am I too comfortable pumping at work, should you cite sources on a resume, and more

by Alison Green on August 19, 2024

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

1. Should you cite sources on a resume?

I’m in a required class for my university this semester about “learning to communicate in the workplace and the classroom.” (This is a university aimed at working adults. I’m in my 30s with a full-time job and a prior degree, so this required course feels a bit condescending to me right off the bat. I’m wondering if that’s coloring my view of this assignment.)

One of our first assignments is to create a resume using a suggested template, find an interesting job listing, and upload both to ChatGPT or Google Gemini for suggestions about how to tailor the resume to that specific job listing. Then, we’re supposed to write an essay about which suggestions we would accept and the ethics of using AI for resume help. The list of questions the essay should address includes, “Would you need to cite the tool? Why or why not?”

Am I wrong to think that that is an inherently silly question? I wouldn’t cite ChatGPT on my resume the same way I wouldn’t cite advice from a mentor, the university’s career, or my parents. Are people citing sources on their resumes? Is this a thing?

It’s not a thing! You do not cite sources on a resume. (What you would even cite most of the time? “Source: my W2’s 2019-2022”?)

Colleges really, really need to stop doling out resume advice because it never seems to be based on anything about how resumes actually work.

2. Pumping at work: how comfortable is too comfortable?

I am a manager in a government office where I specifically supervise a team of 4-6 people, but also occasionally supervise others on a case-by-case basis. I do not have the power to fire anyone, but I do performance evaluations for the people on my team and, realistically, if I pushed for someone to be fired, my boss would probably give it serious consideration. I am returning to work after maternity leave with my second child and, since my baby is breastfeeding, I will be pumping several times a day.

I am very fortunate to have an office of my own, an incredibly supportive boss, and a generally parent-friendly office culture, so I am not facing any of the usual problems a lot of breastfeeding people have to contend with.

My question is about how my pumping might affect others, specifically the people I supervise or am otherwise senior to. When I did this the first time, I thought nothing of saying, “I have to go pump now,” or “Let’s meet at 2:30 because I have to pump first.” I have a little sign I hang on my door while I’m pumping that says “Pumping, Do Not Disturb.” I kept my pump in my office and sometimes had my freshly cleaned pumping paraphernalia sitting on a table behind my desk to dry. I even, on a couple of occasions, pumped (whilst wearing a huge, tent-like drape, of course) during meetings in my office with one of my female supervisees who had volunteered (not in response to a question or suggestion from me) that she had no problem with my pumping while she was there. I also pumped during a meeting with my own supervisor who had also volunteered that she was fine with it. I was very comfortable with the whole thing.

But since then, I have been giving it some more thought and now I wonder, was I too comfortable? Should I not be referring to it so directly and make more of an effort to keep the equipment out of sight? Because, obviously, just because I am comfortable with people knowing that I am pumping, that doesn’t mean they are. Should I forgo pumping during meetings with people whom I supervise, even if they are the ones who suggest it? I am particularly concerned about this last because I think a woman is far more likely to make that suggestion than a man — indeed, I would be very surprised if any of the men I work with ever did anything of the kind — and I definitely don’t want anyone to feel they have less access to my time because of their gender.

I never got the feeling last time that anyone was uncomfortable with the way I handled it, but I realize that, given my position as a manager, people would not necessarily feel like they could express discomfort if they felt it (though I hope they would). What are your thoughts?

References to pumping and a sign on your door about pumping: Fine. Normal. If someone has a problem with that, that’s a them issue. You’re just being matter-of-fact when the info is relevant.

Having pumping equipment visible in your office: Also fine. Adults should be able to handle that.

Pumping during meetings: This is where I get warier. You’re right that you’re setting up a gendered system where the women you manage get that access while the men don’t (and where maybe some women could feel pressured to say they’re fine with it because others are), and I’d not do it for that reason.

3. Cover letter red flag or forgivable flub?

I posted a job for a public-facing position at a nonprofit. Less than an hour after the ad went live, I got an application from someone who seems like a great fit for the job, except that the cover letter he sent was addressed to a different organization with a glaring typo in that organization’s name. If not for the wrong addressee, the letter would be fine.

I’m curious for your thoughts on both sides of this. From my end, this seems like a big red flag for someone who will be doing written and in-person communication with our community. It also implies an impulsiveness that makes me hesitant. Okay, great, you’re excited about the job, but maybe put a little more time into the application? On the other side, although I’ve never made this mistake, I’ve made similarly mortifying email mistakes and I do feel for the applicant.

Is there a best practice in this circumstance, besides just writing it off as, I guess I’m not getting that job!? As the hiring manager, if this person came back immediately with an apology, I would be more inclined to do an interview, though I would set the bar higher than I would otherwise. As it stands, this person is unlikely to get on my interview list.

Eh, if he’d otherwise be a strong candidate, I wouldn’t let this be a deal-breaker. Pay attention for other signs of problems with attention to detail, yes, but I’m increasingly skeptical of ruling candidates out at the initial screen because they didn’t put more time into their application. It’s not reasonable to expect candidates to invest significant time into initial applications when so often they won’t hear anything back at all. Mistakes further along in the process can be a bigger problem — but I can’t get that worked up about a mistake at the application stage (particularly mistakes in the typo neighborhood; I’d care more about a factual error or, for a writing-heavy job, a weird tone).

You asked about best practices for the candidate. I wouldn’t advise writing back to an employer correcting a simple typo; that’s excessive. On the other hand, if it’s the name of the organization, probably. Keep it brief and light — “My apologies, I realize you are in fact the Groats Association of Nebraska, not the Toast Tipplers of Michigan!”

4. Celebrating a milestone months later

I work on a team that doesn’t really have team celebrations as part of its culture, I think because our executive doesn’t care to spend money they don’t “have to,” but I’d like to change that.

A few months ago, I approached my boss about taking a working team out to a modest lunch to celebrate a successful launch. It was a group of six, including me. I’d even be open to taking them to the on-campus cafeteria if that’s all we have the budget and social capital for. I’ve been told my boss has been waiting for an answer from their boss since then. It’s been three months. Personally, I think the timeliness has passed and it might foster some resentment and thoughts of “Why did it take this long to celebrate this launch? Are we not worth celebrating when the milestone actually happens?” (The morale on the team overall isn’t great, hence why I’ve been trying to inject some positivity and recognition.) On the other hand, some might say a late celebration is better than none at all. I’ve already thanked the working team profusely for a successful delivery, shared the accomplishment with our group’s executive, and done everything I can do without any budget to work with.

Should I just tell my boss to forget about it since it’s been so long, or is it still worth waiting on an answer that may never come? Before anyone asks, gift cards are a touchy subject and a bit verboten due to the tax implications and potentially being seen by finance as a form of compensation, no matter how small the value.

Yeah, it’s going to seem strangely belated at this point — unless there’s another milestone to tie it to (“it just got kudos in an industry magazine”) or another logical way to explain the timing (“now that Frank is back from leave”). In theory you could do it at the end of the year (“looking back at the year, this was a major accomplishment”). But eh, I think you’re probably better off talking to your boss about having a small budget for this kind of recognition generally, which would be approved ahead of time so that you can pull from it as needed without waiting months for a yes.

That said, the fact that your boss has (allegedly) been waiting months for approval for something so small probably says that either she hasn’t pushed it much or it’s just not something they’re ever going to do.

5. Are thank-you cards from an intern too much?

I have a dilemma on how I want to say thank you in leaving the company I’ve been an intern at for the last three summers. The atmosphere here is fun, laidback, and friendly yet professional. I’ve made a handful of close relationships with my coworkers/mentors during my time here and since I am graduating this winter I won’t be back to intern next summer, so a handshake and a “goodbye” seems insufficient this time.

As a person who has a hard time expressing deeper feelings on the fly, I thought that writing short thank-you cards to the handful of people who impacted me most during my time here would be fitting. Is this inappropriate to do as an intern? I want to be able to give individual thanks to my manager and mentors during my time here without going over the top. I’ve been very thankful for all they’ve taught me during my time here, and hope to continue some of the friendships I’ve formed here after my completion. Naturally I go around on my last day saying goodbye to the staff, it’s just this time it’s more permanent and I want to let them know that a positive impact was left on me.

Do it! Assuming you’re going to include specifics about why you appreciated working with them (not just sign your name on a thank-you card), this is by far the most meaningful goodbye gift anyone can give. Most people love receiving this kind of note; many of us keep them for years, and it will solidify the good will people already have toward you. 100% do it!

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{ 427 comments }

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  1. A/g commenter*

    LW4: it’s too late to make this a celebration of your project. Move on and make it an end of year event instead.

    1. Certaintroublemaker*

      And in the future, just go pick up bagels and coffee, a cake, whatever makes sense for your group, and let them know you are celebrating the successful launch. (Even though, yes, major project budgets should include a launch celebration.)

      1. Pink Sprite*

        While it would be a very nice gesture for the OP to buy coffee and donuts or bagels for the team, it could likely start an unwanted trend in the department and/or company.
        Plus, it’s an expenditure that the company should pay for, not individual managers. Because of the money issue, and the potentiality of some managers doing something very small and inexpensive and other managers going much bigger and more expensive.

        1. TheBunny*

          I agree. While it’s a nice gesture, things like this tend to then become the expected norm.

          And, not everyone will have the ability (financial or otherwise) to do this for their teams. That’s also got the potential to get sticky.

      2. Acronyms Are Life (AAL)*

        I actually think OP should try this if they have the capacity and some leverage in the office. I would get something like donuts and coffee/tea, because it’s relatively low budget, and then submit it as an expense. That way OP is not breaking the bank if it’s rejected, and perhaps can get the attention of someone in management to start allocating a small fund for celebration.

      3. Person from the Resume*

        No. The manager should not have to pay out her own pocket.

        And I work for the government so I disagree that major project launches should include a launch celebration because the tax payers would object to that,

        1. Reebee*

          Would they, though? I mean, that’s money right back into the local economy viz. bakery, cafe’, etc. Individual taxpayers, sure, but en masse? Meh.

          1. Fishchurch*

            I work for a government body, and spending our public funds for celebrations like this is expressly forbidden.

          2. JustaTech*

            For ten people who would think that, or just not care, there is one person who would be irate about “misuse of MY tax dollars!” and would complain loudly to their elected representative, or the media, so that one angry person means no snacks.

  2. AcademiaNut*

    For #1 I will note that I’ve recently seen scientific journals and grant proposal systems that require that you state if AI tools were used in the research or the writing, and in what way. So you wouldn’t cite Chat-GPT in the same way you would a paper, but you would be required to state that you, for example, used it to polish your grammar, or create an initial outline.

    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Ah, maybe that’s where it’s coming from.

      (I’d originally had a sentence in the response that said, “Moreover, even if we did cite sources on resumes — which we do not — ChatGPT is not a source, just as Google is not a source” which I will remove for the sake of clarity.)

      1. Another librarian*

        Agree with this discussion – the assignment is getting the student to think about AI uses and citation practice. A point that I haven’t seen made though is that it’s probably not a great idea to feed a document full of personal information into these systems. See also: Feeding them company confidential documents, etc.

        1. sparkle emoji*

          Yeah, I think this framing is a better way to think about it LW, at least until the class is over. This assignment is going to be more useful as a way to consider the pros and cons of AI than real practical resume advice. This sounds like a class with a broad mandate and the professor is combining requirements in a way that seems clumsy but it will be over soon enough.

        2. Quill*

          Yeah, I think this was put together badly from a different perspective than Alison might be coming at it: the first question should be would it be safe / appropriate to use the program, the second should be is it reliable for this use, the THIRD should be whether it must be acknowledged. From what the class is described as, they’ve skipped the first two in a slightly concerning way for a college course at all.

          (That gap may be made up for by other assignments of course.)

          1. Rebelx*

            Completely agree. I think the word choice of “cited,” especially in a college course context, brings to mind the kind of citations you put in research papers, but I think the question is likely trying to get the students to reflect on whether the use of “AI” tools should be *disclosed*. I also don’t see anything prescriptive about it… the professor is not saying the students *should* “cite” the tool, just asking them to think about some of the issues around using these things.

        3. LW 1*

          I spent five minutes grumpily removing all the actual personal information off my resume for this assignment. ChatGPT doesn’t get anything more information than “nonprofit organization in City, State” and certainly not my name and contact information!

          Frankly, when I saw that question on the assignment, I thought “what the fuck do you mean, would I cite it?? of course not??” so I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t completely off-base as technology is advancing!

      2. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

        Agreed that the goal is to get students to think about how/when to use AI and whether/how to cite it.

        A resume might be not quite the right work product for this kind of assignment, but we’ve had to grapple with it the past few years, as well. As of this year, we have an AI policy and are teaching about it in professional responsibility (example 1: lawyer gets sanctioned for submitting a brief written by ChatGPT with fully made up citations that lawyer never checked for accuracy). A resume seems silly, though, as no one cites anything in a resume.

    2. Brain the Brian*

      That’s where my mind went, too. Management at my company is asking us to tell them if we use AI as part of polishing a presentation now — not as a punitive measure, just to see whether it’s making a difference in overall quality. I can see how some fields would see it as a vital part of acknowledging all the tools you used to finish research. But on a resume? I still don’t think it’s necessary there.

      1. Polly*

        My company has made this easy for us: the use of AI is forbidden. Of course this could change, but it’s a strict company policy as of now.

        1. Bookworm*

          No one in my office uses AI, but one definite it use for it would be writing basic emails, etc. Some coworkers write and spell so badly that I do hope they start using AI for this.

            1. Not A Raccoon Keeper*

              Wait, aren’t we a few generations past that already? Looking at you, Mavis Beacon (thanks for teaching me to type!)

              1. DJ Abbott*

                I suppose it might as well be machines, since whoever was supposed to teach Bookworm’s colleagues failed!

            2. Brain the Brian*

              We work in multiple countries, and for many of my coworkers, English is their second, third, or even fourth language. Management recognizes that AI can help these folks get their thoughts out in English much more quickly and legibly than writing it all 100% themselves, so they’re okay with its use. They just want to know when it’s going on.

              1. Quill*

                We also used to hire people with some language training specifically for international teams so that there would be backup, in case the team’s grasp of English as the language of business hit some snags, which is probably what we’ll have to get back to if constantly changing language models readability degrades the way some applications (a lot of spell checks) already have.

                1. Brain the Brian*

                  In a couple of countries where we work, we are legally required because of the nature of our business registration to have all-local staff except for one senior manager, who can’t possibly proofread every document before it leaves the building. Even though our local staff have training in English, I know that many of them are embarrassed when they get back long lists of grammar corrections from our HQ in the U.S. or from clients / vendors / etc. I’m perfectly happy to let AI LLMs help them out when they’re drafting stuff in this case, and their English writing has shown a very marked improvement — not just in grammar, but also in the level of detail they can discuss coherently — since starting to use them.

          2. MigraineMonth*

            I don’t think we need AI for that. We had spell check, grammar check and even sentence prediction long before ChatGPT came along. From what I’ve heard, Grammarly used to be a lot *better* before it jumped on the AI bandwagon.

        2. Quill*

          I just took a weirdly positive course on our policy that didn’t cover what I would expect it to (Never add info that could ID a client, etc… which makes it basically forbidden for any actual use at my job, but is not necessarily a problem for the whole organization) and swung wildly between vagueness of “well obviously you have to rewrite everything it says and double check every source” (At which point: faster to have never used it!) and when I clicked that I wouldn’t be using it for my job, weirdly conciliatory, with “that’s OK! It’s not for everyone but we hope you’ll feel more comfortable in the future!”

          So I think there are a lot of very bad, panic-built super general AI use trainings and lessons going on about now.

          1. Brain the Brian*

            Definitely the case. IME, most of the people who design these trainings haven’t really thought through the types of work done by the people who will be taking training. To be fair, though, that’s also the case for the majority of other trainings at my company — from IT security to contracts compliance and on and on. On contracts compliance, for instance, our trainers will run through the list of applicable standard terms, conditions, and regulations — most of which are kind of impossible to break if you’re using an ounce of common sense and not trying to intentionally break the law (and if you are trying to break the law on purpose, a training telling you not to isn’t going to stop you) — but flatly ignore common provisions about reporting (which can vary by contract), closeout, and actual implementation details that concern the project team and are easier to break accidentally. It’s idiocy in action, but there’s no impetus to change it at least at my org.

    3. Emmy Noether*

      I was thinking this too – they’re trying to apply the same ethical rules for a CV as for a research paper or a class assignment.

      The same rules don’t apply! You don’t have to write your CV yourself, you don’t have to list authors, and you don’t have to cite sources. The only requirement is that the information is accurate*. (If you are one of those people that put a famous quote on your CV, do attribute that correctly though, please.)

      That’s probably what I would expound on in that essay.

      *and that’s where AI can become a problem if someone doesn’t know they have to go over it again to excise the BS afterwards.

      1. Mary*

        I don’t know, given some of the ethical quandries around ai tools (theft of work, amount of power used, etc.) I think it’s a good discussion point for a college class even if you think he answer is, “no, of course not.”

        1. Ai*

          Yes, especially as it’s one of the first assignments, it sounds like the point is to get you to think critically about how AI is used, which seems like a timely and appropriate thing for a college to get its students to do.

        2. Neon highlighter*

          I agree – the assessment is not creating a CV, it’s discussing AI and ethics (and look here’s a CV you’ll have at the end too). That’s highly relevant. And students do need to be explicitly prompted to think through how citing practices vary in workplaces from assignments.

          This is about LW identifying a position and being able to defend it.

          1. BethDH*

            Yeah, I’ve been involved in preparing this sort of course and most assignments are trying to accomplish multiple things. This one has components of research, critical analysis of the research they find, writing for a particular format, and ethics. I suspect they just hit on a resume as something relatively short that is likely relevant to everyone no matter their major.
            If this is the case, though, it sounds like they didn’t do a great job explaining the assignment’s purpose to the students.

            1. Smithy*

              Explaining it poorly is a possibility – but I remember being a grad student and not always quite getting the distinction between those higher-level academic exercises and professional world practicums.

              In my case, the program had a nonprofit management focus – and a number of us students really wanted an area that went over grant writing. To our administration’s credit they kept on saying there was no academic merit in doing that – but we pushed, so they gave us some kind of short elective mini-course. It was only after I graduated and got a job that their explanations made sense. Writing grants is a technical process of following the rules, and different grants have different rules and can have vocabulary you need to know – but none of that really falls academic consideration.

              I was an older grad student looking for this program to give me the degree, improve my employment prospects, etc. If I learned more about how academia was studying philanthropy, neato – but it wasn’t my #1 focus. So I’m coming at this with a lot of understanding where maybe the professor did give that insight – but when students hear CV, their minds are immediately going to practical use and just not as open to hear the other possibilities.

