, doing anything to oppose it, nor being measurably impacted by it.

          I do think once you’ve reached this level of paralytic contempt for your employer, the only real solution is to leave. (Ask me how I know.)

      2. DisgruntledPelican*

        As Alison suggested in her reply, OP’s employer stating he preferred to work with men is enough to lawyer up over her employer’s “declaration of intent to discriminate.”

  28. WellRed*

    OP 3, you feel undervalued. In fact, you are undervalued. BY YOUR BOSS. Why are shrugging that off m?

  29. Cat Tree*

    LW2, my company is big on human error prevention. Just a quick intro can change your whole on the situation. My very large company uses it because it’s more *effective* than punishment. It actually works to reduce errors.

    For something like forgetfulness about money, you either need a tool to trigger a reminder, or have some kind of systematic check in place.

    Airline pilots follow checklists in an emergency because that works. If the system was just “do it correctly or be punished”, lives would be at risk.

    If a system not based on punishment is good enough for airline pilots, it’s good enough for your restaurant.

    1. WellRed*

      It doesn’t sound like this was a problem in need of a process solution, more a one off.

      1. Lab Boss*

        Agreed- sometimes a “process solution” can feel punitive for a one-off mistake, because it feels like your boss telling you “I refuse to believe you just screwed up once, I’m going to make you jump through a bunch of hoops to do your job now.”

        I once cost my company a couple grand by grabbing the wrong chemical off a shelf and ruining an experiment- we went through an investigation process to determine if a process fix was needed, and the outcome was essentially “no, this process happens all the time with no problem, he just did something dumb once” and that was that. If I’d had to do an elaborate system of check and counter-check every day because one time I picked up the wrong bottle, it would have been really annoying.

        1. Angstrom*

          Right, but a process solution doesn’t have to be elaborate — in the case mentioned it could be as simple as a colored sticker or shelving the bottle in a different location.

          Error prevention can often lead to process improvement.

          1. Lab Boss*

            Valid point! I guess it’s more accurate to say that process solutions should be considered for how complicated they make the job, so they aren’t just adding complication for the sake of it.

          2. Hyaline*

            It sounds like there is a system or at least a correct process/way of doing this, but LW got busy/distracted and didn’t do it. That raises questions about whether the process is as streamlined as it could be, but reminders or failsafes don’t work if you actively ignore them.

          3. Peanut Hamper*

            This is where I landed as well, and commented with a potential solution down below.

            I used to be responsible for poke-yokes at my old job, and this is immediately where my mind went.

        2. bamcheeks*

          But that;s presumably because your company considers “costing a couple of grand” a relatively low-impact error that can be absorbed occasionally as a one-off. If the impact had been “costs $200k” or “led to someone being seriously injured / a near miss”, a process change to make it much harder to make that error would be reasonable.

      2. Cat Tree*

        So, this is my area of professional expertise, at a company in a highly regulated industry. I’ll try not to get too long-winded with details. We have an entire department dedicated to investigating deviations. Sometimes a one-off does warrant a new or changed process. Each deviation has an impact assessment. If the potential impact is high, it gets a deeper level of investigation. We also do periodic trending, so high-frequency but low-impact events can also drive process changes.

        My industry isn’t financial, but I would think a deviation related to money would be high enough impact to warrant a change.

      3. RM*

        That depends on how quickly the error was caught, whether it was caught as part of a checklist vs. one person being particularly observant, the opportunities for theft in that time period, and how much money was in the bag. A lot of restaurants do not have good processes, and a lot of restaurants do not have processes that take into account the level of short staffing and divided attention that is just part of the normal work environment.

    2. Angstrom*

      Aviation in the US has the Aviation Safety Reporting System(ASRS), which lets pilots and other aviation personnel submit anonymous near-miss reports. These reports are used to identify and correct system issues, and are not used for enforcement.

      The lesson is that it is important to say “I made a mistake/found a problem. Let’s figure out how to keep it from happening again.”