              1. bamcheeks*

                hen students hear CV, their minds are immediately going to practical use

                Specifically, they’re often thinking about “practical use as job applicants“, since that’s the role they are more mostly used to thinking of themselves in. But if you’re teaching at university, you’re also conscious that you’re educating the next generation of managers and leaders, and some of the assignments should be getting you to think practically about how you’ll implement policy and initiate change in response to technology!

                1. Smithy*

                  Absolutely! I’m just bringing a bit of former humility from my former experience as a student where those finer distinctions can get lost when you’re bringing a more pragmatic mind of how X applies to your professional life.

                  I think this dynamic can also create a bad faith loop between students and professors. If the professors think that most students will ultimately just see this as a lesson about preparing a CV for their job hunt, then they won’t try harder to explain the larger ambitions of the assignment. And just figure, those who get it will get it, those who won’t won’t – and now I’ve saved myself 15-30 min of time to work on other things.

              2. A Not-Crappy Career Advisor*

                This is off the original topic but it sounds to me like the admin didn’t have a sense of how to generalize a grant application well enough to teach a useful course. Yeah, every grant/agency has its own rules (whether it’s the order of the parts or using a specific platform like Grants.gov), but nearly all applications require things like a project description, justification, budget, impact statement…those are the sorts of things a course could instruct on, in much the same way it’s possible to give general advice on resumes and then on how to tailor one for a specific job. Source: I used to teach that grants course.

                1. le sigh*

                  Agree with this. In addition to the list of common requirements, learning to write for grants is different from other forms of writing — the tone, style, structure, etc. I have worked with people who have had zero training in grants and people who have taken a decent intro course and it makes a difference.

                  A well-designed class gives you some basic guidance and practice on understanding the commonly asked questions (how to answer, what info you need), mistakes to avoid, how to tailor your proposal and adjust your writing style/tone to different audiences, the types of funding you can persue, etc. You can also sometimes learn the basics of government grants v. academic grants v. grants from private foundations — all of which can be very different.

          2. Nancy*

            Exactly, the professor isn’t giving resume advice, they are giving an ethics assignment. LW has to choose a position and should why they think it’s the correct one.

            We normally don’t cite sources on resumes because there was never any outside source to cite. AI is changing that.

            1. Nancy*

              Oh, I guess people do use professional resume writers. Still, it’s a course
              Assignment, not advice.

            2. A Not-Crappy Career Advisor*

              How is AI changing that? It still isn’t providing information that the resume writer doesn’t have, and if it is, the problem is writing a falsified resume, not whether the material is cited.

              1. sparkle emoji*

                I agree that AI is not changing that, but I can see the instructor wanting students to consider why it would be different for a resume vs paper or take the time to write an argument about why or why not. I get why the LW finds the exercise silly(I would too).

              2. I strive to Excel*

                Because the AI models themselves present an ethical challenge for people, as they are built off datasets that people did not consent to provide.

                But even then, your argument might be a result the professor is looking for! “I wouldn’t cite it because it’s no different from taking my resume to a professional resume writer” sounds like it would be a valid take.

                1. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

                  Right. The data sets don’t come from nowhere; there are ethical questions surrounding their use generally.

                  To use an immediate example, it has clearly crawled AAM, because it will happily write you a cover letter in the style of Alison Green, correctly answer various questions about the site, and provide job advice “as if from Ask a Manager” that usually *sounds* like Alison‘a writing style but may or may not be advice she would give. Including invented quotes “by Alison” and scripts.

                  Is this ethical? Should you be able to use it? Should you use it for these purposes? Should you tell someone if you did? Should Alison get compensation for having her examples mashed together and regurgitated by a for-profit piece of software? What if that for-profit software reproduced something more or less exactly—copyright violation or chance? What if you asked it to make you a logo similar to her branding to put on your letterhead? These kinds of things are in active discussion right now; it’s not as straightforward as a lot of people might think. And yes, the discussions often start with small things, like “should you tell people if you’re using it?”

        3. Emmy Noether*

          Oh, I agree that it’s good to discuss the ethical use of AI in various contexts.

          I just don’t think that an essay prompt that can be answered with “of course not, duh” is a good prompt. Discussing the use of AI for CVs would be a good essay prompt. Discussing the need to cite AI in papers would be a good prompt. The combination is nonsensical, because then it’s about how CVs don’t have citations, not about AI.

          1. bamcheeks*

            “standards for academic papers are different from standards for applications because they’re doing two different jobs, and assignments done as part of work are a third thing” is actually a really useful thing to draw out and discuss with students. It’s really normal to learn these things as rules without considering why, and it means people can’t extrapolate to other situations, so you get people scared to use coding libraries or templates because It’s Not Their Own Work, or on the flipside using gen-AI or template cover letters that don’t actually convey any distinguishing information about the candidate.

            1. Emmy Noether*

              That is, indeed, also a good discussion to have, but it’s also not the question that was asked.

              There are so many directions adjacent to this question to take this (also, if you read “citation” as just “marking that AI was used”, that’s yet another valid discussion). That’s maybe ok for a live discussion starter, but for a written assignment, you shouldn’t start with a nonsense question that people then have to spin into something valid. Be clear what the question is. If it’s “are standards for academic papers different from standards for applications, and if yes, why?”, then ask that!

              1. bamcheeks*

                I don’t actually agree that it’s not the question that was asked! I think it’s a perfectly valid thing to include under “why not”.

                I mean, we don’t know the broader context of this assignment and whether it’s standalone, preparation for a class discussion or intended to come after these things have been explored in class discussion. We don’t know what the marking rubric is. We don’t even know if the assignment is formative or summative.

                So yes, it might well be a badly-drafted question which leads the student in the wrong direction, or it might be intended to provoke exactly the kind of discussion that’s happening her. I can’t agree that it’s an inherently bad question without knowing a lot more!

          2. Snow Globe*

            But many college students probably don’t know whether to cite sources in their resume, so this could be a good point of discussion (assuming that the professor in this class is aware of that and the point is to get people thinking about it.)

            1. A Not-Crappy Career Advisor*

              I’ve been doing this job upwards of 15 years and I have never once had a student ask whether they need to cite sources on their resume.

        4. HB*

          Came here to say something similar.

          I was not aware of the scientific journals/grant requirement, but even on a basic level I think it’s a perfectly appropriate question because the key here is the “Why or Why not.”

          It’s a reflective question designed to get the student to analyze why they think the way they do rather than just regurgitating memorized facts. Yes, it’s absolutely ridiculous for the LW because they’re well beyond that level. It would never occur to them to cite something on a resume, but they’re not an average 18 year year old whose main survival mechanism is to simply follow instructions blindly and to the letter – irrespective of whether they actually read or understood the instructions in full.

          If you’re an 18 year old who has been told to cite their sources on every single writing assignment they’ve ever turned in, and now they’re told to write a resume and not their *own* resume, but essentially a fictional one… is it outside the realm of possibility that you would default to “what do I cite and how?” And if you didn’t, and then you get to that question on the essay prompt, would you have a moment of panic thinking “Oh god, was I supposed to cite my sources?”

          The LW knows it’s an inherently silly question, because they know the actual purpose of citation and it doesn’t apply to a resume, but not every 18 year old does. They cite their sources because they’ve been told to, and the question is designed to make them, well, question that.

        5. Smithy*

          This is exactly where my mind went.

          That this is an interesting question to consider ethically – as well as perhaps seeing how that more layered aspect of using AI can level a playing field in the way that personal networks or family connections could in the past. If I’m applying to a law firm and have a parent that’s a lawyer – showing a resume/cover letter to that parent for their feedback would never be cited. But also the applicant themselves would still be in that position of deciding if their parent’s advice was too dated or just inaccurate for how CV’s work now. The applicant is still making those critical thinking decisions of what to finally submit and evaluating the result of the “help”.

          I will say that personally the one area of applications where I’m not sure how I fall on the ethical scale has been writing samples. It’s really common in my industry to ask for them with job applications – but also they ask for the samples to be entirely your work. To me that’s always been an ethical knot where I’ve always taken it as a bad faith request. I don’t work in a field where anything I write is 100% my own work. And if anything, it’s not great practice to do so. All to say, for an ethics class – all very interesting questions to think about. But I definitely have never slept badly at night knowing I submitted work samples that were not 100% my own work.

          1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

            AI is not going to level the playing field. AI is just an amalgam of everything on the subject so it cannot speak to a specific field. It is bland, lacks individuality and often wrong. It very well could say send in your resume to a law firm on a white shoe.

            Yet a third attorney got ensnared by using AI for legal research and the cases didn’t exist.

            I would be incredibly wary of any so-called advice that I got from AI on my resume.

        6. Hester Prynncess*

          Yeah, I’m a professor, and this is clearly an assignment geared toward getting students to discuss the ethics and conventions surrounding our evolving AI use, which is an absolutely important conversation we should be having right now as a society.

          It’s not a blanket recommendation to cite AI at the end of every document, including resumes and cover letters — otherwise, the end of the question wouldn’t be, “Why or why not?” It would simply be, “Why should you cite this?”

          The person wants to see/hear students’ longform reasoning around the ethics of common attribution practices in a professional environment. So, not a silly question at all.

      2. Language Lover*

        But they’re not telling the students what to do. They’re asking the students to think about whether or not they should.

        And that’s all part of AI literacy that many schools feel they need to address.

        1. A Mechanic*

          Hard agree. I didn’t read this assignment as resume advice, or only incidentally (because to argue for or against the LLM suggestions you need to have a grasp of what is and is not relevant on a resume in the first place!), but more about the use of AI/LLMs in the workplace and the ethical questions this raises.

          1. sparkle emoji*

            Yeah, this feels like a broad “job skills” class that everyone is required to take from my reading of the letter. It’s likely going to be a mile wide and an inch deep in terms of the depth on any topic covered. The instructor is hopefully using this as an exercise on AI in the workplace or job market, not practical resume writing advice, because that’s best case scenario here.

          2. Friendo*

            It seems like a pretty bad prompt if that’s what they’re getting at. If the goal is to talk about AI in the workplace, it should be about product produced in the workplace, not a resume. The ethical questions involved are very different!

        2. Hannah Lee*

          But they’re not telling the students what to do. They’re asking the students to think about whether or not they should.

          And I would hope that at least one student would come back with an argument that it is not a good thing to upload their personal information, job history, CV to Chat GPT or whatever AI and why.

      3. Irish Teacher.*

        I wondered if it was…sort of the opposite, that they wanted students to be clear that the same rules don’t apply. Like the stuff about should you cite Chat GPT was a question, so it’s possible that the correct answer was “no” and that they wanted the students to expand on how a resume differs from a research paper.

        Perhaps they had students in the past who thought the rules for research papers would also apply to resumes and they wanted to see if students were aware of the differences.

        I wonder if what you would expound on is exactly the answer they were looking for.

        1. Emmy Noether*

          Maybe? But if one has to wonder what they were looking for, it’s a badly phrased question.

          1. a clockwork lemon*

            The whole point of a discussion question is there may not actually be a “correct” answer. The goal of the question is to get students engaging with and analyzing the question itself. If you’re trying to address a VERY BROAD question of “ethics and AI in the workplace” it’s probably a pretty good starting point. How is a resume different from other types of work you’ve made in the past? What is the point of a resume at all? If using AI isn’t cheating in this context, is it “cheating” in the workplace?

            This thread is a perfect example of why it actually IS a pretty good discussion question to use in an undergraduate class about communication.

            1. Hush42*

              This. I have an Associates Degree, Bachelor’s Degree, and an MBA and what I realized throughout my time working on those is that the higher you go in education the less professors are looking for one “correct” answer. (Obviously this doesn’t apply to areas where there *is* only one correct answer- i.e. Math). Especially on essay assignments. They are looking for students to take a position, any position, and craft a well reasoned argument for said position. I would bet that this teacher does not care if OP writes on why it should be cited or why it shouldn’t be cited so long as they can articulate and defend either position in a well written essay. A comment in the thread above said the question should be more nuanced than can be answered with “Of course not, duh”. But the whole point of many assignments is to take questions that feel like that on the surface and examine why you believe that to be the case. Honestly, as a manager I *want* incoming employees to be able to look at something and go deeper than “of course not”.

      4. Leaving academia*

        I agree with the others that say they aren’t trying to apply the same rules to a resume and class assignment. It IS a class assignment. A resume also does not come with an essay about the process of writing the resume.

    4. Joron Twiner*

      Yes, this is how I interpreted it. “Cite” meaning “disclose use of AI tools” not “add a footnote in MLA style”. The school setting may actually be a red herring.

      I don’t think you would need to disclose use of AI tools in writing a resume because our current norms don’t require disclosure of any resume-writing aids, whether that’s a template, a friend, a professional resume writer… But I think that is the question they want you to think about.

      1. StarryStarryNight*

        I agree – “cite” is the wrong word, but in the industry I work in, where intellectual property and authorship are big issues, people are always expected to make any use of AI transparent. In fact, just a few weeks ago during a job interview, the person applying asked what our processes for this were, and we all saw it as a point in her favour that she would bring up this complex, important issue.

      2. Jo*

        This is what I came to say. The aim of this is to get you thinking about the ethics of AI in your work or to get jobs. My first thought was that it would be like using a Canva template to format a resume, so no, unnecessary.

        But if for example you asked ChatGPT to redraft your CV and highlight your leadership experience, and it did so in a way that *perhaps* made you sound more experienced than you would have otherwise, would that matter? I’m still on the side of no because you could ask a friend who is a strong writer to do the same and end up with the same results.

        But the thought experiment of where would you need to draw the line on disclosing that ChatGPT (or someone/something else) had helped on a CV could make for some fun discussion in a university ethics class!

    5. WheresMyPen*

      That’s what I thought. Rather than citing AI as a source, I wonder if they’re asking if you think you should reference using it since it wouldn’t all be your own work.

    6. kalli*

      Plus the whole point of the assignment isn’t resume advice, it’s meant to get you thinking about when/how you can use AI correctly and the discussion should include ‘this kind of document doesn’t traditionally require sources, but other documents might’ and ‘the resume speaks to your capacity for language and knowledge of the usual structure for this kind of document and people will be judging your abilities based on it so using AI for this might give an inaccurate sense of that’. They’re not saying and haven’t said to cite whatever AI was used as a source and aren’t saying ‘this is how you do a resume’, they’re trying to teach about appropriate and honest uses of AI in the workplace.

      Which, given the amount of integrations AI already has in work-related software, is probably better done even if it is this clumsy, than not at all.

    7. Richard Hershberger*

      I am curious: do they define “AI” for purposes of disclosure? It seems in practice to be more of a marketing than a technical term. My guess is they mean generative AI using large language models, but it more expansively could include stuff like Grammerly.

      1. AnotherSarah*

        This is a great question–I think they mean LLMs, but questions of other AI tools are a good addition to the ethics part! (We discuss them in my classes.)

    8. AnonInCanada*

      Now that’s a new twist. So, if I were to run a resume through Grammarly to check if I should be phrasing items in a “warmer” tone, would I have to state that on my resume as well? How about a dictionary to make sure your spelling was accurate? That seems a bit absurd to me.

    9. Penny Pingleton*

      Well, LW#1, this thread, with all its insightful comments, provides the ethics discussion for your paper. Do you cite AAM’s commentariat as a source?

    10. iglwif*

      This is what I was thinking, too. I personally would absolutely never use ChatGPT for the purpose of matching my resume or cover letter to a job posting, but having just had to work with an outplacement services company after being laid off, can confirm it is advice they are giving people. (And giving it very loudly and confidently.)

      And if I were reviewing resumes and cover letters, especially for a role involving communications and analyzing information, I would absolutely want to know if someone had used ChatGPT in writing their application materials. (I would also want to know if they had a friend/spouse/parent write their cover letter for them. The fact that people do this is why so many interview processes include stuff like writing assignments.)

      I think “citing sources” is the wrong framing here, because everyone is right that citing sources on a resume is ridiculous.

    11. Diluted Tortoiseshell*

      Yeah I actually think that this assignment is really good! It makes you think critically about the tools and will likely demonstrate how very very similar all the resumes are if they discuss and compare in class.

      Props to the prof for training them on a new tool that’s not well understood in a way that’s relatable and going to show the limitations.

    12. linger*

      You absolutely should cite the AI tool for the purpose of the college assignment since you need to specify which alterations come from that source as part of the assignment.
      But that has little to do with whether you should cite the AI tool if following the same procedure for a real-world job application. The assignment requires you to make the ethical argument either way. For example, there are potentially real-world consequences around ownership of AI-generated text. This is not relevant for a resume: as a non-published work, with the sole purpose of conveying accurate information about the applicant, it is not subject to the same standard of disclosure for wording as a work submitted for publication. But it could be quite relevant for, e.g., a writing sample provided as part of an application for a position generating content.

      1. linger*

        We could also consider an intermediate real-world case: a third party resume-rewriting service, using information supplied by a client. This is much closer to the actual situation these students are being given, with source information supplied, and the wording of the text subject to negotiation.
        In this case, the client’s “ownership” of the resume is established by their ownership of the source information, and by the terms of their contract with the rewriting service (to which the hiring manager is not a party).
        Under the terms of that contract, the service arguably should disclose to the client if some portions of text were generated using AI, and also ideally identify those portions, since those parts may less accurately convey the client’s information. (In any case, the client should check the product for accuracy of information before sending it on, because that is what matters to the hiring manager.)
        But then, when the client makes their application, they do not in turn need to disclose the use of AI to the hiring manager, just as they do not need to disclose the use of a rewriting service.

    13. AnotherSarah*

      Yes, this is what I was thinking. If you use it even for an abstract, you note that–so it’s not a citation like a footnote, but it needs noting. (Still not sure this should apply to resumes/CVs though.)

    14. smirkette*

      In some disciplines, it’s practice to cite the software application and version—personally thinking of statistic packages—along with source data. This is in theory so other people can try to replicate your study, and to flag any issues that may arise from software bugs.

  3. Nodramalama*

    For LW2 interesting, I don’t think I’d be uncomfortable with slmeone pumping in front of me, the same way I’m not uncomfortable with a mother needs to feed their baby out in the world.

    1. justcommenting*

      I think standards for what’s in public are much looser and fluid. For example, if I saw someone (of any gender) walking around in a swimsuit in public, even if we weren’t near a beach, I still wouldn’t care. But it would be very jarring and bizarre to see a coworker in a swimsuit walking around the office.

      1. Brain the Brian*

        It’s the “semi-captive audience” phenomenon that AAM has continually referenced over the years. The bar is higher when people can’t escape, so to speak.

        As a data point, I — a gay man — would be uncomfortable if my female boss were pumping in a closed-door meeting with me, but probably not if we were just in the general open office while we all worked independently. I don’t really feel like analyzing why my mind works that way — just stating it for reference.

        1. Nodramalama*

          I think we all have different associations that make things weird/normal, acceptable/not acceptable right?