      You want a culture at your business that encourages people to step up and take responsibility for their actions and for fixing problems. Punishment won’t do that.

      1. AF Vet*

        +1

        I was aircrew in the Air Force and we had a LOT of training in Crew Resource Management (CRM). It all boiled down to know yourself (are you tired / stressed / distracted?), TALK to the others on your crew, OWN your mistakes, and work together to ensure safe flights. The Aircraft Commander is not God, but they and the rest of the crew are entrusted with the lives of all on board (AND their families and friends). In the air we focused on keeping communication free and clear – the lowest rank on that plane could still flag an error / speak up when something didn’t seem right.

        In your case, you need to own the mistake to your crew, commend anyone who brought it to your attention, and then ask for help if they notice the error again. You also need to make it not only acceptable but commendable when others find an error and bring it to your attention. You might be the boss, but that doesn’t mean you’re God. You are human. You’re going to have human moments of forgetfulness, error, etc. Your team will be stronger when everyone has each other’s backs and you ALL work together to deliver great meals to your customers.

    3. el l*

      While others who actually work in aviation can flesh this out more, it took decades, systems, and profound culture work for Crew Resource Management to really change how people operated and for the safety benefits to happen.

      Would love to agree, but – just dropping punishments and adding checklists isn’t enough.

      I’d say the other lesson OP should take: Punishment is intended both to send a message to everyone else, and to remind people of their responsibility. Neither seems necessary here. So – now’s the time to figure out how to treat others when that’s true.

      1. Angstrom*

        CRM was a huge culture shift. The old model was a rigid hierarchy, where nobody dared to disagree with the captain. The new model is the cockpit crew as a team, and it is one’s duty to speak up if one sees a problem. It’s “None of us are as smart as all of us” as a highly developed working discipline.

        1. AF Vet*

          Yup! And it trickles out to the rest of life, too. I became a lot less authoritarian once I’d been crew for a couple years. :)

      2. TeaCoziesRUs*

        I’d argue that punishment is meant to discourage someone from making the same mistake again by harshly doling out discipline. I agree that there’s no need for it in the workplace, but facing consequences can work just as well. With your money bag, had it been misplaced the natural (and painful) consequence would be reimbursing the bag out of your own pocket. It’s a mindset shift, but it helps. I’ve used Love and Logic as a parenting tool for years, and it’s helped both my partner and I to come to logical solutions for when our kids misbehave, as well as allowing kids to face the consequences of their decisions. It doesn’t have a direct correlation to the workforce, but the principles still apply. In your case, since you are the boss, your team is who you hold yourself accountable to. So, what consequence would make sense here? The bag didn’t have any money missing, but if it did you could show them that you paid out of pocket. I don’t know the answer, but I think this is the right track.

  30. Lab Boss*

    I volunteer at the university I graduated from. Every year when I fill out my volunteer background check form I’m asked: Have you ever been employed by the university? Are you still? If not, why were you terminated? And every year I have to write a short-form response explaining how “I was an undergrad lab tech and then I graduated and had to get a real job” is a perfectly good reason to no longer be employed, and to please not consider me a security risk.

    1. MsM*

      You’d think they’d have enough people in your situation to come up with a specific “were you employed as a student?” question.

      1. Lab Boss*

        You would THINK that, wouldn’t you? Then again, you’d also think that I’d only have to file one background check form per year, instead of them regularly misplacing it and needing me to fill out a new one every time I arrive to work there, and yet, you would be mistaken.

  31. Also*

    LW4, the question is essentially “would you hire this person again?” or “would you work with this person again?” If you would, just answer yes.

    LW2, if you’ve been managing via punishment or using an autocratic style, please stop.

    It’d be great if everyone could stop hiring and promoting people with this approach into management roles in the first place. It’s the least effective management style there is, by a long way, and there’s decades of peer reviewed studies and data to show it.