          It’s like that conversation ages ago about whether people should feel empowered to walk around offices in bare feet. My brain automatically went omg no, I hate feet. Why do I hate feet and do not think they are work appropriate? Dunno. But I do.

            1. Jeanine*

              When I worked in an office I took my shoes off at my desk all the time. And now I work from home and I’m either barefoot or in sock feet every single day. Love it.

        2. Emmy Noether*

          I definitely see a difference between “interacting with someone face-to-face while feeding/pumping” and “being in the same room/within line-of-sight while feeding/pumping”. The first I only did with close family and friends, but I was fine with feeding on a literal park bench (not pumping, though. Pumping weirdly felt more intimate).

          1. nodramalama*

            Yeah that’s interesting. Obviously it depends on the woman, but I have a lot of acquaintances/women I kind of know who have breast fed in front of me very matter of fact. I was at a work lunch last week and one of our colleagues came from her mat leave and breast fed at lunch. And it really only registered with me because I happened to be looking at her at the time.

          2. StressedButOkay*

            As a ciswoman who has no children, my only experience with pumping was with a friend about 11 years ago. I had no issue with it BUT the pumping machine was incredibly loud. I’m sure (hope?) we’ve come a long way but depending on the pumping machine, it could just in general be distracting. On top of having a semi-trapped audience and varying levels of comfort – it seems like OPs office is really flexible and I’d continue to take advantage of that. Move/shorten meetings to make time for private pumping.

            1. Not A Raccoon Keeper*

              Pumps have come a lot further! My friend even has these battery-powered ones that are boob-shaped, and she just pops them in like a really big bra cup and goes about her life. I think they were also really quiet – you wouldn’t have known except that they made her boobs even bigger than her breastfeeding norm.

          3. Hannah Lee*

            The distinction between “interacting with someone face-to-face” vs just being in the same room clarified something that hit me when reading @Nodramalama’s comment equating “feeding a baby out in the world” and “someone pumping in front of me”

            It’s that I’m comfortable with someone feeding a baby out in the world, or feeding a baby in the same room, line of sight of me, whether that’s happening through a bottle, breast feeding, a spoon, or asynchronously by pumping.

            But if I’m having a one on one with my manager, or even a small group meeting with her, I wouldn’t be as comfortable. Not because I don’t want it done in my presence, but because it would feel like a distraction for one or both of us. Especially with the power differential, particularly in something like a one on one.

            Like, if I were the manager and pumping, it might seem like I could just say “it’s not a big deal, it’s not a distraction to me to pump while we’re having your one on one” because I might be able to concentrate just fine. (it’s not primarily my brain, ears or mouth involved in the pumping) But as the *subordinate* who might be bringing up complex topics or stuff that might not be an easy breezy conversation, topic for me to raise, I wouldn’t be confident I had my manager’s full attention and it might throw me off a bit. I’d much rather my manager say “hey, got to pump first, can we push our one on one xx minutes?”

            1. Brain the Brian*

              Agreed with a lot of this. As the subordinate, I’d probably spend a lot of a closed-door meeting just thinking “Eyes up eyes up eyes up EYES UP” to avoid even the appearance that I’m thinking about my manager’s breasts, and I wouldn’t be terribly well focused on the work questions at hand as a result of that alone. I think the onus is on the manager to ask for a shift in meeting time (frankly, you don’t even really need a reason why — “Give me 20 minutes, and then we can meet” will almost always be fine) in anticipation of a subordinate potentially being uncomfortable with pumping in a one-on-one. Being flexible about meeting times to accommodate pumping is much more in the spirit of supporting working mothers than having meetings while someone is actively pumping, IMO.

        3. a clockwork lemon*

          I’m a queer woman who isn’t exactly prudish, but I would be uncomfortable if my boss asked me into a 1:1 meeting and when I got to her office, she was pumping. I would also be uncomfortable with it in an open office, even though I probably wouldn’t care if I saw that same boss out in the park with her kids and she happened to be nursing/pumping.

          Normalizing breast feeding means normalizing the idea that people who are nursing may have to schedule their workdays around the biological reality of pumping, NOT putting coworkers and direct reports in a position where they have to justify not wanting to think about or potentially see anyone’s boobs at work for any reason.

          1. Paint N Drip*

            I have opposite feelings around pumping, but totally agree on your second paragraph! We all have different comfort levels but no one should be forced into discomfort under the guise of normalizing breastfeeding (and actually normalizing breakneck work culture IMO)

            1. Jeanine*

              Actually if someone is breast feeding and their baby is there and hungry you would have to just deal. Pumping not so much but I feel the OP needs to feel comfortable doing it. There should be no stigma attached to breastfeeding and pumping that’s nuts. It’s a natural process that is a form of feeding a human, that’s all.

              1. a clockwork lemon*

                This is literally a letter about whether or not it’s appropriate to pump at the workplace during an in-person meeting. There is no hungry baby with an immediate need to be fed by their nursing mother here.

                The question is not “is OP comfortable with breast feeding,” the question is whether it’s appropriate in the workplace for OP to be actively pumping during closed-door meetings with her direct reports. The answer to that question is resoundingly no, for a lot of reasons that various other commenters have raised.

              2. not nice, don't care*

                It’s hard enough keeping my own work/life balance where it should be, let alone being forced to deal with someone else’s work/life balance involving babies/pumping at work.
                Let’s not normalize subjecting folks to non-consensual (and the power imbalance means OP may never know) bodily functions at work. It may take a village to raise a child, but many folks don’t live in that village.

                1. UKDancer*

                  Yes. I don’t think there should be a stigma attached to feeding or pumping, but I still don’t want to watch someone pumping or know they’re doing it in a meeting. Not because it’s offensive but because it’s too personal and it makes me uncomfortable.

                  I think something can be normal and natural and still not personally want to be there to see it.

              3. mbs001*

                Which is why someone should not have their baby at work. It’s not professional in any setting to have children in a workplace — much less breast-feed around others.

              4. inksmith*

                yes, but “just deal” should probably mean – sorry, can we meet in half an hour instead? not – let’s meet while I feed the baby. Especially since it’s pretty rare to have your baby at work, so clearly there would be extenuating circumstances in place already.

        4. Observer*

          would be uncomfortable if my female boss were pumping in a closed-door meeting with me, but probably not if we were just in the general open office while we all worked independently.

          That kind of makes sense. If everyone is just sitting there, you don’t have to “notice” what other people are doing. Whether someone is pumping, eating lunch, whatever. When you are in a closed door meeting with one person, you kind of have watch them doing whatever. So it stands to reason that you are likely to react differently.

        5. rebelwithmouseyhair*

          I was with a friend once when she had to pump and we just dove into a small private area to continue to chat while she did so. She laughed and said nobody had ever been in the room with her when she pumped. But we were both breastfeeding counsellors at a breastfeeding conference, so we were both relaxed about it.
          Some people can feel icky about breastmilk. It’s a wonderful liquid but it’s also a bodily fluid, and most other bodily fluids can freak a lot of people out if they leave the body. Also, breasts are involved and they are heavily sexualised in the west.
          So it’s best not to foist the act of pumping on others unless they feel comfortable enough to ask you not to do it in front of them.

          1. SimonTheGreyWarden*

            When I was pumping, I had to do it in my coworker’s office because she had one and I was at a table at the back of a large study space with a sort of half-cubicle. Luckily that coworker was also a close friend and we both got real comfortable real quick with me pumping and her eating lunch, but in that case she offered the office and there was no power difference between us.

            I don’t know if I would have felt different vis a vis pumping/breastfeeding in public; my son never latched and so I never breastfed (pumped for a full year and it sucked the whole time). If a woman felt comfortable to pump in public, more power to her, and I definitely feel that breastfeeding in public needs to be normalized, but in an office space where someone can’t “get away”, it seems like a bad idea.

        6. TeaCoziesRUs*

          I’m a bit squicked out by it for someone in a position of power… and I breastfed both kids. *facepalm* (It’s mostly just the thought of hearing the motor and being hyper-aware because of the sound – and that is 100% a me thing.)

          I am in awe that OP COULD pump in semi-public! Most moms I know who pumped had to get in the right mindset, to where it was almost akin to shy toilet syndrome – it ain’t coming down when others are around. I breastfed my kid on demand – including sitting in church services – without a cover other than a nursing shirt most of the time. I wouldn’t bat an eye to someone nursing in front of me – other than trying to keep quiet so I’m not distracting the baby enough to stretch mom’s nipple. BTDT. Don’t ask me why pumping is any different… it just is. *sigh*

    2. Disappointed Australien*

      I’d be quite comfortable with either, at work or otherwise. I’m male.

      BUT I know that some mothers wouldn’t be comfortable having a male subordinate (etc) in the room while they did that.

      There’s also the issue of establishing that the “closed for pumping” sign on the door now means “unless you’re one of the special people”.

      1. WeirdChemist*

        There’s also the issue of future mothers who need to pump now having the precedent of “well Susan was fine with me interrupting that time last year, so I’m going to barge right in” Particularly because the LWs boss is one of the people she’s meeting with!

        It’s fine that LW2 is comfortable with a certain amount of frankness surrounding pumping. However, creating the expectation that any future mothers in your office also be made available to others for work tasks while pumping is a bad precedent to set

        1. Snow Globe*

          This is a good point. A junior employee who is pumping may feel pressured to just keep on working/attending meetings, even if she isn’t comfortable with that, since the boss does it.

          1. Perfectly Cromulent Name*

            This is my concern as well. I would likely feel pressure to do it too, or even if I did not do it, feel stressed that I was not doing it. When I’ve worked at places in the past where we were told “We support taking vacation time and completely unplugging! We support taking your sick time!” But my boss would continue checking emails on the reg or dialing into normal, non-super important meetings on vacation, or always came to work sick…it made the message pointless. They were not *modeling* the things that they *said* they supported. So if I were told “We support pumping! Please, use the pumping room- take the time and privacy and relaxation you need!” (and as some have pointed out, not all pumpers can multi-task and get good results while pumping), but my boss was attending meetings while pumping- it would be the same thing! I don’t think that there is anything shameful in pumping or breastfeeding, but it would be *one more thing* that I would feel pressured to do in the name of productivity, and even if I were told it was okay to not attend meetings while pumping, I would feel pressured to do so because there would be an unspoken modeling by my supervisor that This is What is Done. You cannot take a break- get your butt in that seat! Just bring your pump!

        2. Insert Clever Name Here*

          This is a good point. There are some people who need to be looking at pictures or videos of their child in order to pump which would make it difficult to be having a meeting!

        3. Immaterial*

          Was about to add this. Some people need to be more relaxed to get better results pumping. I’d be concerned about what precedents you’re setting as a supervisor.

      2. Trillian*

        And as a general principle, if one wouldn’t do it in front of a man, one shouldn’t do it in front of a woman, either.

    3. CityMouse*

      I pumped and while I was fine with nursing in public you are a LOT more exposed while pumping and I personally wouldn’t want to pump in front of anyone at work. I also don’t want to continue working while pumping ad you sometimes need to express (massage) while pumping too.

      Everything else on OP’S list is fine.

    4. Neon highlighter*

      I would not be comfortable. It’s just not work appropriate behaviour even if legally protected. Mothers should be provided with an appropriate space to pump. Workplaces should be flexible with work roles and tasks as possible for the industry so mothers can pump. But I shouldn’t be required to watch you pump while I’m trying to do a meeting.

      Just stick to planning for other tasks while pumping and don’t make people feel they have to be ok with it.

      1. UKDancer*

        I agree. I absolutely believe women should have clean, safe spaces for expressing milk, but I also don’t want to watch it at work in a meeting.

        1. Observer*

          True. But the problem is that we know that this is not universal. So while it’s nice for the LW to know that she probably has not made everyone uncomfortable, it doesn’t really help her going forward. Because knowing that *some* people would be ok with it is not really enough.

          More important is the fact that a lot of people would not be comfortable. And people announcing that they *are* comfortable with it just creates pressure on people to “go along”.

        2. Time Out*

          And the question is about whether the OPs comfort level means they should get to impose that on others who may not be comfortable with it.

          How you feel is not actually the issue here.

          1. ferrina*

            Yeah, once the power dynamics come into play, it’s about more than an individual’s comfort level. You also need to think about what precedent it’s setting- are you sending the message that everyone should be comfortable with this (or at least accept it)? Even if you don’t mean to, that message will be sent. Perfectly Cromulent Name had a great example upthread of how saying one thing but doing something else undermines the message in a big way.

            Workplace culture is set by behaviors, not by statements. Senior and management (or semi-management) staff are generally seen as the standard bearer of what is expected and acceptable. If staff see others misbehaving without repercussions, they will take away the message that that behavior is acceptable or even expected. And that goes for non-toxic behavior as well- if LW is showing that it’s okay (or even expected) that pumping occurs during meetings, that could send some inadvertent messaging that the behavior is expected (either that the pumping person should be okay with pumping in meetings, or that the other attendee is okay with pumping). Especially if certain people are being rewarded with access/quicker response based on whether they are comfortable with this.

      3. anne of mean gables*

        Also worth considering that there’s considerable variation from one pumping set up to another. One of my pump setups requires me to be in a bra (can throw a cardigan over for modesty, but pretty hard to get everything covered unless I go full muumuu) with clear plastic cones shoved over my nipples, visibly suctioning them. The other slips into my bra and just looks like a pair of Barbie bolt-ons under a normal shirt (very noticeable on me but possibly not at all on a larger-breasted person).

        1. Whomst*

          I’ve seen some of the commentariat saying that it’s okay if you’re using a discrete wearable – I don’t have enough experience with the wearables to agree or disagree, but I have a hard time imagining that any pump is going to be so discrete that it’s unnoticeable. But it definitely affects how uncomfortable I would be with someone pumping in front of me – shirt on, a larger chest, and an occasional dripping noise is much less of a NO than someone draped in a tarp, tubes and pump sitting on the desk, “whoosh whoosh” vacuum noises. And you couldn’t pay me enough money to be the one wearing the tarp.

    5. Anonys*

      I think beyond the concerns raised by Alison, OP also needs to be aware of the optics/precedent, especially considering pumping breaks are legally mandated (I am aware that employees are allowed to continue working while pumping under the law, but as far as I understand it, this is up to them). Could the fact that OP takes meetings during pumping make her direct reports feel pressure to likewise take meetings (even if they find it uncomfortable) and forego quiet pumping breaks for multi-tasking in the future?

      I am aware this would not be OP’s intention but the implicit pressure could be there. That’s why I also don’t think it’s great on the part of OP’s supervisors to encourage her to pump during meetings with them. If my supervisor said to me “hey i’m fine if you pump during our meetings rather than pushing them back”, I would worry about being perceived as “not dedicated enough” if I didnt agree.

      But by all means, OP, please continue to say things like “i can meet at 2.30, I need to pump first” – I think that sets a great example that pumping at work and prioritizing time for it, is normal and expected.

    6. Earlk*

      I actually think it’s far more appropriate to feed your baby in front of other people than pump. I get that it goes to the same place in the end but a child needs to eat when they’re hungry but meetings and pumping can be scheduled around each other. It’s better to err on the side of caution.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        Eh, scheduling meetings and pumping around each other has limits. For one, some have back-to-back meetings for hours, and most nursing mothers do have to pump every X hours for both supply and comfort. Also, while my body turned out to be fairly fexible about it and I didn’t have to stick to a strict schedule, I am given to understand that experiences vary on this. There can also be conditions where one has to pump smaller amounts more frequently. There can be reasons for having to pump NOW.

        1. SimonTheGreyWarden*

          When my son was really young, I had to pump every 4 hours or risk mastitis. Tapering down as he got older was difficult and I had to slowly back it up to every 6, then every 8, etc.

      2. Coffee break*

        When you need to pump, you have tostop and do it. You cannot wait. At least I couldn’t, as it would have made a very uncomfortable mess for all of us at the office.

      3. nodramalama*

        Is that always true? I feel like a lot of women have to pump at certain times and sometimes your day is going to make that difficult

        1. anne of mean gables*

          There is a huge amount of variation here from person to person. My supply (high) and breastfeeding goals (hated it, and willing to sacrifice months of BF for comfort/logistics) made it such that I could be super flexible with timing (and there were still times I had to pump during [virtual] meetings, just with how the timing worked out day-to-day). Someone with a lower supply they were fighting to maintain, and/or a real commitment to extended breastfeeding, would have a lot less flexibility.

          1. Coffee break*

            My supply was so high, I had to pump or I’d be leaking breast milk everywhere, even with nipples covers.

            Most women cannot pump on demand or schedule their meetings around when they might need to pump.

          2. ferrina*

            Exactly this.

            Pumping (and supply in general- heck, everything related to biology and/or children) is extremely variable. There is no one-solution-for-everyone. That’s why expectations and policies need to be able to fit a wide array of needs (and comfort is a need in this case- it can impact supply).

        2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

          It mostly depends on how old the baby is, whether she is exclusively breastfed or not, and how much milk the mother gets at each pumping session. Some mothers fill the bottle in a matter of minutes just a couple of times a day while others may have to pump more often and still only just get enough after 15 minutes.
          Also stress can affect production so if the workplace is an emergency ward or a high-adrenaline office, the mother would be all the more likely to need a zen pumping room where nobody will disturb her.

      4. Seashell*

        I think that depends on the circumstances. I pumped at work, but I also gave my kids baby formula and they were on solid food by the time I went back, so I wasn’t trying to pump to get 100% of the baby’s nutritional needs met. I pumped once a day, usually at lunchtime. Women who are trying to keep their supply up to do all the feedings are going to need to pump more.

    7. AvonLady Barksdale*

      I wouldn’t mind if a colleague breast-fed in front of me during a casual meeting. Totally fine by me. But pumping is loud and/or distracting, plus there’s an element of doing a task that at some point will require the meeting to be disrupted. And yes, meetings get disrupted, but i just think pumping is better suited to solo tasks. If my colleague were pumping in her office while working, I wouldn’t care, but I don’t need to be there and it has nothing to do with breasts.

      1. June First*

        @AvonLady Barksdale
        +1 Pumping can be loud and distracting. I’d say your mind isn’t completely on the meeting if you are checking milk levels, need to reattach the pump, etc.
        That said, I understand the need to do it at certain times. That is a real thing that affects milk production.

    8. Cat Tree*

      This is an interesting idea. Somehow pumping feels different than feeding directly. I did both. There were times that I breastfed in a semi-public location (generally someone’s private house that we were visiting with multiple people around.) But I never wanted to pump in front of others and personally wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it. Maybe it’s just because it took me a long time to get set up correctly for that, or maybe because it was more planned/scheduled in the first place while feeding directly feels more spontaneous.