  32. HonorBox*

    OP2 – I was at a conference last week and a presenter who is in a leadership role in my industry was talking about coaching and communication with his team. He made a point to say that the best leaders are accountable and willing to admit mistakes. I think your best course of action is to thank the supervisor for pointing out the mistake and then when appropriate (in training for instance) point out that everyone makes mistakes. Even you have made the mistake of leaving a money bag somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be. Use it as an example of how everyone can mess up, and point out that your error could have cost the restaurant quite a bit of money so it is important that everyone pay attention and focus on the tasks that they need to be doing. There’s no need to “punish” yourself, just as you shouldn’t be focused on punishment for the small mistakes that happen through the course of the day.

    1. Lime green Pacer?*

      OP2 was taking a shortcut, due to time pressure. One of the techniques I use to avoid making similar mistakes is to ask myself “If not now, when? If not me, who?”. Also, that old saw, “There’s northing more permanent than a temporary solution!” helps me to avoid quick & dirty solutions and do things properly the first time, because once it’s dealt with somehow, it’s easy to forget about it entirely.

  33. HailRobonia*

    The “eligible for rehire” question reminds me of my old job involving professional trainings. In the post-course survey (how would you rate this course etc.) we ask “would you recommend this course to any of your colleagues” – our intent is essentially “do you think this course is good enough that other people in your field would find it beneficial” but some answers we’ve gotten have been “no, I am the only person at work doing this task” and “no, I don’t like my coworkers.”

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      This reminds me of all those online reviews where somebody will say “This is the best product EVER!” and then only give it one star, because they assume that one star = first place, and not realize that they are giving it the lowest possible rating.

      1. HailRobonia*

        Ironically we’ve tried to run a program/course on survey design & strategy. We probably could have used that expertise ourselves. Our original survey was so poorly designed, it might as well have been “Rate this program on a scale from amethyst to pterodactyl”

      2. Orv*

        These days I just mark five stars for everything unless something was really egregiously wrong, because companies like Uber have caused me to internalize the idea that anything less than five stars is a request to have someone fired.

    2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      Snort. “This training was GREAT! I don’t want ANY of those jerks I work with to benefit from it.”

    4. Nightengale*

      I get a lot of that with demands about whether I would recommend a specific website such as for a store or hospital. I mean, I don’t really recommend websites to other people for those things. “Oh, I highly recommend the website for X General Hospital!” Who does that? If you need information about a public transit system or a hospital or whatever, the website is the place to get that information, possibly the only realistic place to get that information, but I am not recommending the website even if I am recommending the organization.

      If what they mean is, would you recommend this layout or format of our website, well the answer is usually, no no way no how. But that isn’t what they asked.

        1. We're Six*

          Hah, I was just talking to some coworkers about this. I ignore these 9 times out of 10 but when I do answer them, I put down some form of, “I only use version of Windows/Office for Windows/15Five.com because I’m required to for work. I don’t enjoy it and I don’t recommend it. Go bug the head of IT or Supplies about why they picked it.”

          Is it a dumb and petty thing to do? Absolutely. Does it make my day a bit better for 5 minutes? Yep.

  34. Workfromhome*

    #3

    “I did not apply for the director position due to my aversion to male-dominated hierarchies.”

    “I feel as though he went behind our backs in an attempt to conceal his ambitions. This has left me feeling undervalued in the workplace.”

    You would have felt undervalued whether he had applied or not.

    If you are in a sexisit workplace thats terrible. But you are projecting your issues onto someone who is apparently a long time “acquaintance” if not friend who apparently has done you no harm in the past.

    This sounds like a very bad environment for you to continue to work in. This person did nothing wrong. He applied for a position you could have applied for. You never expressed any interest to him in the position so why attribute any negative feelings to him?
    I dont think you are put out because he didn’t run it by you. you are put out hes a male who got a position you feel you deserve (but dint actually apply for.

    You should seriously consider leaving if you are to a point where you don’t apply for any promotions because you feel your gender excludes you from consideration.

    1. HonorBox*

      Great points all.

      If the GM of the company is actively stating that he’s interested in a male-dominated workplace, that’s actionable, either with a lawyer or by leaving. Working for someone who is obviously and blatantly sexist should make you angry.

      But don’t let your anger get misguided. Your coworker applied for the job. You did not. It isn’t like he was inspired to apply because you told him you were concerned about applying yourself because your GM has said he wouldn’t hire a woman. Or even that you and he both applied and you were passed over because of your gender. He didn’t owe you a heads up that he was interested. Don’t be mad at him for applying. Be mad at the situation, sure. You’re putting too much emphasis where it isn’t going to be helpful for you.

    2. Peanut Hamper*

      This is where I land as well. This sounds like a toxic company, and it sounds like LW is starting to normalize that toxicity.

      It’s time to get out and move on.

    3. Hyaline*

      Yeah, the only logical explanation for LW’s feelings I could come up with was “why would my friend want to advance and further invest himself in such a shitty company” but in that case…why would you want to continue to invest your time and talent in such a shitty company?!?

      1. Dawn*

        I think it’s the perception (not the reality) of a lack of solidarity, putting the sexist management on one side and the employees on the other, but that’s not how, well, work works.

        If you’re at the point where it’s “us vs them” it’s time to relocate “us” to somewhere that you’re not feeling in opposition to “them”.

  35. mettina*

    LW2:
    I think one aspect of this is to own your actions in public. If someone from my team makes a big mistake, I usually have two conversations. One-on-one and a public one with the whole team. Both kinda are the same: We go trough what happened, what was the mistake made and how are we going to avoid such outcomes in the future (this is a key, we are not trying to train people into robots who never make mistakes, but we are trying to prevent the negative outcomes). In the private meeting Im talking to this one person, and we get “personal” and I adjust my speech to the severity of the issue. ublic meeting, In the public meeting, I dont name names, I speak more general and mention that I have gone through the issue with the specific people.

    In your case, I would first go through the happening with yourself (self reflection) and a higher-up, if possible. Then I would do the public meeting. Just in this case, I would “out” myself, and stress to my team how seriously I take the mistake and that I will work hard to avoid that mistake in the future.

  36. My Boss is Dumber than Yours*

    Re: #5

    A dude who told me he’s never wrong said it’s really weird for a grand-boss to be on the hiring team.

    1. Coffee Protein Drink*

      Interesting. Another Hiring Manager noted below that where they are, the grandboss is the person who signs off on the budget for the position.

    2. Hlao-roo*

      Is this a call-back to the “I was rejected because I told my interviewer I never make mistakes” from February 14 of this year?

  37. Lady Bubblette*

    I’m not sure I (woman) follow the reasoning behind Letter Writer number 3 “Despite my qualifications and proven track record of generating significant revenues for the company, I did not apply for the director position due to my aversion to male-dominated hierarchies.”.

    If a certain demographic dominates a field, how is it going to change if people of other backgrounds do not apply/join/etc?

    1. Hyaline*

      Sometimes you don’t want to take on the burden of being that vehicle of change, though, and I think that’s fair. Not every stage of life or career leaves you with the bandwidth to Fight the Man. As a general principle I agree with you, but in practice there can be a lot of very legitimate reasons to look at the situation and say “I’m not tackling this right now.”

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        This is a good point. I don’t think I could handle a job where I was swimming upstream every hour of every day.

      2. Workfromhome*

        Not sure I agree, here is no evidence that she has applied for position before and been passed over personally due to her gender.
        Its not “I’ve tried and failed I don’t want to try anymore”
        Its her perception (which might be correct) that females done get the promotions, so she chose not to apply at all rather than apply and fail and be proven right.
        Its a self-fulfilling prophecy.
        Applying in and of itself is not a huge effort. Yes there is the risk she applies and goes though the steps and ultimately fails due to “discrimination” but she could also apply and fail due to legit reasons or she could succeed.
        You cant win if you don’t play.