      1. MrsBuddyLee*

        As someone who breastfed for the better part of the past 5+ years, including ~2 years of pumping in the office, I think the big difference is nipple visibility. If you’re feeding directly, your nipples are only visible for the brief period when baby is latching (and even then likely covered by baby’s head). With traditional pumping, your nipples are extremely visible the whole time. I had zero issue breastfeeding my kids anywhere in public, but would only pump in semi-private.

        That being said, pump technology has evolved significantly over the past few years. If you’re using something like an Evie or Willow (which are designed to be worn in public under clothing), I think that’s less problematic than the traditional Medela or Spectra pump (which isn’t really designed for that).

        Either way, as a manager the power dynamics would make pumping in person with a direct report inappropriate. If there’s a conflict between your meeting schedule and pumping schedule, switching to Zoom/Teams could be a good compromise. I did that many times and it was a lot more comfortable for all involved, especially if you have a good headset with noise reduction technologies.

        1. PlantProf*

          That was how I felt too—I’d breastfeed in public quite comfortably, but once my baby started refusing anything but a bottle, I’d be looking for at least semi-private places to pump when we were out. It does feel much more exposed to me, as well as more awkward.

    9. Dust Bunny*

      I think you can be comfortable with something in general and still not think it’s workplace-appropriate. I don’t care if people wear old sweat pants to the grocery store or my friends change clothes in front of me, but I don’t think those things are workplace-appropriate (or, rather, they would be too informal for my workplace).

    10. Saturday*

      But feeding a baby in a work meeting would also be an unusual and not something that people do routinely.

    11. Pumped Out*

      I think it’s a fair point about what it means for access to the manager.

      I’m just about to finish a year of pumping for the second time, and like LW, i sort of couldn’t care less who sees, but I don’t actually want to make people uncomfortable. I am in a weird work scenario that I thought I’d be leaving much sooner into this, and I just said at the beginning, don’t worry about a pumping space (because we don’t have one), I’ll just pump at my desk in my shared office, and I have wearble pumps so other than taking them in and out, there’s nothing to see, just the noise. Eight months later, I do feel a bit bad for my immediate coworkers when we’re here together (which isn’t 5 days a week), but I really didn’t plan to stick around this long. That being said, I did wear the wearable pumps from the car and all through the office when I arrived in the morning. And I did sometimes have them in while microwaving my food. Do I feel bad about that stuff? Nope.

    12. Beth*

      I wouldn’t be uncomfortable with someone pumping in front of me, but I would not choose to pump in a meeting with others myself (for all the reasons Alison mentions–the work context just has too many nuances and potential problem points).

  4. nnn*

    I think what happened in #1 is the prof had a list of questions they’d established for assignments to teach students about AI, and then later adjusted or adapted the assignment to be about resumes without adjusting the questions sufficiently.

    1. learnedthehardway*

      Agreed – for a school assignment, citing sources makes sense. For a resume writing assignment at school – same. For a resume that goes to an employer – no, never.

    2. Language Lover*

      But why would they need to adjust the question? It’s a perfectly fair question to ask students to consider even if the answer is ‘no, not necessary. ‘

      1. nnn*

        I’m thinking they might need to adjust the question because it left at least one student wondering if you should be citing things on your resume in general

        1. Neon highlighter*

          I’d have nothing left if I took out all assignment questions that confused students!

          Frankly I see it as a good thing if it made LW stop and think about it, do some research, and hopefully draw some conclusions and frame a position on the topic.

            1. Dahlia*

              I’m in school and I’ve seen my classmates be confused by everything possible including the idea that you can click links.

              It is impossible to never confuse people.

          2. ChatGP-wee!*

            I agree with this entirely. I think Alison focused on the wrong thing, this wasn’t resume advice, it was an assignment for applying judgement about AI tools.

        2. Emmy Noether*

          It would have to be adjusted because the answer (CVs don’t have citations) has nothing to do with AI, so it’s derailing the essay.

          It’s like changing the subject from geese to llamas, but leaving in a question about if you should put warming lamps above the nests for the eggs.

          1. Snow Globe*

            It might not be derailing, depending on what the professor is trying to convey. Yes, you should cite AI in places that you’d normally cite sources, but no, you don’t have to cite AI in places where you wouldn’t need to provide sources.

            1. ecnaseener*

              Right. This isn’t an AI class, it’s a work communications class. It’s not derailing anything to ask a question eliciting answers that are more about work communication conventions than AI.

              Also to respond to nnn a couple levels up: presumably the professor will go over the assignment later and clear up any confusion then, as you would expect for any class. It would be a pretty crummy class if they only asked questions with obvious answers and never prompted students to consider new and confusing ideas!

      2. Indisch blau*

        This is how I see it. With the very sudden advent of AI, students need to think critically about when and how to use AI and whether and how to disclose that use. Resumes are not required to be soley one’s own work. Witness how many people write to this site asking how to express nuances of their time spent working at a company (title changes etc.). That help doesn’t need a reference either.
        With a cover letter the case is different.

      3. Project lead*

        Yeah, I think LW1 one has misunderstood this assignment. It’s not telling you to cite Chat-GPT, it’s asking you to consider the value, purpose and ethics of using generative AI when creating a job application.

        There is no settled answer on whether it’s ok to use Chat-GPT to create applications: literally everyday I’m seeing recruiters on LinkedIn say it’s changing the recruitment process and they haven’t adapted to it yet, some hating it, so banning it, others recommending it. There is no “correct advice” anyone can give about it. Asking students to be thoughtful about it and providing space for discussion is all anyone can do!

        1. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

          I would go so far as to say that right now, there are very few questions about the use of LLMs that have such a blatantly obvious answer that they’re not worth discussing. Generative AI is changing the landscape fast, ethical and legal considerations are lagging due to the sheer speed of change, and no one—not even experts in the field, as they will freely tell you—knows how this will shake out over the next few years. If a resume is ok to use generative AI on, what about using it for a writing sample? Should you disclose it then? How about a prerecorded video interview—if you’re not comfortable on camera, can you get AI to make the video for you? Would you be ethically obliged to disclose? And so on. This is not, at this point, a situation where I would say that any of these questions are so obvious that discussion would be pointless.

      4. ecnaseener*

        Agreed, the expected answer is probably “no, because the nature and purpose of a resume is such that there’s no expectation of citing any sources.” I think LW is caught up in their annoyance over this class in general (justifiably it sounds like!) but this is a perfectly good essay question within the context of the class.

  5. Fierce Jindo*

    Re: this part:

    “ Moreover, even if we did cite sources on resumes — which we do not — ChatGPT is not a source. You wouldn’t cite it in an academic paper either; that would be like citing Google instead of the article it linked you to.”

    Some journals ARE now asking authors to disclose ChatGPT etc usage, at least internally during the review process. I predict many more will soon. (It’s true that it’s not cited like a source, though.)

    1. GythaOgden*

      Disclosure isn’t citation though. It’s more akin to using an anti-plagiarism program like TurnItIn than it is noting that you got a quote from (Jindo, 1989, p34).

    2. Hyaline*

      Yep. If you ask ChatGPT a question and it spits out and answer, and you use that answer, you should in fact cite ChatGPT as that was the *source* of the information that *you used.* (To suggest you only cite the original source of something is totally wrong–you cite Wikipedia if you use Wikipedia, not the citations Wikipedia used. You cite the author who synthesized the five studies on cheese degradation in humid climates, not the five studies themselves. To do otherwise is actually academically dishonest.)

      1. metadata minion*

        Though oh goodness if you’re citing ChatGPT as the source of information you are doing something wrong. It’s very complex autocomplete; it will 100% make stuff up, including citing sources itself that do not exist. And generally if I’m going to Wikipedia for something I would then follow through to the citations and cite them, because they’re usually going to be more reliable.

        1. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

          To give a very clear example of this, I just asked ChatGPT what Alison Green would say about handing in your resume in person rather than submitting electronically. It said:

          Alison Green, known for her practical advice on job applications, would likely say something like this:

          “Handing in your resume in person can be a great way to make a memorable impression, but it depends on the company’s culture and preferences. If the job posting or company website doesn’t specify a preference, it’s usually best to follow their instructions for submission. However, if you’re confident that handing in your resume in person will allow you to connect directly with someone who can make a decision, and if the company seems open to this approach, it can sometimes be effective. Just make sure to be polite and professional, and be prepared for any potential questions.”

          Here I asked it about the origin of the “cheap ass rolls” meme on Ask a Manager:

          Certainly! On Alison Green’s Ask a Manager blog, “cheap ass rolls” refers to a humorous anecdote about a reader’s experience with a frugal but creatively named snack.

          In the story, a reader shared a recipe for homemade sushi rolls made with inexpensive ingredients, which they dubbed “cheap ass rolls.” The name was meant to reflect the budget-friendly nature of the recipe, emphasizing that you could enjoy sushi-like rolls without spending much money. Alison Green highlighted this as an example of resourcefulness and humor in the workplace, noting that it illustrated how people find practical solutions to everyday challenges, even in areas like meal preparation.

          The term “cheap ass rolls” became a memorable example of how people can creatively and humorously navigate tight budgets, turning a simple, cost-effective recipe into a conversation piece.

          It confidently, flagrantly makes things up.

          1. wendelenn*

            Yes, I doubt Alison would EVER say something like that about handing in a resume in person!

        2. sparkle emoji*

          I don’t think people should be using chatGPT as fancy google the way many people do, but if they’re going to and they put the info in a paper, I’d prefer that info to be cited so I can consider the source instead of taking whatever false factoid it dreamed up as true.

      2. amoeba*

        Well, in my field you’d usually be expected to continue on to the primary literature (those five cited papers), read/skim those and then cite them. Review articles are a bit of a border case – fine if you just want to cite something for a general overview, not great if you’re talking about concrete examples – always primary source then. And wikipedia is definitely a very, very big no, to the point that we use “source: wikipedia” as a joke because you get told in your first term at uni that that is definitely never, ever acceptable.

        1. Hyaline*

          For full fledged academic research, sure. For freshmen papers, no you wouldn’t expect it—and for the freshmen to claim they’re citing those extensive studies instead of the five page synthesis they read would be misleading!

          1. amoeba*

            Eh, the Wikipedia thing, definitely! Citing a review instead of the original papers, yeah, depending on context. But Wikipedia was very much never an option here (Biochemistry). I think that was drilled into me as early as high school, actually! (When the alternative was “go to the library and find a book”, not “academic papers”…)

      3. Hyaline*

        Y’all, I’m not saying that these are *good* sources. However, for a writer to cite anything but the source they actually used for their information is incorrect and misleading. If you used ChatGPT to generate info and you use that info, you have to use ChatGPT as your source. If you use Wikipedia and only Wikipedia (not just using it to surf for sources that you actually use), it’s wrong to cite Wikipedia’s source instead. Do I encourage or even condone using crappy sources? Not remotely. But it’s actually a lot graver of an academic misstep to falsely cite your sources, moving from “stupid move” to “blatant academic dishonesty.”

    3. Hyaline*

      (In fact, just in case anyone cares about this, major citation styles are already adopting formats for using information from generative AI prompting. Here’s MLA:

      Format:
      “Your prompt” and description or refinement of prompt if applicable. Name of AI tool, version of AI tool, Company, date that AI text was generated. URL.

      Example (from the MLA website):
      “In 200 words, describe the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby” follow-up prompt to list sources. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 9 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat. )

    4. iglwif*

      Yeah, I think “cite” is the wrong word here. In publisher and journal policies, it is 100% about transparency: did you use an AI tool? If so, how did you use it and what did you use it for?

      Like the notes about informed consent, funding, other conflicts of interest, author roles, etc., it’s a disclosure rather than a citation.

  6. Maria S*

    The way I interpret #1 is not as a recommendation to cite ChatGPT, but as a task to explain IF ChatGPT ought to be cited. A homework assignment “Is It Ethical To Steal Silver Spoons At A Dinner Party? Discuss.” is not an instruction to steal.

    1. Smithy*

      Yeah – honestly it brings up to me a thing I see a lot in applications around submitting a writing sample that’s all your work/unedited.

      For my job, a lot of what I do is take materials others have written and then put them into a cohesive document where the goal is to make them sound like a unified voice and relevant to the reason for the writing. I’m not denying that’s a unique skill, but it’s also not genuinely “all my work”. Not to mention, at work – I have my stuff edited/read for clarity all the time as a matter of good practice.

      The ethical question around what to do when asked for something like that I think is an interesting educational exercise. But pragmatically would never wildly change what I do.

    2. Humble Schoolmarm*

      I would tend to agree. I do think it would be good for the professor to clarify whether they mean a full citation (mla or whatever) or a note at the bottom acknowledging the use of ChatGPT. I actually approve of using a resume for a vehicle to explore the limitations of AI because it’s a document that you know what it information it should have. I can see why LW is frustrated, but on the list of frustratingly vague assignment directions, I’ve seen far worse (ie. create a visual to show your understanding of classroom inclusion based on what you have learned in this course — offering the option of writing an essay or making a recording of yourself explaining was, according to prof, less inclusive than asking everyone to make art).

  7. Julia*

    #1) given the previous question about AI ethics, I wonder if they mean to ask whether or not you think you should disclose that you used AI to edit your resume. The question is poorly worded, but this didn’t read like advice to me. It seems like they are trying to get students to think about how the ethics of AI are relevant to their job search. There could be some context I’m missing, but that’s my take!

  8. Coffee please*

    I work in a female dominated office (there are a few men) and have pumped during meetings with wearable pumps under a huge sweater. The sound is barely susceptible and the only noise is maybe a tiny dripping if you REALLY listen hard. I didn’t ask for anyone’s permission and didn’t feel the need to. I also did this at my open-office desk. I honestly think this is fine ‍♀️

    1. Jet Blu*

      You may think it’s fine, but others may not, especially your reports. I’m a breastfeeding mom but I would never pump at work with others present.

    2. Kella*

      The issue, though, is that the person pumping isn’t the only one who needs to be okay with it, everyone exposed to it also needs to be okay with it, and you can’t speak for them. You cannot know for sure if your pumping is making someone else uncomfortable because they may feel reluctant to voice this discomfort in order to keep the peace. The likelihood that someone would feel unable to voice this discomfort only increases when the person pumping has more power than you.

      1. anne of mean gables*

        With a wearable pump setup and a big, thick sweater, I would be shocked if anyone was aware.

        1. Snarky McSnarkson*

          So, like with the wearable pumps, do you wear it all day like a bra? Or do you have to go somewhere to change into/out of the apparatus? My breastfeeding days are over, but I am absolutely fascinated by the new technology.!

          1. JustaTech*

            You pop them into your bra, and you have to be careful-ish getting them back out so you don’t spill the milk (which then needs to get refrigerated). I have a friend who would retreat to a dark corner to put hers on, but I think she went to a space with a sink to take them off and transfer the milk.
            So yes you can put them on and off without whipping out a boob, but you do clearly have a hand down or up your shirt.

          2. anne of mean gables*

            It is *incredible* how the technology has progressed (and become more accessible, with new laws around how insurance companies must provide pumps). I just had my second child and I have absolutely no idea how anyone pumped for a second child before the wearable pumps.

            I personally would not feel comfortable wearing them in front of people at work because I’m pretty petite and wear somewhat form-fitting work shirts – it would be extremely noticeable on me – but a larger woman could totally get away with it with a thick, loose sweater. You do have to pop them in and out but there’s no reason you couldn’t pump for 20 minutes and leave them in for the remaining 40 minutes of the meeting.

      2. ferrina*

        +100

        I would feel so awkward this situation. I would feel really uncomfortable saying anything- I don’t want to comment on other people’s health situations (pumping counts) but I would be so uncomfortable having a coworker pump next to me in an open office(!). I also wouldn’t be sure how open that coworker would be to conversation- if they are already willing to violate social norms in such a clear way, are they going to dig their heels in further if I politely ask if they can do that in a private space*? Will they yell that I hate new mothers because I asked them to move? (unfortunately, I’ve known plenty of people who would make this jump)

        *assuming that there is a private space available. Legally there should be, but “legally” doesn’t mean it’s actually there

        1. Friendo*

          You can be uncomfortable, but I’m sorry, saying that someone is violating social norms or yell at you is not rational.

            1. anne of mean gables*

              And for a very long time, breastfeeding in public was a violation of social norms, but then we all (for the most part) realized that feeding a baby is a biological necessity and not a sexual display.

              I said this in a comment above, but pumping setups vary WILDLY in how discreet they are, and (to be blunt), how much nipple they show. For some people, both pumping and their jobs are pretty inflexible, time-wise. For example (according to my sister) it’s very common for nurses to pump during cases because that’s more or less the only way to make it work.

          2. ferrina*

            It is violating norms to pump in a public office space. It’s a pretty commonly accepted norm that when possible, pumping should not be done in a public space.

            As for the yelling, in my experience when someone is violating an extremely common social norm, it’s either because 1) they didn’t realize it’s a norm, 2) things are extreme enough that they are making an exception, or 3) they have decided that they are the exception to the societally agreed upon rules. 1 is not a problem- it’s pretty common with well-meaning ND folk (including me), and if you talk to them, often they’ll try to work with you. 2 is the least common, and you usually (though not always) know if it’s going on (someone looks exhausted or overwhelmed, or you know that something is going on with them). Usually the response is compassion. 3 is the one you need to look out for. If 3 is true and they think they are the exception to that rule, then it is really likely that they think that they are the exception to other societally agreed upon rules (don’t believe me? work retail for a bit). These folks can be, er, tempestuous. They often aren’t afraid to use volume to prove their point. They will push boundaries until they get what they want.

            I’ve been yelled for making polite requests quite a few times, and it’s definitely not a pleasant experience. So yeah, my brain runs the calculous of Likelihood To Be Yelled At. It’s considering things like “does this person often violate social norms” and “how has this person received feedback in the past”. Which is all a highly individual calculous and is swayed by imperfect data- for example, I may be a lovely person, but someone that I don’t interact with much caught me when I was sick and I responded to them in monosyllables. Now this person thinks I’m standoffish, because in their experience, I was. I may not even realize that this person thinks that I’m standoffish, because they are polite, avoid me, and keep their opinion to themself. But that will impact their calculous in whether I can be trusted to react well to a request and whether they will feel comfortable saying something.

          3. Not the class clown*

            We can maybe debate whether public pumping in an office *should* violate social norms, but as of now, it 100% does.

      3. atalanta0jess*

        But WHY? What is there about wearable pumps for them to feel uncomfortable about that one legitimately needs to be held responsible to? If no nudity is involved, what gives that other person the right to be uncomfortable or not uncomfortable about how I deal with my lactation? That they might hear a slight trickle and remember that I’m a lactating person? That’s absurd.

    3. Lei*

      I think pumping in a larger meeting and especially pumping at your open office desk is different from pumping in a 1:1 meeting with a subordinate though.

    4. Moonlight Elantra*

      I had a miserable experience breastfeeding. Absolutely miserable. I still hear the noise of the pump in my nightmares sometimes. I would not be comfortable sitting in a meeting with someone pumping.

    5. atalanta0jess*

      Yeah, I think there’s 1000% difference between the new wearable pumps and the traditional style.

      Wearable pumps under a sweater? I think totally fine, no one has the right to care. You’re wearing a medical device that is doing what it needs to do, it’s quiet, and no body parts are revealed. I cannot see what the objection would be. (I do see Moonlight Elantra’s comment below, and even so I do hold this stance. If I have medical trauma around my diabetes, does that mean you shouldn’t have a dexcom on? Of course not.) Yeah people might feel weird if they think about it, but they should probably just stop thinking about it. You’re not sitting around thinking about your female colleagues menstrual blood collection techniques are you? (Why is this relevant? Because it’s discrete medical paraphernalia being used under the clothes.) If you did, you’d prolly feel uncomfortable, but like, just don’t.

      Traditional pumps? Noisy, and body parts are at risk of being show for an extended period of time. Totally different.

  9. Roxie*

    I, a woman, read the “pumping” headline and immediately thought of fist-pumping in the office, like if something good happens, or when you high-five your coworkers.

    For shame!

      1. Goldfeesh*

        Uh oh, you sound like you could have been the young custodian who unlocked the door on the woman pumping. ;) I think that was back in the mortification week.

    2. Captain Hastings*

      I read this right after my morning workout and absolutely thought it was going to be about bench presses on the desk or curls during a meeting.

  10. 123*

    2) ya I would be unfortable with someone pumping in front of me directly while meeting (I’m female). I would also feel pressured to not speak up if I felt I was the only one

    7. allathian*

      Agree. I don’t have any issues with breastfeeding in public places in general.

      Granted, when my son was born, our maternity leave system was such that most people had stopped breastfeeding long before they returned to work and an at-home nanny or grandparents were the only daycare options available for babies younger than 9 months, and the vast majority of breastfeeding parents wean their babies before that (very few breastfeed past 6 months and most of those only once or twice a day when the baby’s eating solid food). This has recently been changed so that parents can take leave in shorter bursts and alternate leave periods in two-parent households, so pumping at work will become an issue here, too, sooner or later.

      1. Learn ALL the things*

        This being done by a boss makes it harder. People with less power are going to feel like they can’t speak up if they’re uncomfortable, and they may also wonder if they would be expected to pump in front of other people if they have a baby in the future.

    10. Audrey Puffins*

      I think I’d use creative framing; instead of citing my own discomfort, I’d be inclined say something like “you’d probably be more comfortable if we left you to do this in private so I will go away and we’ll reconnect after you’ve finished”

    11. Shirley You’re Joking*

      Same. I’m female and never had kids. I’d be distracted wondering about what it felt like and how it works. I don’t want to be thinking about breasts during a meeting.

    12. Dek*

      Same.

      Breast feeding, fine, but for some reason pumping just sort of feels…I dunno. I wouldn’t be comfortable, but it would also feel a little bit like trying to do a meeting where one person was visibly on their phone or something.

    13. Nonanon*

      I was wondering how different the response would be if LW was the one in the meeting; “My boss was pumping in front of me and I was uncomfortable but felt pressured to keep going and speak up.”
      I am not comfortable with people breastfeeding/pumping in front of me (I do support your rights to do so in public and your rights to feed your child however works for you; I am just personally uncomfortable), BUT if this was the first time in a few weeks I could have a meeting, or something was urgent, or even if my boss was busy and they have to stick to their scheduled meetings… I might not have the standing to “speak up” and reschedule as needed for my own comfort.

      1. Observer*

        I was wondering how different the response would be if LW was the one in the meeting; “My boss was pumping in front of me and I was uncomfortable but felt pressured to keep going and speak up.”

        I can’t speak for anyone else, but I would absolutely be sympathetic. Especially in a one- to – one meeting. And I’m sure that Alison would have some good verbiage for that person. This is *very* different from people who get bent out of shape by the existence of breast milk, etc.

        I might not have the standing to “speak up” and reschedule as needed for my own comfort.

        Exactly! Which is why it’s on the person with more power and standing to not put anyone in that position.

      2. Saturday*

        I do think it’s important to remember though that LW is only pumping when with people who said that they were comfortable with it without any prompting or suggestion on her part.

        I think the response would be different if she was saying that she had asked people if they were okay with it and then pumped, because people would have felt pressured to say it was okay.

        1. TheBunny*

          I disagree. People talk in offices and it’s really possible some of the people who are OK with it know others have already said they are.

        2. Malarkey01*

          I disagree. If I’m uncomfortable but think gee Jane has meetings with her while she pumps, I’m going to be perceived badly if I’m not okay with it too so I better say I’m okay; then it’s a problem. There’s really no way to know who is or isn’t in that situation.

          1. MicroManagered*

            Exactly. Plus, I think putting “pumping” on a sign makes me think OP2 isn’t self-aware enough to catch if people are REALLY comfortable, or just saying they are.

            It’s just weird to put that level of detail on a sign, period. It doesn’t give anyone information they can use, like how long you’ll be indisposed. If someone changes clothes in their office, they don’t put a sign on the door that says “naked” or a sign on the bathroom stall that says “pooping” even though those are normal things people in human bodies sometimes to do at work.

            1. JustEm*

              I don’t know – pumping signs are really common, since otherwise people may assume a closed office door just means the person is focusing and it’s fine to knock and open door prior to hearing a response. Pumping generally takes 15-40 minutes per time, multiple times a day- this is different from changing clothes where one is only briefly at risk from someone opening the door. Also different from a closed bathroom stall where all associated activities are private.

    14. iglwif*

      I would not be uncomfortable at all — just like I am not uncomfortable being in a room with someone who’s nursing a baby — but if anybody in the office is uncomfortable and feels pressured not to say so, that’s enough of a reason to not do it.

      (Note: I have never had this come up in a work context, because by the time people come back to work in Canada they are generally at the stage where it’s no longer necessary to pump to keep up the milk supply. I think it’s REALLY important to consider here how the dynamics of the office are different from the dynamics of social situations — for example, just one person being a bit uncomfortable in the office would stop me from ever nursing during meetings again, whereas several of my in-laws being loudly judgemental just made me more determined not to go hide in another room to nurse.)

    15. Artemesia*

      I have no problem with nursing babies in public and in fact nursed my own decades ago in public — but I would be very uncomfortable with someone pumping in front of me. I am old and times change, but somehow the machine pulsing etc just seems awkward in a way that a baby nursing doesn’t

    16. Lemon_it's_Wednesday*

      I’m female and have a child. I also have adhd and difficulty focusing during meetings especially. If someone was pumping in a 1-1 meeting with me I would not be able to focus as well. Just like any distraction during a meeting.

      I also had a breast reduction before my child was born, and have a lot of difficult personal feelings around that part of the body. I wouldn’t want to deal with that while having a 1-1 meeting.

      I also know folks who have trauma around their breastfeeding experience who wouldn’t want to be in a room 1-1 with someone pumping.

      It’s just different being at work vs being with a friend or out and about. It’s a different dynamic.

    17. Not the class clown*

      This! I’m a woman who’s childfree by choice, and I’m sure that plays into my discomfort. But I would also think this could be upsetting for people who’ve struggled with fertility or who had/are having a difficult time with pumping themselves.

  11. Dalek.*

    I would be upset at an assignment that requires me to upload my original work to an LLM. A) they’re terrible for the environment and B) my hard original work is now in ChatGPT or whatever other LLM is being used and it further trains these machines that others then use to avoid doing the hard work I did. Nope. I would respectfully decline that part of the assignment and hopefully my explanation would suffice for the ethical dilemma part of it.

    1. un chip más chill*

      ChatGPT doesn’t really have long term memory of the stuff you paste/type in there , it remembers your questions for a little while like your google search history remembers what you searched , but it’s trained on a set amount of input (for the free version it’s still working off a 2021 dataset) . Not that you’re wrong about A just so you know B isn’t really an issue in that specific way.

      1. Dalek.*

        Oh wow! I didn’t know that. I assumed that just as there’s data scraping across many websites to train these machines (that has prompted artists to use programs like Glaze and for writers to lock down their works) that anything you fed into it is likewise used for training. My mistake.

      2. The Prettiest Curse*

        It’s good to get the reminder on cut-off dates – and also useful to remember that tools similar to ChatGPT are trained on everything ever posted publicly on the internet. So that would include every AAM comment ever posted. We’re all feeding inputs into these language models whether or not we actually want to do so. (Hi, future AI text-scraping bot! Please don’t go all Skynet on us.)

        1. Skynet*

          Absolutely not!

          Hey, to prove you’re a human, would you mind checking all the boxes that show places you would hide in a robot apocalypse?

      3. Neon highlighter*

        Students need to be careful using assignment submission as a form of protest. If you can’t afford to fail you can’t afford to play games.

        If you feel very strongly that it is unethical to complete the assessment, you could lodge an alternate assessment application, and I’d send it up the chain to see if they want to support you or not. But not liking AI models is unlikely to be supported because of the employability links.

        But choosing not to do the assignment would get you a fail in my class. I have set marking criteria, and they apply to all students equally. If you don’t do part of the assessment, and that is critical to pass – I mark what you did and work out the grade. Even if I agree with you I’ll still fail you.

        1. bamcheeks*

          I know at least one university local to me includes concerns about energy usage and copyright in its AI teaching and learning policy. I I was writing an assignment like this, I’d want to write the rubric in such a way that a student who declined to use generative AI and provided a justification for doing so in the essay portion of the assignment would still score well. But obviously whether or not you could do it with this one would depend on how the marking was structured.

        2. The Unionizer Bunny*

          But choosing not to do the assignment would get you a fail in my class.

          Before instructing the students to use ChatGPT, you did have OpenAI, the party acting for your educational institution per 20 U.S.C. § 1232g (a)(4)(A), sign a proper contract agreeing to their responsibilities when storing student records?

          ChatGPT requires an account, and if just one person identifies their class, the commonality of assignment-types may be enough to link all your students to their enrollment in the same class, which is a student record. I don’t want to even imagine all the details that students might put on a resume, which they are being coerced (at peril of their grade) into disclosing. And the teacher trusted to keep them safe would fail them out of the entire class for refusing to cooperate in circumventing FERPA by enlisting the students’ aid in violating their own privacy? I’d be asking the community which of these penalties to seek:

          https://facit.ai/insights/ferpa-violations-examples

          I’d also add the one I don’t see there: “Students who refused all get an A in the class for being wiser than the teacher.”

  12. Link*

    First letter – In terms of MLA type citation for sources, chatGPT would absolutely not count as a source. It’s pulling information from other sources, and regurgitating it for you. Often in the form of suggestions, or essay style answers, depending on what you demanded of it. And as Allison said, it’d be like citing a google search instead of the actual page you’re looking at. You’d need to back trace what it’s vomiting at you and cite those sources once you’ve confirmed the authenticity of the information if that’s the type of project. And citation in this sense, would be just a WTF moment for resumés.

    BUT I am of the opinion that if you use AI tools, it absolutely needs to be disclosed no matter the final product, especially at its current stage of its life cycle. And for MLA formatted projects, I’m not sure yet if there is a rule that guides AI disclosure yet or not. And if the strict formatting of MLA isn’t required for the end product, like a resumé, a footnote in the footer I imagine would be sufficient currently.

    That said, if I’m ever on the receiving end of a job application and I found out that AI tools like chatGPT were used, depending on the position, I might consider that a major red flag (certain types of office jobs, data handling, etc), while other positions, I might not care as much or if at all (certain levels of food service, physical labor positions, etc).

    1. Despachito*

      The thing is, it depends HOW you use the AI tools. If only as a brainstorming-y source of ideas that may not have occurred to you off the bat, and then you take the ideas you see fit and process them, does that count as “I used an AI tool”? It did help you by feeding you ideas but you didn’t just copy and paste its output. And I am pretty convinced that if you do it this way there is no chance anyone could tell you used AI.

      Similar as if you research the internet for ideas how to make a resume and then make one based on what you learned (e.g. a lot of people used Alison’s advice for that purpose) – you used it as a tool and it was very helpful, but I cannot imagine anyone requiring you to cite that.

    2. Grits McGee*

      Reading through the comments, it feels like AI is something that would necessitate a “credit” rather than a citation. You cite sources of information, you credit creators or contributors to the final work.

      1. Turquoisecow*

        Yeah it’s more like a ghostwriter or cowriter than a source, it’s not providing information so much as just putting it into a format.

  13. Songbird121*

    LW 1 I encourage you to think about the people in your class that might not have ever had a job where they had to write a resume. I have a number of students who are in your same age bracket who are attending college because they have had jobs in retail or other such fields and are looking to make a change in their employment. So for you this class may feel less necessary, but for others this may be extremely helpful. Rather than focus on what isn’t helpful, I encourage you to use this as an opportunity to engage in some sort of skills practice. We can all get better at a range of skills, even if we already have practice. For example, I like to use boring meetings that I don’t want to be at as a way to refine my note taking strategies, to better track who said what in the meeting, so that when I am in a context that it’s important to be able to recall what different people think about an idea or proposal, then I have a format already developed and practiced.

    The other element in your letter is that you may be misinterpreting what the purpose of the question is. When there is a “why or why not” the purpose is not necessarily because there is a debate about the answer to the initial prompt, but instead to signal to students that they need to support their responses and/or explain their reasoning without leading to a correct answer. There might actually be a correct answer, yes or no, but the answer is less important than providing the reasoning for the answer given. Many students/people in general have room for development in regards to this skill, which is an essential part of Metacognitive development. And even if there is one correct answer that it is not necessary to mention the use of Chat GPT when crafting the resume, having people who think it might be explain their reasoning allows for better discussion about why people might think that, and how those situations might be different than times when it’s use should be mentioned.

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      Yeah, my assumption of that question was that they wanted to check if students understood that you do not cite sources on a CV and why. While that may have seemed obvious beforehand to the LW, who is 30, it might well not seem as obvious to younger students who only have school and university as examples (I know the LW says the university aims at working adults, but I am not sure if that means all the students there are working adults over 23 or if that is just the target demographic and there are a few traditional students as well) or to people from other countries who may have different cultures around resumes (I don’t know of any culture that requires citations, but given that so many other things vary by culture – length, headshots or not, how much personal detail, should you meniton things like hobbies? – it is possible people from different cultures may be unsure of how to do things in the culture they are now in) or even people coming from different working backgrounds, as say a resume for an academic career might different a lot from one for a corporate career or a career in medicine or a trade.

      Especially as it’s one of the first assignments, part of the idea might be to see where the students are at with their understanding of AI and resumes. If everybody says “no, of course, you don’t cite sources because resumes are a very different medium than academic essays (and explains the difference) and anyway ChatGPT is not a source (and explains what a source is and how ChatGPT differs), you can pitch certain parts of the course a little higher than if you get a lot of answers saying, “yes, of course you must cite it because sources should always be cited. Otherwise it is plagiarism” or something like “no, you don’t cite it because you want employers to think you came up with it yourself.”

      1. Songbird121*

        This is another really good point, in regards to how assignments are used by faculty to get a sense of existing student perspectives and where to take the class discussion next. I have taught many classes where there were things that in one section they grasped easily, while in another there was limited understanding. And having these kinds of writing assignments really helped to identify those differences, so that the discussions could be useful to each class rather than just being a blanket topic that covers exactly the same things in the same ways.

  14. Observer*

    #2 – Pumping.

    You are most definitely NOT “too comfortable” with pumping in the office. If anyone has an issue with the ~~gasp~~ mention of **pumping**, that is their problem. It’s a perfectly reasonable description of a very normal activity. And it should be treated as such.

    Pumping during meetings is a bit different. If you are on a video call, and are reasonably covered up. I can’t see any reason not to, as long as you have a reasonably quiet machine that won’t make noise. It just shouldn’t really be visible. And do not pump in in person meetings with others – especially not with people you supervise. But also not with people on your level or above you in the hierarchy.

    In addition to the issue that you and Alison highlight in that you wind up effectively giving women more access, it’s also true that some women might find it uncomfortable. But there is also another problem. Many women absolutely do not want to pump around others, even if they can do setup and “tear down” in private. If you take meetings while pumping, it is likely to create pressure on others to be willing to do the same thing. And that’s not fair. There is a reason that the law requires that employers provide a private space for pumping.

    I realize that you certainly would not expect others to do this, just because you do. But others may not realize it; some people may look at this and think “if she can do it. what’s the matter with me that I’m so hung up on this”; and some people may look at you and say *to others* “If she can do it, why can’t you?”. I don’t think that there is any way to prevent that from happening. Given how often women still get push back about having a reasonable place to pump and being able to take the time to pump in peace, this is a real potential issue. And if something like that were to happen, there would not be a lot you could do about it. Better not to let that start up.

    1. Yaya*

      I completely agree with this. I think the biggest thing that a manager can do regarding breast pumping at work is advocating for clean, private, and appropriate spaces for others. LW #2 is absolutely lucky to have their own office but it should be on their radar that not everyone has that privilege and in a management position, they can point this out.

      On the other hand, I think it’s very important to continue to use direct language around breast pumping. I had an HR director (!) tell me that ‘Pumping’ was too blatant to have in my diary, accompanied by a facial expression showing her disgust. But at that time, we didn’t even have an appropriate (or legal) space for me to do it, we had two other more junior members of staff about to return from maternity leave who would also be pumping, and we work in a very progressive charity. So if we can’t even talk about it, then I couldn’t see us fixing the issues!

      With regard to equipment being visible , I was on the side of having it out if it needed to be and normalising the process, but then read the comment below about it being potentially upsetting for staff with fertility challenges or who had experienced loss.

      1. Yaya*

        Whoops, hit send too soon. Just to finish the last thought – so I think it’s worth weighing that up because there are lots of ways to both normalise what you are doing and be considerate of others who may feel upset by it.

    2. Cheesesteak in Paradise*

      The other issue for having an expectation to work and/or have meetings is some women have their letdown affected by focusing on other tasks. Some don’t. I could do whatever while pumping personally but I know folks who could only pump successfully if they were in a quiet space looking at photos or videos of their baby.

      1. Observer*

        I could do whatever while pumping personally but I know folks who could only pump successfully if they were in a quiet space looking at photos or videos of their baby.

        This is a perfect example of one kind of issue with expectations (unstated or not) of continuing to work while pumping. No one should have to get into the details of their pumping to “prove” that they actually have “enough” need for private and quiet space for pumping.

      2. Presea*

        Yeah, this is a huge angle for me that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere. Maybe I’m missing something as a neurodivergent person who has no intent on ever having a pregnancy, but wouldn’t a manager pumping during meetings create pressure that anyone who’s pumping needs to work while they do so? I feel like that’s an even bigger deal than if people are comfortable enough, and the comfort question isn’t exactly trivial in itself.