        1. dulcinea47*

          A friend of mine looked at who had been promoted in her workplace and found not only that the women who were hired had on average twice as much experience as men. Sexism is real and people are allowed to be discouraged by it.

        2. bamcheeks*

          You seem to be thinking that “succeed” is a positive outcome, but “get promoted, into an environment where the director doesn’t support me” is not necessarily a positive outcome!

          It is also EXHAUSTING trying to figure out whether you weren’t picked because of discrimination or another candidate was legitimately better than you. People are allowed to nope out of that stress!

    2. bamcheeks*

      It is very reasonable to conserve your energy for male-dominated hierarchies which have signalled they want to change, rather than ones which have stated they don’t want to. Absolutely admiration for the people who did fight those battles, but the existence of unfair practices doesn’t create a responsibility for people affected by those practices to fix them.

  38. Observer*

    #4 – Reference checks.

    Would they be eligible for hire if they came back as students? Would they be eligible for hire if they applied for a different non-student position at your organization? If so, they actually *are* eligible for rehire.

    The thing people want to know is “Would you be willing to give serious consideration to this person’s candidacy if they met the technical requirements, anywhere in your organization?” They don’t care if you would re-hire them in *this* particular position, but on an organizational level. And if your organization would not automatically dump their application, they are indeed eligible for re-hire.

  39. Another Hiring Manager*

    Where I am, “hiring team” means the person who will be the direct supervisor (hiring manager), the next manager up, and the person who can sign off on the salary. The hiring manager typically tells leadership who they want to hire, the next manager up will run the second interview with the person signing off on the salary doing a short, final approval.

    While the first interview is usually by panel, it’s made up of the hiring manager, people who hold similar positions, and possible peers. That depends on availability and ensuring we have a diverse panel.

    Your mileage may vary.

  40. Peanut Hamper*

    The real issue in #2 is that the opening manager forgot to load the money into the drawers. That’s where you need some error proofing. Maybe something you set on top of the register when you empty them out at night like a little flag, and then something you take down when the cash is loaded. Then anyone can look and know that there is money in the registers and someone with the authority to do this can ensure that it happens before you have a line of customers at the register.

    1. Pizza Rat*

      This. Solution over punishment.

      The work punishment made me twitch. That’s not a word I want to hear in a work setting.

    2. blupuck*

      This is perfect. A wonderful restaurant we enjoy has a similar process to make sure guests are greeted by a server quickly. When tables are ready for guests, a small vase of flowers is placed on the table. As part of the greeting procedure, the server takes the vase away. Staff can see at a glance how many tables are open and who needs to be greeted. I was amazed when I figured it out.
      A flag on the register would serve the same purpose. Perfect!

  41. i drink too much coffee*

    As a fellow government employee (also, ironically, currently in a drought watch that I have to do a bit of education on!), I love Alison’s response. They are entitled to information from their government, but I’m going to go ahead and assume if they’re mad at you, you’ve already given them that information and your job is done at that point. “I’m happy to explain more if you need it, but if you continue to be abusive, I will disconnect the call. I will go ahead and let you know that there are resources on this issue on our website and our social media.” (Or whatever makes sense for you). That way if they continue, **click** and you have done your job, and let them know where they can go if they can no longer continue the call.

  42. Czech Mate*

    LW 1 – honestly, if someone calls you a Nazi and you evenly say “I’m Jewish, so unlikely…” and then use the rest of Alison’s script, I could see the person backpedaling pretty quickly.

    Similarly, my husband was in a job interview a few years ago and the company owner said, “So, like, how would you respond if someone said something was [the R word]? You wouldn’t, you know, run to HR right away, would you?” My husband, taken aback, reflexively (and truthfully) said, “My mom is a special education teacher, so I’d just tell them that wasn’t okay.” Interviewer said something like “Oh…..” and the conversation died there.