      3. iglwif*

        Yeah this is an important perspective I hadn’t thought of!

        I was never very successful with pumping — which didn’t matter very much for me because I live in Canada and had been working long enough to have zero difficulty accessing mat/par leave, but would have been a nightmare in other circumstances.

        And just as we encourage more senior people to set an example by taking whatever leave is available, unplugging during vacation, not coming to work sick, etc., I think the reverse is also true — if pumping during meetings could make anyone else think that they need to be doing that too, it’s worth interrogating whether you should do it yourself.

    3. Frieda*

      I’m not sure I can articulate why nursing the baby and using a breast pump feel different to me but they do. I breastfed both of my kids for a couple of years but they’re now young adults so my information on how quiet pumps may be is out of date.

      Maybe this is a “know your office” situation but IMO pumping on a zoom call, presuming the sound isn’t a distraction, fine. Closed office with other(s), no. Open office plan? It seems to me like that’s a sign that the employer has failed to provide private space for the mother. I’d be a little anxious if my only pumping space was in a large open office and that seems like a bad precedent to set.

      1. CityMouse*

        As someone who was 100% fine nursing in public but wouldn’t pump in public, you’re a lot more expose and it kind of looks a bit ridiculous. With a baby, I could also have a hand free if I was sitting but when pumping I always needed two hands to keep the pumps well positioned (the assistance clothing didn’t work for me).

        1. JustaTech*

          Yes! I fed my kiddo in all kinds of places (plane, the beach, every single bench in the park near my house), but I only ever once pumped in a not-private space, and that was in a car (I was not driving) because I was hours late (delayed flight and then a super long line at the car rental) and I was in a *lot* of pain and could not wait one more minute.
          Even with the hands-free bra and special clothes I always felt way more exposed pumping.

      2. Cat Tree*

        I think where I land is that we (as a society) should just let women pump without having to work at the same time. Just let us take a real break to do it.

      3. Observer*

        Open office plan? It seems to me like that’s a sign that the employer has failed to provide private space for the mother.

        Absolutely. If you (the employer) think that some of your staff may want to take zoom meetings while pumping, make sure that they can do so *if they choose to* in an appropriate, private space.

      4. iglwif*

        I was bad at pumping, and it took a long time and a lot of work to get even the few ounces of milk I needed to go out for Monday night rehearsals when my kiddo was a baby. I would not have been comfortable pumping in front of people (other than, like, close family), although I didn’t have any issue with being present while someone else pumped.

        Nursing in front of random people felt 100% different. I have no idea why! But maybe because nursing felt like parenting whereas pumping felt like some kind of medical situation?? No clue. But it DID feel different to me.

        1. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

          I think maybe part of it is that with nursing, the baby is Right There and so of course you’re going to feed the baby when s/he needs to eat. With pumping, there is a perception that you could do this elsewhere/at another time give or take a few minutes, since you’re not immediately in the middle of feeding the actual baby. Plus the logistics of pumping (w/ all the paraphernalia involved with the machine and milk storage) is just inherently more complicated to juggle/find space for than the baby.

          1. iglwif*

            Yeah, that makes sense. I never pumped anywhere but at home because ::waves hands at all the stuff:: whereas I nursed the baby anywhere and everywhere. If you’re working and have a tiny baby you HAVE to pump at work but it’s still not the same as if the baby were right there needing to eat immediately.

    4. Cardboard Marmalade*

      This is such an important point. I think that the idea that you can want privacy for something while not being ashamed of it is a concept that human culture is just barely starting to come to grips with. I think we can all help be part of a cultural shift towards allowing more freedom from shame when *talking* about things like breastfeeding/pumping, menstruation, etc, while still upholding the idea that maybe people still desire and deserve privacy when handling the physical side of things.

  15. TheBunny*

    LW#3

    I agree with Alison. At the initial application/resume stage it needs to be pretty bad to completely rule them out. I would wonder if the candidate knows or realized after the fact and I might mention it in passing as a “so this happened and I’m guessing it’s out of character, can we speak more to that?” kind of way.

    I once received a “resume” from a candidate that was a link to his “LinkedIn Portfolio” and a link to his Calendly to schedule time with him once we were suitability impressed with him.

    Spoiler Alert: We were not impressed. (By this tactic or, frankly, the portfolio.) We did look at his LI (more out of morbid curiosity) and I was dying to know to know how booked he was for those Calendly appointments. I was not shocked to find his days wide open.

    This was an initial application deal breaker.

    1. ferrina*

      Love this take.

      I’ve always been so frustrated that employers want an applicant’s initial materials to be flawless, customized and clearly spent hours on it. Applicants often need to churn out hundreds of applications (for many cases) and won’t hear back from many of those companies. It’s an absurd waste of time to spend 2-3 hours on every single application.

      Anyone who has ever worked in lead generation knows that you plan for a certain percentage to get no response, and you strategize your approach to maximize your time. You invest more time in things that are more likely to get a response (for example, a personal recommendation) and less time in things with a lower likelihood (like a generic Indeed posting). Obviously you still want good materials, but you aren’t going to throw away hours on things with a low likelihood of success. I agree that while a typo should cause hesitation, it shouldn’t be a dealbreaker that early in the process.

    2. pope suburban*

      I second this, especially with how difficult it can be to apply for jobs these days. Candidates spend a whole lot of time tailoring, uploading, and then manually re-entering resumes. They do cover letters for each position and have to save and name those. There are endless rounds of interviews and sometimes friggin’ homework assignments. Expecting them never to pick the wrong letter or miss something in their editing process is not reasonable; these are human beings, not robots, and either they’re doing all this while working or they’re having to make a full-time gig out of trying to become employed. A little grace goes a long way, and will probably help land a perfectly qualified human being to do the job.

      1. TheBunny*

        Exactly.

        I’m a lot more concerned if they have the experience, show up on time to the interview and are nice to the receptionist on their way in than I am on the details of their first application.

    3. Artemesia*

      I think the cover letter with the wrong organization is a huge red flag. That is epic level of not caring to be detail oriented. I might not rule the person out if they were otherwise great. But I would definitely give the process extra scrutiny. In my experience this kind of error in the application process shows up in performance if they are hired or in interview performance when they aren’t.

      1. TheBunny*

        It’s so easy to have a cover letter that you changed and saved the new company info to…and then still attach the previous version.

        I’m under no illusions people are writing, from scratch, each cover letter they send.

    4. Beth*

      Agreed that a copy/paste error, typo, or similar small error shouldn’t rule out an otherwise strong candidate. Job hunting these days often involves sending out dozens or hundreds of applications, most of which never lead to even an HR screening call. It’s unrealistic to think candidates are going to spend much time on each application. Given that, minor errors that look like rushed work don’t feel like they’re even worth mentioning to the candidate, much less eliminating someone over. Just look for if they have the right background/experience and put them into your interview process if so.

      1. TheBunny*

        Agreed. Getting the wrong company name on a cover letter feels like it should be addressed at least briefly. For me, errors on applications are either totally ignorable (vast majority) worth mentioning in the interview (occasionally) and deal breakers…which happen rarely.

  16. TheBunny*

    LW#5

    Do it. Please.

    I was at a Tech Start Up for a while and one of my favorite parts of the job were the interns. I love working with them. Their perspective and what they can add by bringing the “new” to the job can be so valuable. Knowing that one of my interns also felt the same? I’d be delighted.

    1. JMR*

      I came here to say the same! I still have a lovely thank-you note written by my first intern over a decade ago.

      1. TheBunny*

        It really does mean something when you can impact someone just starting out.

        Yes some of them are work…but overall interns are wonderful.

      2. The Rural Juror*

        I’ve kept all the notes I’ve received! And archived the emails I received from interns I worked with remotely from one of our other offices. I’ve appreciated them all.

        1. Laurelo14*

          Co-signing to do it! I’m looking at a note right now from a student assistant who left in May after being with our department for three years. It’s one of the few things I kept in an office move and I plan to keep it after I leave this job! Also, I love a good thank you note (both writing and receiving).

    2. Spero*

      Agree!! I was a volunteer manager for several years and I still miss the energy and enthusiasm they brought to my every day work. I also still have half a dozen thank you letters from interns I supervised over a decade ago, some of whom went on to become colleagues. My ‘work’ file that I keep at home is literally just offer letters, raise notices, and thank yous. I throw portfolio work away far more often than thank yous, for ex

    3. iglwif*

      Yes, yes, yes! I have lovely notes from interns I supervised that I deeply appreciated at the time and still keep in my “positive things to look at when I’m having a bad day” folder.

      There is no feeling like the feeling that you’ve made a positive impact on another person!

    4. JustaTech*

      One of the friendships my parents treasure most is with a guy who was my dad’s summer intern. He was great at his job, but he is also just a great guy. My dad took a real chance on him because he didn’t have any prior experience, but he wrote a great cover letter.

      We went to his wedding and now that he’s out in the world doing awesome stuff my parents are kind of like, honored to be part of his story.

    5. Toots La'Rue*

      I recently got a thank you note from an intern who wasn’t even in my department, she just sat near me and we had friendly conversations once in a while. I thought it was very nice, and it solidified her in my head a bit more than she probably would have been otherwise! I think as a general rule if you have an instinct to say something kind or express appreciation to someone, it’s hard to go wrong following that impulse.

  17. Jet Blu*

    I’ve nursed three babies. Don’t pump during meetings. Only pump alone. You truly are not sure how people feel and it could open a whole bag of worms, especially if you’re their boss.

    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      Yeah, I completely understand that pumping is a time-consuming activity, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable having someone do it in an in-person meeting. If it’s a Zoom call and it’s not distracting, I wouldn’t care – people do lots of stuff out of camera view on Zoom calls! Definitely not in meetings with people you supervise, though, since they’ll be a lot less likely to say they’re uncomfortable to start with and then to speak up if they become uncomfortable later on.

    2. CityMouse*

      I also would note that sometimes you don’t know how YOU feel during pumping because letdown sadness can be a bit of a whammy.

  18. Catherine*

    Re #2, I would not pump in the presence of others. So many of my friends have struggled with their fertility, or experienced really intense guilt for using formula instead of breast milk due to various health problems. For them, seeing other people breastfeed can be pretty emotionally fraught. Even though I wouldn’t be doing it AT them, I personally just would not want to run the risk of making a coworker feel badly about their body that way.

    1. bamcheeks*

      I understand this is aiming to be a compassionate response but it feels like the result would be a backdoor way to reinforce all the same stigmas against pregnancy and breastfeeding that are coming from patriarchal norms. I think you’ve got to be careful with this thinking. As long as people are coming back to work whilst their babies are small enough to need expressed milk, this has got to be to some degree visible in the workplace.

      1. CityMouse*

        Yes, women just got the right to legally nurse in public in all 50 states just in 2019 and women still get harassed for nursing in public. As someone who breastfed but also firmly believes in fed is best and would never judge someone for formula, it’s also not okay to push nursing moms out of public either. Having to hide often means just not going anywhere.

      3. Bread Burglar*

        True. But that workplace visibility doesn’t need to be pumping in a meeting with other people!

        As a woman who can’t have children (and wanted to) it would be very upsetting and awkward for me to have a meeting where my boss was pumping under her cover while trying to discuss work with me. And it would be difficult to say that to my boss when there is a power dynamic.

        Just because we want to advance visibility of pregnancy and reduce stigma doesnt mean we should also ignore the unfortunate sides as well like infertility and miscarriages. There needs to be some level of balance here.

      4. Observer*

        it feels like the result would be a backdoor way to reinforce all the same stigmas against pregnancy and breastfeeding that are coming from patriarchal norms

        Not really. There are a LOT of things that are normal, and seen to be normal and reasonable, that we don’t stick in people’s faces. So it’s one thing for the LW to be perfectly comfortable putting her sign out that says “Please don’t enter. Pumping.” That’s normal and reasonable, and the person for whom this stings has a chance to catch their breath and move on with their day. But that person is not going to be able to do that when they are sitting in a meeting with their boss. Instead that are going to have to essentially staring at the really concrete reminder of their issue while actually trying to focus on whatever it is that they are meeting about. That’s a very different thing.

      5. Jaydee*

        Pumping would still be ”visible” just not literally. The sign on the door, the calendar entry, the pump bag and drying pump parts, the “can we meet at 11:30 instead? I need to pump first” would all be there. Just not literally pumping in someone else’s presence while at work.

      6. Morgan Proctor*

        I agree. I was on the fence about this issue when I first started reading responses, but now I firmly feel that as long as you’re covered up, pumping in meetings should be fine. Lots and lots of things can be upsetting to many people, but that should trump someone’s human right to feed their baby. And also, needing to feed a baby shouldn’t need to take a woman out of important meetings, as long as she’s comfortable with pumping in front of others.

        Your triggers are not your fault, but they are your responsibility, not everyone else’s.

  19. CityMouse*

    As someone who pumped, I wouldn’t do it during meetings for a couple reasons. One is when you’re pumping you should really just focus on that and stuff like sometimes needing to massage to express and all that. I also sometimes would get letdown sadness and definitely wouldn’t want to deal with that. Then needing to get the milk put away pretty quickly.

    For me, I felt a lot more exposed (and funny looking) while pumping than I did nursing and so I wouldn’t feel comfortable around other people. You need to feel comfortable to pump successfully.

    Everything else is fine, but I’d protect pumping as a private space.

    1. JustaTech*

      Yes to the idea of “pumping as a private space”! By not pumping in in-person meetings the LW can reinforce the idea that no one would be *expected* to pump in a meeting, while still normalizing pumping with the signs and pump parts.

    2. Dahlia*

      If the LW doesn’t need to focus on it, they know that. Everyone’s body is different and there’s no such thing as “should” when it comes to this type of thing.

  20. nnn*

    For #1, it might be useful to your class as a whole to specifically ask the prof this question, so they have an opportunity to clarify for the class that you don’t cite sources on resumes.

    When I was in university, they taught us “If you misunderstood something, someone else is also going to misunderstand it.” This may well be a situation where that’s pertinent.

  21. nnn*

    Another consideration for #2:

    If you’re multitasking your pumping with meetings etc., that might give other employees the impression that they’ll also be expected to multitask pumping.

    If you put up a do not disturb sign, that will make it clearer that they can take the time and space they need to pump without being expected to do other things as well.

    1. CityMouse*

      Yeah, multitasking pumping shouldn’t be the norm at work because it’s bad for pumping. those wearable pumps work for some women but for some they don’t and my friend had her supply fall off using one. So it’s important to support women who want pumping to be private and need to take the private nonbworo time.

      1. hiraeth*

        Yeah, I agree. I don’t think LW’s whole pumping experience should be dictated by what other women might want in the same situation, rather than what works for her – but as a manager it is also important to think about the precedents you set. Just as LW should be mindful that if she works late frequently, her team may feel they have to do the same, it’s also worth considering how her actions affect the culture around pumping at work. You don’t want everyone expecting that they can bother a pumping colleague or that they can book meetings etc. during pumping time.

    2. June First*

      You make an important point!
      When I was pregnant with my second child, I was at a different workplace that was going to set up a lactation room for me. I said it wasn’t necessary, that I could pump in my office, etc.

      Someone pointed out that it wasn’t just for me, but for others who didn’t have the same access to a private office.

  22. PumpPro*

    I have a handsfree pump which is super quiet, and I just go somewhere private to set it up then crack on with my job. It fits in my bra underneath my clothes and the pump element clips on my belt. Once I was asked for advice on supporting his wife with a newborn by a colleague (another colleague suggested he talk to me as they knew I was on BF baby no 2) and it was only half way through the conversation that he twigged I had a pump on (it’s about the volume of a quiet desk fan so normal background noise and conversation covers it). I would 100% recommend.

  23. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    Op4 (belated appreciation event) – yes, I would tell the boss to forget about it, and exactly why (morale is in the toilet and this would be a kick in the teeth as it’s too little too late, since it’s clear the company doesn’t value this accomplishment). If the launch required significant amounts of overtime or other effort over and above… make sure your people know that they might have prior commitments when overtime is requested.

    1. WellRed*

      The boss HAS forgotten about it or never cared in the first place. No wonder morale is low at this place.

  24. call me wheels*

    Thank you cards sound like a sweet idea to me! I’ve recently started using thank you cards a lot more and I think they’ve been a hit. I recently graduated and wrote some to the staff I’ve had the best relationships with (and the campus cafe staff because I always have a little chat with them), including my personal email for those I’d particularly like to stay in touch with, and all of them were really well recieved. Some I couldn’t hand over in person but even of those I didn’t put my personal email in, I recieved an email to my uni account thanking me for it. Especially if you can personalise them it’s a nice gesture i think :)

    1. Gumby*

      Absolutely! It had nothing to do with an internship, but I once wandered into the office on a weekend to pick something up and found our office manager, and her husband(!), painting over scuffs on the walls. I realized she probably did a lot of invisible work like that on top of all of the very visible work I knew she was doing so wrote a quick thank you note and left it in her mailbox. She was thrilled! I got a thank you note for my thank you note (but stopped at that point because I didn’t want to descend into ridiculousness). It can really brighten up someone’s day. So I try to look for opportunities to thank people. Thank you emails are also great but there’s something about having it on a card that seems nicer to me. I just get packs of 8 generic thank you cards at the dollar store and keep them on hand.

  25. Neon highlighter*

    LW3 if they weren’t exciting as an applicant move on. But if you’re interested in them – why harm your job search over this? Especially if this position won’t be easy to fill.

    Your applicants are probably applying to a lot of jobs, and made a small error. If you do hire them – it’s a good laugh later.

    Alternatively, return the application and simply say I think you attached the wrong document and give them the chance to reapply. But that’s a lot of work for you.

    1. Farles*

      Very much agree with your second paragraph. It’s silly to pretend or act as though every applicant is only applying to one job ever, or that a minor mistake in applying to jobs is necessarily reflective of their attentiveness in “real” job matters.

      Is it the error or is it being granted an inadvertent peek behind the curtain of their job hunting status that is what is really off-putting? I suspect it’s a bit of both, and their combination may be leading to a more emotional response (no judgement intended! The feelings are rational, if not reasonable) than would ordinarily materialize for a minor mistake.

    2. r*

      If it’s just the wrong name for the organization and they were otherwise a very good candidate, I’d maybe forget the mistake.

      On the other hand, recently I had an applicant who wrote a VERY enthusiastic letter that was 90% about how deeply inspired he is by our organization and the encounters he has had with our executive director… unfortunately, he had us confused with a similarly named organization which coincidentally has a director who shares a first name with our director (imagine we’re Llamas Northeast and our director is Linda Tran, and their name is Northeast Llama Center and their director is Linda Walz). In that instance, I dropped him from consideration mostly because he wasn’t the right sort of applicant, but also because he was clearly applying based on a belief that we were the Northeast Llama Center.