  43. Coffee Protein Drink*

    LW4–I agree with Allison and you should say they would be eligible for rehire if they were a student since that’s all you hire. Anyone could go back for another degree or a master’s or PhD and be a student again.

  44. Mary Smith*

    OP5: I always ask for the names and titles of who I’ll be meeting with (including hiring teams) before the interview. I do a lot of research on them and tailor my answers to what’s most important to them.

  45. mm*

    “It has become apparent that my director has a preference for working with men, as he has openly expressed.”

    So the director is sexist, and he’s also quite stupid if he is openly saying he prefers to work with men. I hope LW3 is documenting these examples. However you can’t be upset over not getting a job you didn’t apply for. Unless there is some example of director hinting to her not to apply?

    I’m afraid I agree with the consensus that LW3 is blaming the wrong party, and should probably start planning an exit strategy if they have not already. I don’t think the friend has done anything wrong, except benefit from sexism. I guess altruistically he could have denied the position and told them to hire LW3.

  46. Dawn*

    LW1: If you wanted to leave your religion out of it (as Allison notes, some people will just escalate when they learn that,) you could maybe go instead with “Nazis killed my great-grandfather.”

    I’m not Jewish, and that statement could still be accurate for me – but especially in “God bless our troops” America that’s going to give a lot of people pause.

    1. Dawn*

      Agh I got her name wrong again why do I keep doing this

      I swear I checked but I cannot get it to stick properly in my head for love nor money

    2. BikeWalkBarb*

      Ah, this has potential. Personal enough to break through with the historical reminder but not revealing individual identities that could be targeted. In the past I’ve said “My dad fought the Nazis and they lost.”

  47. r..*

    LW1,

    most people in the US have had the opportunity to have a certain amount of history education, certainly enough so to understand why it is unacceptable to call someone who is not a Nazi a Nazi, without you having to expose yourself to further danger in order to make up for their own lack of thought.

    I’d also go out on a leg and state that most of the people that did call you Nazi in fact do know what they did, and that they should not have done so; they just didn’t think they’d have to _care_.

    In addition to what Alison has already suggested you might also want to clear with your supervisors if it would be okay for you — and morally, it is okay! you shouldn’t have to put up with people calling you a Nazi; but this is a blog abour career advise, not morals and ethics — to abbrevate those contacts further and instead of telling them that you will disconnect them if they persist, disconnect (or hand them over to your manager) them directly with the words “Sir/Ma’am, due to use of abusive language on your part l I have to disconnect you now. You will be contacted by a supervisor via phone or mail to discuss this matter further.”

    People have a right to free speech. They do not have a right to demand that other people listen to their speech, especially not if they’re abusive.

    By the way I read your post your organization does have a certain leeway how they treat infractions on drought restrictions, and while it would probably be prudent to put as much effort into education and outreach as reasonably practical before fining people, they don’t have to if people waste that opportunity on spewing invective. At that point might as well skip that part and go directly with the fine.

    But that’s probably a decision that’s better made above your pay grade, which is another reason to escalate those callers up as quickly as possible.

  48. Frosty*

    LW#2 shifting your mindset away from punishment is going to do you a lot of favours in your relationship with your team.

    Being honest with them is a huge step – letting them know that you made the same error that you’ve called out others for, and that you’re chagrined to realize that it was easier than you thought to make the error. You could apologize directly to those that you have “punished” for the error in the past.

    Then consider making a new process that makes it harder for the error to occur. Humans make mistakes – it’s one of our defining characteristics. If you can create a new way of doing this task, then it might not occur again – (maybe it has an extra step, maybe it’s done earlier in the shift before customers get there, maybe it’s always having 2 people doing the task with the 2nd person signing off that they witnessed it done properly… I’m not sure – you know your industry best but there are likely some ways you can change it so that the mistake is harder to make).