  26. Cheap ass rolling with it*

    LW4 – It’s unlikely you’re going to get approval after 3 months. When I worked in academia, I shelved out-of-pocket for celebrations. It was small (like cake, or lunch at a casual place), and I was the manager that was making more than my reports. It was very clear that it was coming out of my own money, and my reports were grateful.

    When I became more health-aware, we would take the afternoon off to go for hikes — where I made it clear you didn’t have to partake. But it was inexpensive for me and fun for everybody to go outside.

    I also bought snacks for my reports — but food is a big part of the culture here.

  27. Inkognyto*

    LW 5:

    I’ve had interns for 1 summer, and there’s one that stands out. They thanked me a lot, always grateful that I assisted them with a career pivot and took the time to make sure they understood what I was trying to teach them. I tried that with others and most of them it was “I have to do this to graduate”.

    I see keep in contact now and then via Linkedin and they are part of my network. I like to see people I assisted grow and learn.

    1. Pizza Rat*

      Absolutely. I still see a couple of my former interns for dinner once in a while. It’s great seeing them develop.

  28. BellaStella*

    On the use of AI if you search online on the Vice dot com page or Futurism or generally elsewhere for the phrase “Scientific Journal Frontiers Publishes AI-Generated Rat with Gigantic Penis In Worrying Incident” it will lead you to a story of how this can how this can go wrong really wrong:

    “AI-generated images in a new academic paper included a rat with a gigantic penis; a peer reviewer who spoke to Motherboard said it wasn’t their concern.” And the paper has been retracted.

    The point of the AI assignment may be to encourage critical thinking and review of materials the LLMs generate. Also to show that you cannot just ask them for a cover letter and run with it.

  29. bamcheeks*

    I’m wondering if that’s coloring my view of this assignment

    LW1, I think yes, your view of this class is colouring how you view this assignment. It’s not by any means a silly question!

    If you talk to anyone involved in recruitment right now, then the impact of generative AI on application processes is a hot topic, and there are no fixed answers on whether it’s OK to use it, whether it’s possible to stop applicants using it, whether it’s possible to TELL if applicants are using it, whether to ask applicants to make a declaration that they didn’t use it, whether such a declaration will be respected or whether it’s pointless, whether recruitment processes need to be completely re-designed to eliminate or account for gen-AI…

    Everything around gen-AI is in flux right now, and whilst I wouldn’t tell anyone to declare the usage of gen-AI on an application proactively, requiring candidates to declare that they haven’t used it is very much a thing that some employers do. Similarly, as people have said above, many submission processes for writing ask people to specify how/where gen-AI was used. Requiring people to declare whether or not they have used gen-AI seems to me to be a less-likely but not wholly impossible thing that could become an application norm in the next few years, and you and your classmates are both potential applicants and potential hiring managers who will have to make decisions about how gen-AI and hiring processes interact. This is a solid question to ask you to reflect on!

  30. Cheesesteak in Paradise*

    Re: pumping

    I wouldn’t pump in a 1:1 meeting especially as the boss but I don’t think “no pumping during meetings” should be a rule. Sometimes pumping during a larger meeting or virtual meeting is unavoidable.

    I had a friend who was pumping and one of her times was during the lunch academic conference at her job. She wanted to attend while wearing the wearable pumps. Her job tried to block her from attending (which was her daily learning time – this was a medical residency) if she was pumping. That’s completely unacceptable.

    1. Dinwar*

      With regards to your first paragraph, I’d think it’d be the opposite. Or at least potentially be so. What I mean is, a manager should have some idea of their direct reports’ level of comfort around this sort of thing, and if they don’t know they can ask first (making it clear that “I’m not comfortable, I’d like to reschedule” is 100% acceptable). Whereas in a large meeting you may never have seen these people before, and you have no idea what their level of comfort is, nor do you have a way to obtain that information prior to the meeting, so it constitutes a greater risk.

      Virtual meetings are a whole other thing. This falls under the heading of “It doesn’t interfere with the meeting and no one will ever know, so it can be treated as though it never happened”. It’s no different than petting a cat that’s in your lap, or doing some knitting–stuff that you probably wouldn’t do in an office setting, but in a teleconference no one will know and thus no one should care.

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

      I think it would be fine to take a call or do a zoom meeting if you are pumping, especially if you are muted and/or it doesn’t make a lot of noise. But i think it would be odd in a professional setting to have your boss be pumping while giving you feedback.

  31. Football fan*

    Re: pumping at work
    Does the LW mean that she is wondering whether it’s OK to–in a one-on-one meeting with a colleague in person–pump in that setting?

  32. Nathan*

    LW2: After consideration, I agree with Alison’s advice. I think it’s mostly about optics. If I heard that my manager had a small list of reports whom she was willing to meet with during pumping, I would wonder if those were reports she was friendly / comfortable with and therefore would receive preferential treatment. I’d also wonder if the heightened intimacy of the situation would lead to a stronger connection with those reports subconsciously, giving them preferential treatment. This would sort of be like if the boss was willing to meet with a few employees over lunch for an hour but not with others. Even if the excluded employees were given hour-long 1:1s some other time, they would still be wondering if the boss’s lunch buddies were the “in crowd”.

    And it’s important to note that even if you are not giving any preferential treatment, your meetings while pumping are 100% professional and matter-of-fact, the appearance of favoritism alone is enough to question the practice.

    1. TheBunny*

      This feels a little like the ever popular golf excursion. Is it work adjacent? Sure. Does it give a seeming preference to employees who golf? Yes.

    2. Humble Schoolmarm*

      I agree. I wouldn’t mind if my boss was pumping in front of me, but it would absolutely never occur to me to ask about someone else’s lactation without prompting. I’d be miffed if it felt like I got left out of a special club by trying to respect my bosses privacy (as I see it).

  33. Friday Hopeful*

    My son completed an internship last year and he wrote hand-written thank you notes. He has a nice job offer from that firm now, a semester before he is graduating. Thank you notes are never a bad idea.

  34. Washi*

    The framing in terms of access is interesting as I would initially have assumed that being able to multitask in certain meetings would mean more access overall for your team. (And I wouldn’t otherwise pump in front of someone at work, but I think if someone preemptively says they’re fine with pumping, it’s ok to take them at their word.) I guess I was picturing these as all regularly scheduled 1:1s, not a situation where “certain people” can come in while you pump.

    One thing reading this letter and the comments is bringing up for me is how isolating pumping can be. My baby was unable to nurse so I ended up exclusively pumping and it was incredibly lonely. I have so many memories of leaving a group of people to pump and hearing everyone laughing and chatting without me. My guess from the letter is that OP is able to nurse so likely isn’t experiencing the double whammy of having to isolate herself in both work and social situations. I guess I just wish it were more socially acceptable to pump in public (while fully covered of course.)

    1. Elliot*

      1000% this. I do a combo of pumping and nursing, but when my husband’s family visits, I’m pressured to pump alone in a room while someone else gets to give the baby a bottle, so they get that “experience” of feeding the baby.
      It is SO isolating and SO time consuming. I’m blessed with a good supply, but that means that I have to pump 30+ minutes every two hours to avoid intense pain, leaking, and mastitis. In an 8-hour workday I’d miss 2 hours pumping if I didn’t sometimes pump through meetings, while working, etc. Being a salaried employee, that’s simply not feasible and would mean I’d be tied to my laptop at night instead of getting to bond with my baby.
      I think a lot of people who are “uncomfortable” with pumping don’t understand how uncomfortable it is for a mom who is 1) full of milk and 2) forced to isolate for 30+ minutes every couple hours.

      1. atalanta0jess*

        Yeah, I’m finding myself really not giving much of a care about people who are uncomfortable with pumping, if that pumping is quiet and doesn’t involve them seeing their bosses’ nips. It’s really not theirs to be comfortable or uncomfortable about.

        1. Jess*

          I disagree, and I am a mom who pumps. I have pumped during large group zoom calls (with camera turned off) because that was easier than changing the schedule for everyone. But I would not want to pump during an in person or one on one meeting, nor be in an in person meeting with a coworker who was pumping. I’m pretty comfortable with my body, and I’ve pumped in front of friends, but coworkers are another category.

          That sucks to be asked to pump while your family gives the bottle to the baby. They shouldn’t request that and I wish/hope you can decline that request and feed whatever way is best for you. But at home is not really comparable to work, I think.

          1. JustaTech*

            I am going to agree with you. I absolutely pumped around family – was it slightly weird that my dad and my father-in-law sat next to me at breakfast while I pumped? The first time, sure, but I was *hungry* and I was doing something important, so I just got on with the pumping.
            But, as you say, coworkers are another story.
            Years ago my company was in a serious space crunch, where people were jammed three to an office, and the pumping room was also the blood-draw room. Which is disgusting and not acceptable. So my coworker who was pumping chose to use her shared office. One of her officemates was fine with it (another woman who had kids), but the guy was super uncomfortable. He didn’t say anything (he agreed about the pumping room being unacceptable), but the first couple of times he basically ran away and hid in the lab until the coworker was done. This guy was brash and opinionated and not afraid to express himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything (because it was an impossible situation). So yes, coworker are different, and that’s before any kind of power dynamic.

            So I would say to the LW, if you have the option and the choice to not have 1:1s while pumping, please choose not to.

  35. sunnysouthcoast*

    I have a slightly different take on the ‘should I add sources on a resume’ question. I work as a university lecturer, and I don’t think this is particularly weird. We’re seeing various disclaimers in various different sectors about AI involvement in online information searches, chatbot interactions, etc. and there’s a general push to make AI use visible to consumers, which I think is sensible.

    I don’t think that a resume meets the bar for declaring AI use, because the AI tool is used to organise the information, not generate it (or, at least, presumably it should be used for that purpose!). But I think, given the discourses around AI in the public sphere at the moment, in a university context it’s reasonable to ask students to reflect on this question. Much university education is about critical reflection, which may involve inviting people to think again about questions which seem to have only one answer; and I suspect that’s what OP’s tutor is looking for here,

    1. Hyaline*

      Exactly–this was about entering the conversation about AI and thinking critically about its use.

      I’ll have a different take if LW writes with an update that their instructor literally told them in follow-up lectures to slap an MLA Works Cited page on the resume, but until that happens, this question was not given as “advice.”

  36. Pocket Mouse*

    LW2: “I have to go pump now,” or “Let’s meet at 2:30 because I have to pump first.”

    This is too much information- not because it’s about pumping, but because the reason you’re busy is not relevant! “I have to go now” and “I’m available at 2:30, let’s meet then” are what people need to know- people assume that if you’re not available, you’re busy, and they don’t need (and sometimes don’t want!) the details. I encounter this all the time with my mom:
    Me: When’s a good time tomorrow to do X?
    Mom: Well, after breakfast I have to drop books off at the library, then I won’t have much time before meeting up with…
    Me, internally: This is not what I asked for.

    Related to pumping specifically, as someone who has pumped: when meeting with literally anyone at work, I would rather think about the work topic than about pumping, and if the person I was talking to were pumping during our conversation, it would be really hard for me to forget that fact—and hold my own memories and feelings about the experience of pumping at bay—enough to focus on the topic the way I’d want to. Just put holds on your calendar during your preferred pumping times and squish meetings around them.

    I think the question to consider is not whether you are “too comfortable” but whether how you’re approaching the topic/activity is useful or distracting for the people around you. For better or worse (and maybe both—opinions will be different!) you will be known as “the supervisor who pumped during our one-on-ones.”

    1. Insert Clever Name Here*

      In general I agree that you don’t have to say why you’re available or not, but when I was pumping at work I found that people didn’t ask me to move my schedule if they knew that was when I was pumping. When my calendar just said “appointment” at 2:00, I’d get asked if I could move my 2:00; if it said “pump” we’d go straight to finding an alternate time for the meeting.

      Also, if my calendar in general has what I’m doing during that block of time (“1:1 with Boss,” “ERP Testing,” “Rate Review”) it feels coy to me to treat pumping differently.

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

        Yes, I can see there be problems where if the OP has a block on her calendar people will try to schedule with her anyways. Or ask her why she can’t have a meeting. To me it would be no different than saying that you need to use the bathroom or its your lunch time

      1. Pocket Mouse*

        I don’t disagree that it’s common! But I wouldn’t want to know someone is doing other common things—say, cooking or washing dishes or doing laundry—while meeting with me either. It’s a distraction, and pumping can be a very particular kind of distraction for some folks.

        If you’re responding to my first paragraph: sometimes too much information isn’t a problem (and therefore not “too much” per se) and sometimes it is. But unless you have a reason to share it, like making sure your pumping time is respected as others said, or if you have a particular goal of normalizing pumping in the workplace, it doesn’t help answer the question of “when are you available to meet?”

    3. Whomst*

      Your first paragraph may be good advice in some office cultures, but not in others. My office, people more often than not give brief explanation for their conflicts, since it aids in scheduling/rescheduling. “I’m meeting with a vendor” doesn’t get attempts to reschedule your conflict, “I’m meeting with my supervisor for our 1-on-1” does. If I say “I have to pump” I don’t get questions on whether I can reschedule my conflict to better accommodate whatever meeting they’re trying to plan.

      But yeah, I have pumped during online meetings, but there’s no way I would ever even consider pumping in front of anyone besides my husband or the nurse in the labor and delivery department.

  37. Morning Reader*

    I’m glad that mothers can pump at work and that there are requirements for providing private space to do so.

    But pumping while you are meeting with someone, in person? Please, no. How could you tell if the other person is agreeing to this because you’re their boss, and not because they are comfortable with it?

    I guess I don’t understand the necessity of most pumping except in rare cases where baby won’t accept anything else. It seems like so much trouble (and time, and equipment) when you can switch to formula. How does a working mother calculate the cost/benefit on pumping? I recall breastfeeding as being advantageous because it was so easy. Baby, breast, done. No toting around bottles, trying to keep everything cool and sterile. I hope that eventually we get longer maternity leaves so that pumping at work is not needed very much. It’s good that you can do it. I’m unclear on why anyone would choose to do it unless absolutely necessary.

    As for the equipment being out and being visible, I don’t think it’s much of a problem because how would someone unfamiliar with pumping even know what it was? I think I’d think it was for some odd hobby, brewing or gardening or winemaking, perhaps some kind of vaping. Some of those things are less work appropriate, so it might be better to keep them out of sight just so others aren’t speculating on what that stuff is, but other than being a distraction, it seems ok.

    1. bamcheeks*

      Your third paragraph is completely unnecessary, and exactly why LW wants to be open about expressing milk at work. It’s not your business how other people are feeding their babies, and this is just as gross as “why would anyone give their baby formula” chat.

    2. Yaya*

      I had nearly a year’s maternity and I still needed to pump at work. It isn’t just about collecting milk, although for many women in countries with substandard maternity leave conditions that may be a primary concern (e.g. the USA). Women may also pump to keep their supply up during working hours, or to alleviate engorgement/fullness between feeds. There were many days I didn’t save the milk that I pumped because my little one just had morning and night feeds, but if I hadn’t pumped, I would have leaked, been uncomfortable, or been at risk of mastitis.

      Won’t touch the formula/breastmilk argument except to say that for some families, formula would not be a choice they would want to make.

    3. hiraeth*

      Come on now, there’s zero need to question women’s choices around this. They know what they want to do and why. It’s no one else’s business.

    4. Immaterial*

      To answer your 3rd paragraph seriously, the cost/ benefit of pumping is a pretty individual calculation. There can be a lot of feelings and a lot of pressure around how people choose to feed their babies, regardless of what they choose to do. I think it’s important that people are free to choose what they find works best for them and their family, even when it’s not the choice I would have made.

    5. Coffee break*

      Why are you so sure you know what is best for nursing mothers when you have never been one? Formula is incredibly expensive is one reason. Another reason is “because adult women are allowed to make choices on heir own.” Good god, you really need to examine your judgements before you comment.

    6. Observer*

      I guess I don’t understand the necessity of most pumping except in rare cases where baby won’t accept anything else.

      So? You happen to be wrong on the utility, but that’s not even the point. Even if you were right that pumping is not so important, it’s really not relevant. Women should not have to be burdened with yet *another* judgement about whether they are doing motherhood “right”.

      And while it’s nice that you are ok with women pumping, you are minimizing a real issue for women. And the kindest thing I can say about it is that’s irrelevant and unhelpful and is likely to make people feel like they need to justify something that they really don’t need to justify.

    7. Elliot*

      This has to be a joke – you’re really commenting on women’s choices to continue to offer their babies breastmilk?!
      Okay, I’ll bite…. My baby has a fairly common condition called CMPA, which means she can’t have any cow’s milk protein. The formula that she can have would cost $13-$15 a day to feed her, is smelly, tastes horrible, and causes serious stomach pain for her sometimes. That’s around $5,000 to feed my baby for a year. I can promise you that my free, insurance-provided pump, plus the slight extra amount I eat while nursing, is way less than $5,000. And that’s before the health benefits of breastfeeding/pumping to both mom and baby.
      I think people also just don’t realize that if you’re nursing your baby, and away from them for more than a couple hours, it’s physically painful and can cause serious illness if you don’t somehow express the milk.
      To the OP – I think this is exactly why pumping needs to be more normalized!

      1. PlantProf*

        I pumped because I wanted to give my baby as much breast milk as possible (I had to supplement with formula anyway). Formula is super expensive, but also I have a chronic illness that has a genetic component, and studies have shown that breastfeeding as an infant reduces the chances of developing it later in life. Just, you know, one more example of the incredibly diverse reasons people want to breastfeed past the 12 weeks or so that is a pretty typical maternity leave in the US.

    8. EA*

      This comment is kind of grating, but even though I nursed and pumped for two babies, I will say I had very little knowledge of pumping before I had my own kids. I actually agree that I wouldn’t have recognized the equipment, and I would not have understood how important it can be. Hopefully this will inspire this commenter to read more about why women might choose to pump at work!

  38. Yes And*

    LW1, you have my sympathy. When I went back for my MBA, I was in my early 40s, and in my second decade of my second career. I was one of the older/more experienced in my cohort, but far from the most so. Everybody I talked to had at least a couple of years in the workforce. Some were military veterans. If there was anybody who went straight from undergrad to this program, I never met them. And yet there were a few professors, chiefly the chair of the program, who seemed to feel it was their job to give us an education in Life Lessons, and frequently assigned essays where we were supposed to apply the lessons of business organization or whatever to our personal lives. It was absolutely condescending and insulting, as you describe.

    My documents folder is full of unsubmitted drafts where I told this professor exactly what I thought of his assignments. And then, having written those drafts, I shrugged my shoulders, held my nose, and knocked out the paper or personality quiz as assigned, putting in just enough effort to satisfy the grading rubric. I needed the degree to make my resume eligible for many of the jobs that I otherwise had the experience for. It just wasn’t a hill worth dying on.