  49. catcommander*

    LW2: When Cao Cao moved against Zhang Xiu, it was close to harvest time and he decreed that any soldier that so much as broke a stalk of wheat in the fields would be executed. When Cao Cao’s own horse bolted into the field and trampled grain, he resolved his dilemma by cutting off his long hair to symbolically ‘execute’ himself.

  50. Youngin*

    I am tickled pink by Alison’s response to #2. I worked for quite a few restaurants before getting into my career and a massive part of why I left was because it felt like food service managers were more interested in punishing than being a good manager. I hope that GM takes what you said into consideration, I imagine it would make a lot of peoples lives better

    1. TA Teresa*

      Right? I don’t know how many times I quit restaurant jobs because I didn’t want to deal with someone being punitive for the sake of being punitive. Like, sure buddy, you get to wear the nice tie and all, but at the end of the day, my being 3 minutes late is a lot less egregious than is your doing whip-its in the back when you think no one’s looking.

  51. Pink Geek*

    LW5: the hiring panels at my current job are usually 4 people. They’ll include the position’s manager, a peer, a domain expert, and someone who does not identify as a man. (Filling out the panel with peers from there)

    The peer might be a domain expert or if our team is hiring our first X we might borrow an expert on X from another team. Same with the not-man. I’ve often sat on interview panels for other teams as the not-man and borrowed subject matter expert.

    The rational for having a not-man on the hiring panel is 1) to evaluate if the candidate (no matter their gender) will respect the expertise of all their colleagues 2) give them a chance to ask questions they might not want to ask someone presenting as a man. Our company is mostly men, maybe we’d have a not-woman rule too if we needed one.

    My previous job also had a rule about including a union rep on hiring committees.

    In a perfect world everyone should introduce themselves and explain why they’re there!

  52. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

    The question means “eligible for rehire for any position in the company at any time in the future” not just the specific position they left. Meaning unless you flagged their HR file as ineligible for cause – they are eligible.

    Half of my office is made up of former students who graduated, and then were rehired into a regular staff position. Heck, the President of our University went here as an undergrad, I think at some point she probably held a campus job. She left to other jobs and came back.

  53. New Jack Karyn*

    I’m irrationally angry at LW4. How many graduates has she tanked over the years? How many applications got trashed because of her answer? How many people went months and months getting nowhere in their job search because of this?

    I get that people are sometimes very literal, for several possible reasons, but–this affected other folks’ careers and their lives. I think a lot of commenters aren’t taking that seriously enough.

    2. Peanut Hamper*

      I’m there with you—that was my first thought.

      But I don’t think LW is in a position where they can go back and fix that. At least they are asking now.

    3. LJ*

      Probably not that many? How many jobs have you lost out on *at the reference check stage* without being able to explain yourself? Especially if the rest of the feedback was otherwise glowing

    4. Binky*

      I’m totally with you. Especially as OP apparently understood it was a problem to mark “no” but then did not consult their boss/hr person to ask what university policy was for answering that question. Getting confused by a question is understandable, but knowingly harming student employment chances and not even asking anyone if you’re doing it right is not.

      1. em_eye*

        Yeah, this is a really horrifying screw-up. In the mirror universe, there’s an AAM letter from a student or recent grad saying “I’ve been getting nowhere in my job search for months, I keep getting to the reference check stage and suddenly getting ghosted or denied. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong or why my former boss from work study who seemed to love my work would do this to me.” This is a case where intent vs. impact applies – even if the LW thought they were just interpreting the question in a particular way, depending on how long they’ve been giving references, they have very likely done genuine harm here.

        1. LJ*

          Really, would there be a multitude of jobs where the reference checker a) sends a form rather than having a conversation b) disregards all other feedback on the form for this one checkbox and c) ask no follow up questions to either the referee or the candidate? (again, this is a candidate that would’ve passed all the interviews and been one of the top candidates at that point). I’m not going to harp this point beyond this comment, but I really do think folks are catastrophizing a smidgen.

          1. em_eye*

            There really *shouldn’t* be a multitude of those cases, but honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were. I both check references and act as a reference myself pretty often. The good hiring managers are going to just call me up and ask in the first place – if they’re only sending a form (not even a personal email), and that form only has checkboxes with no space for additional context, no, they are not going to then call the hiring manager to get that added context. I mean, I don’t know for sure that these students have missed out on jobs as a result of this person’s mistake, but there’s really no reason to believe they haven’t.

            Why would a company choose to ask this question in such a way and not provide room for additional context if they didn’t act on that information?

      2. Orv*

        I’m one of those people who agonizes over stuff like this because I’m afraid of putting anything on a form that might be construed as a lie. In that situation I’d feel rather trapped between not wanting to hurt someone and not lying.

  54. samwise*

    OP 4.
    In higher ed, asking if the reference wants to be contacted about future openings often means “so that you can share them with students/colleagues (or even yourself)”

    Especially if these are entry level positions.

  55. CityMouse*

    I work with the general public and have been on the receiving end of harassment, and I give one warning and then hang up. This was signed off on by our bosses after some really nasty incidents.

  56. RPOhno*

    LW2, as someone working in a regulatory compliance field, I can tell you that all punitive action for anything other than intentional misconduct does is guarantee people don’t tell you about problems. This reads like a process breakdown, and so the really relevant question is not “how do I punish myself?” but “why was I able to do this in the first place?” Look into some basic root cause analysis tools, take this as an opportunity to change how you handle process and quality deviations and safety incidents. Frequently, when a foolish choice is made, it’s not malicious, it’s because the process in place has a gap. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it sounds like you’ve finally encountered a process breakdown so glaring that you can’t punish someone in lieu of fixing the actual systemic problem.

  57. Former Elected Official in Aryan Nations Area*

    This took me back to a blog post I wrote in 2012 about why the use of “Nazi” or “nazi” (either capitalization form) is unacceptable. It was wrong then, it’s wrong now.

    My basis for saying so at the time: Having served as an elected official in Idaho in the area that included the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations compound. When there’s a swastika on the sign hanging at the end of the driveway you don’t quibble over capitalization; you just press the accelerator to leave the area more quickly. And you sure as heck don’t doorbell that precinct.

    The unacceptability of stretching this term to refer to anyone who has strong feelings about an appropriate way to do something is even more true now that we have neo-whatevers storming the US capital in an insurrection, running their vehicles into crowds to kill protesters standing up for their beliefs, and trying to undo what’s left of representative democracy in the US.

    Why someone would feel the need to justify stale and offensive pop culture usage of the term is beyond me. Just don’t.

    1. Former Elected Official in Aryan Nations Area*

      The post is at biketoworkbarb.blogspot.com/2012/06/is-there-such-thing-as-lowercase-nazi.html.

  58. avskk*

    The references one seems weird to me. Those students are eligible for re-hire. They may not be eligible for student employment, but as graduated humans they’re surely eligible to be hired as regular employees. The question isn’t about specific positions — it’s about whether the employee is in good enough standing to rejoin the company at all. Why would you say otherwise good student workers are ineligible?

  59. TA Teresa*

    Hiring team: ask them! Usually the person who is scheduling the meetings will be able to give you the name, title, and LinkedIn link for anyone you will be speaking with. In very rare cases (think super-secretive niche hedge funds or companies that do very specific cybersecurity work), they may get a little cagey here, but in that case, they should be able to get on a phone call with you and talk you through it.

  60. Azure Jane Lunatic*

    LW2, in addition to whatever process improvement you make and owning it in public, you could say something like “I did this thing, it wasn’t okay, I would be very upset if anyone else had, and in recognition of that, I’m going to contribute $amount to the tip pool today.” Which will hopefully reinforce that it’s a good idea to call you on your errors, and show humility, while putting money in the pockets of those in your staff who are likely to need it the most.

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