    1. I strive to Excel*

      This last weekend I ended up having to drive an extra hour and a half on top of numerous other communication-failure related incidents due to my family full of white-collar professionals apparently forgetting every business communications class they’ve ever had. Two weekends before I ended up showing my *childhood English teacher* the basic principals of CYA/closed loop communication (she’s a family friend as well as my former teacher). If I were ever in the position of teaching a beginning communications or writing course of any form I would walk into that room assuming that people there knew nothing, no matter how old they are or how experienced they are, because it’s really common for people to not learn things that we think are “common sense”.

      There are ways to make that more and less condescending, and I don’t doubt your experience. Writing an essay on “applying business organization to my personal life” sounds like a form of mild torture to me. I also agree with you that there’s a lot of assignments in college where you’re going to just have to take a deep breath, finish it as fast as you can, and then have something to bitch about with friends. I just wanted to add a smidge of perspective on the other side as to “what seems obvious to me may not always be obvious to you/the rest of the class”.

  39. Acronyms Are Life (AAL)*

    Because I’m a cynical person, I see the pumping issue in a different way. Bad management being like ‘oh, well OP doesn’t mind pumping at her desk, so why do you need a room to do so?’ or ‘OP holds in person meetings while pumping, why can’t you?’

    To me it’s kind of similar to emptying a colostomy bag or other medical things like having to do injections. It’s all normal life things, but not necessarily something that people feel comfortable with occurring while sitting in a room with someone unless it was absolutely necessary. Plus, with all of the virtual options nowadays, I think there are ways to do these things and still be present at meetings.

      1. I Have RBF*

        Why? Both are excretions from the human body that need to be managed appropriately. Both are non-trivial processes that need to have clean components, appropriate receptacles, and privacy to perform. Both are protected by law. The only difference is that one is waste and the other is food for another person.

        Or are you arguing that people who have colostomies should be ashamed and not be allowed to empty their waste at work?

        1. Coffee break*

          It’s really exhausting explaining how feeding a baby is different than emptying a bag of shit in front of someone. Give me a break.

          1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

            Would you and meep have reacted the same way to just the mention of injecting? If not, maybe set aside the part that bothers you and react to the actual point: there are normal life things that people have to do, that are merely facts of life and not shameful, but that should be done with some degree of privacy. The reactions here are derailing and dismissive.

          2. I Have RBF*

            Nowhere did I say “in front of someone.” Don’t put words in my mouth.

            I said “Both are excretions from the human body that need to be managed appropriately. Both are non-trivial processes that need to have clean components, appropriate receptacles, and privacy to perform. Both are protected by law. The only difference is that one is waste and the other is food for another person.”

            The key point is that both need privacy to perform, as well as clean components and appropriate receptacles.

            IMO, feeding a baby is no different from emptying a bag of shit in that it is a biological necessity.

            I do not elevate breastfeeding to deific status nor denigrate managing bodily waste to demonic status. The only difference is that they should absolutely not be performed in the same place. IOTW, relegating breastfeeding or pumping to the bathroom is not appropriate, and emptying a colostomy bag should not be done at a table for eating. The key word, which you ignored, is APPROPRIATE.

            Sheesh.

  40. HonorBox*

    OP2 – I’m a male, so take this for what it is worth. I’ve worked with females both as coworkers and as a supervisor who were open about telling people they needed to pump. I’ve seen pump equipment on desks. And that’s not a big deal at all. It is part of having a child and part of taking care of them and totally understandable. I’ve never thought of someone saying that they needed to pump, or scheduling a meeting so they could accommodate pumping as any different than someone saying they were going to lunch or scheduling to accommodate a lunch break.

    I think it is great that your female coworker was OK with you pumping while meeting with her, but I think there’s probably more who won’t be, so setting aside that time to not meet with anyone is probably a better bet going forward.

    1. Good Enough For Government Work*

      I’m sure you didn’t intend anything adverse, but you may wish to consider not referring to women as ‘females’.

      It’s something of a dogwhistle for Men’s Rights Activists and other common-or-garden misogynists. Also, for those of us who are nerds, I am unable to hear it in any other way than said by a Ferenghi on Star Trek. FEEEEEEEE-MAAAAAAAALES.

      (This is where you’re using female as a noun, to be clear; saying something like ‘female coworker’, where it’s an adjective, is fine.)

      1. Mary*

        Eh, he referred to himself as “male” at the start.

        I find it’s more the people who use “men” and “female” that you have to worry about.

  41. The Other Evil HR Lady*

    To #1: I also attended college later in my career, so I think they gave you an exercise in critical thinking, more than they gave you an exercise for how to write a resume. The answer is obvious to you because you’ve been working, presumably in a professional environment, for years. But others don’t have that experience, and the class can’t cater *just* to people who have professional backgrounds. They have to help those who wouldn’t have been exposed to AI in their day-to-day – think warehouse workers, construction crew laborers, wait staff, etc. They want all of you to think about AI, the ethics of using it, and whether you’d say anything in your resume. But they’re not telling you to do it – they’re *asking* if you should. TBH, I do think the fact that you’re finding the class condescending means the the assignment feels the way it feels, when it’s supposed to help everybody write a resume – not just you.

    1. Hyaline*

      Totally agree. And even if you have been working a while and know how resumes work, the question of when and where it’s ethical to utilize AI in the workplace and especially in written communication is still good to consider, as it’s an emerging and changing topic of conversation! The class may be geared toward a less experienced student that you, LW, but if you don’t see the value in probing questions of ethical use of AI in communication, I’m saying this gently, but you may not be as ahead of the game as you think. Academic coursework is often about going below the surface of “what we do in the workplace” to look at the foundational underpinnings, the theories and yes, ethics, that guide us.

    2. Astor*

      I agree with your overall assessment, but I want to point out that some classes do cater *just* to people that have professional backgrounds. There are definitely professional programs (including some MBA programs) that only accept students that already have defined experience working in their profession. But even then, a lot of those programs are designed so that there are multiple goals. In a program aimed at professionals, I would generally assume that each class is balancing some combination of these three goals:
      * teaching required skills to students who either didn’t acquire them or retain them from their previous educational/work experiences
      * documenting those required skills of students via assessments
      * supporting an environment for students to network

      From the LW’s description, it does sound like this is more likely to be a class full of students with a wide variety of backgrounds and not just with a particular kind of work experience. However, it still might be a useful framework with which to approach these kinds of classes.

      Each subject will have a different balance, but so will each instructor and each student. For example, some subjects it will be understood that maybe 5% of students will have previous experience, and others 95% of students are expected to. Some instructors are better at teaching, some are better at assignments, some are better at explaining their goals, etc. As a student: when you go into a class knowing that you already have the skills required to pass the class, focus on documenting those skills in the assessment and on networking with other students.

      You can decide if there’s an advantage for you to excel at the class (other opportunities via instructor, awards for excelling, etc), or if it’s better to save that energy and just do enough work to meet/exceed the minimum grade (usually a B in post-graduate programs). You can also use this as an opportunity to find other students who think similarly to you, and also to pay attention to which kinds of students are approaching it differently and how/why. You might certainly have terrible instructors or a terrible class/program, but you can have more control than you think about what you take out of the structure of the class even if the subject material isn’t helpful.

      Good luck with your program LW1!

  42. PieAdmin*

    LW2: I’d rethink the “Pumping, Do Not Disturb.” sign, because some intern might think you were just lifting weights and try to break into your office anyway.

  43. Ginger Baker*

    I breastfed for MANY years and pumped for a year per kid. I am very pro-breastfeeding and nursed my kids anywhere I was that they also were with zero qualms. But pumping milk to me is like pumping iron: sure, it’s zero issue to talk about and if you happen to see me doing it, meh no big deal at all, but in zero way would I suggest we conduct a meeting while pumping (milk or iron!). Having a meeting while I do a workout would just be…weird…and the same goes for pumping milk in my book. And I breastfed way past American norms, this does not even remotely come from any discomfort with breastfeeding.

  44. Trout 'Waver*

    OP#5, I cherish the thank-you notes I’ve received from interns over the years. Do it.

  45. Hyaline*

    #1, in defense of this professor as a writing prof myself–you were not given advice, you were given a question to think about in the context of an essay prompt! Unless this professor tells you outright you should cite sources on a resume, you should think of this as a prompt for thinking more deeply about “how to ethically use AI” than veiled advice. And it’s kinda an interesting question from a hypothetical ethical standpoint–“in most fields, if you use someone else’s words or ideas, increasingly including AI, you give credit. Do resumes count as part of this ethical guideline? Why or why not? Is it even possible or advisable to give credit in any way, including citation, on a resume? If you can’t give credit, does it change what AI tools or outside sources you can ethically use?”–so consider answer it that way.

  46. Fluffoth*

    For #2 I thought the OP meant pumping iron. My colleague’s on a weightlifting kick right now…

  47. Delta Delta*

    #2 – I see nothing wrong with blocking time on the calendar and noting “pumping,” specifically so people know that things really can’t be scheduled on top of that time block. I also see nothing wrong with the sign on the door.

    I’m not at all enthused about having in-person meetings while pumping. I have a few reasons: 1) while the OP may not be uncomfortable, the other person in the meeting may be (for whatever reason, and it’s valid and I’m not going to debate it); 2) depending on the pump/equipment, it may be distracting or noisy, and may end up making the meeting unproductive; 3) it communicates to other pumping parents that they have to have meetings or continue working while pumping, and that’s likely not the message the company wants to send.

    1. the Viking Diva*

      –> “it communicates to other pumping parents that they have to have meetings or continue working while pumping, and that’s likely not the message the company wants to send”
      Some companies probably DO want to send this message but that doesn’t mean we have to aid and abet them. I think this is a really important point for a manager to take into account in how this comes across to others. Speaking plainly, not secretively, about pumping; taking time out to do it; yet not pumping in front of others who may be uncomfortable and don’t feel able to say so or don’t realize it will be weird until they are in the situation.

      The principal in play: We allow bodies here… AND we allow privacy about bodies.

  48. ijustworkhere*

    Pumping or nursing a baby at a meeting or would not be acceptable in my workplace. We have a lovely mother’s room with comfy recliners, refrigeration, a sink, etc, everything someone would need to pump or nurse and maintain the equipment to do so. Blocking time off on a calendar is fine. Putting a note on a door is fine.

    I also agree with the people who say it sends a bad message to others that it’s not OK to take a break to take care of your own bodily needs or those of your family.

    1. spcepickle*

      That is awesome and all – till you have one of those managers schedules that are back to back meeting. Or someone has been trying to chase me down for the last several hours and this is the 20 min gap I have. Some people can pump really quickly, put for some people it take 20 or 30 min 3 times a day. I am not building 90 min into my work schedule to go sit by myself in a “lovely room”.
      I agree that I would be very carful about pumping in front of my team, but with my office door closed in a virtual meeting or on a phone call or while responding to email. As long as you can’t see my boobs – I am gonna do what I need to.

  49. Pizza Rat*

    I bought my interns small gift at the end of their term. They worked hard, their end presentation showed creativity and knowledge and I learned plenty from them while they were here.

    I loved having interns and my workplace has a great program for them, including seminars on things like grant writing, presentation skills.

  50. IT But I Can't Fix Your Printer*

    I worked in an office where they scheduled the summer “staff appreciation” event so late that they invited me to come to it after I had moved to a new position. In November. After a very challenging summer including a major software implementation. I don’t miss that place!

  51. Another Hiring Manager*

    I’d love to hear from the commentariat about they are using ChatGPT and the like as part of their job search and resume creation. I ask because when hiring for a position recently, I received a few resumes with the Executive Summary reading almost identical to each other, in a different writing style than the work experience was written. I’m 98% sure it was ChatGPT and I found it off-putting.

    1. bamcheeks*

      I am not, because I’ve had lots of experience writing CVs and cover letters and for me it is WAY easier to just write a cover letter than to figure out what prompt I’d need to give Chat GPT to create a cover letter that is tailored to both me and the job.

      I work with candidates and have seen some using Chat-GPT, and my experince is that Chat-GPT usually tailors the application to the job (“WANTED: Enthusiastic llama groomer with a flair for working with shy llamas” “Dear Hiring Manager I am an enthusiastic llama groomer with a flair for working with shy llamas, please hire me, Yrs etc”) OR to the candidate (“I am a keen camelid groomer with broad experience at two commercially successful llama training camps”), neither of which is particularly useful.

      That said, from the output point of view, I don’t think there’s a significant difference between people using Chat-GPT badly and people using templates badly. It was perfectly possible to get stiff, irrelevant or near-identical cover letters from candidates pre-gen-AI just because Google had sent them all to the same page, or before that because their libraries had sent them to the same book and they didn’t know what they were supposed to do with it.

    2. AC36*

      I find this blanket use of AI/ChatGPT offputting, as well. At the very least, someone should personalize it after they use it. If it’s used as a template (if they really need to?), OK, but not editing after would be a red flag to me. It’s no different than plagiarizing a paper or Cliffsnotes, in my opinion.

    3. Meep*

      I am on the fence about it. My BIL’s roommate (who only has a GED and retail experience at 27 – for clarity on background, not to judge him) has been using the man who cannot even get a single ping on a dating site to give him advice on his resume. For retail positions. Obviously, the roommate is getting no call backs.

      In this one case, I feel like ChatGPT would be the better option over BIL.

    4. Diluted Tortoiseshell*

      Using Chat GPT to write your resume is only really helpful if you train the model on your experience and style, which takes a fair amount of time and effort to get accurate and still produces some nothing burger sentences.

      I did find it helpful for rewriting some accomplishments, but only with a lot of prompting and even then it only gave me a starting point.

      That said I think ChatGPT is not the best resume tool. There are some AI/ATS resume scanners out there that give you way more valuable information. For example did you know that ATS readers have a character limit per sentance and going over this can result in the ATS not reading your resume? I got way more form these simple scanners then I did from ChatGPT.

  52. shaw of dorset*

    I would not want to be in an in-person meeting with someone pumping. It gives me the willies and is something I’d prefer not to witness. Also, the US Government, my boss, and my coworkers all think I’m a woman, but I’m not.

    1. CityMouse*

      As someone who pumped, I also would find it weird someone offering to be in the room whole I pumped. Hard no on that, give me my privacy.

      1. Jet Blu*

        Plus even if the pumping employee thinks all are ok with it, they may not be. It’s kind of presumptuous. No one really knows the thoughts of another person.

  53. Chocolate lover*

    #1 – I don’t think the instructor is suggesting that they do include citations, but it’s about the question as it relates to AI and ethics. I work at a college and that’s a big issue right now, helping students assess when it is and isn’t appropriate to use AI at work. Students have already been fired from internships for inappropriate usage, while others use it as an integral tool in other internships.

  54. Definitely not me*

    I think question #1 and the answer both may have missed the point. It sounds to me as though the question in the assignment was about the ethics of using AI and whether one should acknowledge that AI was used to create the resume materials. Social media platforms supposedly require you to indicate whether the post was generated by AI and this seems similar to me, as though it was more of a thought experiment for students than an instruction or a requirement to cite sources in the resume.

  55. The golden typewriter*

    Lw#1, I wouldn’t worry about the question. That’s just a •,*. Comprehension question •,*.
    The kind of question that’s kinda silly, doesn’t matter, or has an obvious answer.
    For example, I took a personal finance class, hoping to better my understanding of personal finance. The worst part in that class was having to complete and analyze a fake person’s taxes and tax returns… twice. And I’d already done my REAL taxes that year.
    TLDR, that’s a reflection question, there’s no actual purpose besides showing you understood/interacted with the lesson.

  56. Saturday*

    It wouldn’t occur to me to tell my boss that it was okay to pump in meetings with me, so if I learned that she was pumping in meetings with my coworker, I would assume they had a friendship that went beyond the manager-employee relationship.

    That would probably be fine, assuming that things in the workplace were otherwise okay, but just something else to consider.

  57. please just do your homework*

    LW #1, has there been any indication that this professor wants you to answer this specific question “yes”? (As opposed to them asking this question in order to inspire critical thought, and perhaps in-class discussion?) If not, it seems to me like you’re enlisting Alison to help you with your homework. Just write the answer you’ve decided on and your reasoning.

  58. spcepickle*

    To the intern – I am here to pile on the doooo ittttt. And to anyone else who is leaving a position and had a good experience. Or really to anyone who is thinking about writing a note at all – The answer is is always yes. Think about the last time you got an actual note in the mail – it feels good and it becomes something special.
    Taking a moment to tell someone that you value them in whatever capacity is worth it.

  59. TotesMaGoats*

    Apologies if this has been covered. For #1-Essay and the question are completely appropriate. I’m having my instructors incorporate conversations about the role of AI in job searching. The question for the essay is basically “do you tell them you used AI to build your resume”? It’s not about whether you cite anything on a resume.

    While uni career centers often give out bad advice, this is a really important topic. My institution is primarily adults and we require this kind of course for undergrads. Given the atrocious resumes I’ve seen, it’s still very necessary. Maybe you have a great resume, it’s never bad to be aware of what’s going on in the wacky world of hiring trends to share with friends and family.

  60. Scarlett Johnson*

    I read a lot of resumes and cover letters and I can absolutely tell when someone has used ChatGPT. The read too much, like you pulled out a thesaurus to write it. If they aren’t edited, they don’t read like a real person wrote it. I work in academia and I absolutely hold this against someone. I don’t think AI is ethical and it isn’t “your” work. Just my two pennies worth.

  61. Velawciraptor*

    LW5: Alison is right. 100% do it! I had an intern last summer who left me a lovely thank you note. She just started with our office permanently today and, when she comes around when our recruitment director is making introductions, she’ll see her card in pride of place on the bulletin board above my desk.

  62. Dawn*

    #1: in my most recent continuing education semester, I had a lady (who had a PhD) cite sources in APA in every discussion forum post she wrote. This included, at one point, citing another post she wrote, and citing Wikipedia several times.

    She ended up making herself look incredibly goofy, honestly; there’s a certain mindset at a certain level of academia that of course you cite sources in everything, but it doesn’t actually hold up outside of academia.

  63. Hopeness*

    LW #1, has there been any indication that the professor wants you to answer “yes”? Any at all? If not, I think you should just write the answer you’ve settled on and your reasoning. Sometimes essay questions are about inspiring critical thoughts and in-class discussion, rather than testing you for a right answer.

    And, to be honest, sending Alison this question does look a bit like you were hoping she’d write your essay for you. I think you’d be better off just sitting down and writing it yourself if that’s the case.

    1. Dawn*

      I disagree that the LW was trying to get their essay written for them, but you’re not wrong about just answering the way you want to answer. I’ve written an awful lot of graded university discussion posts which start with some variation of, “I appreciate the diversity of opinions on this subject but you’re all making this way too complicated.”

    2. Fiona-a-a*

      As a former teacher, when I assigned essays and defenses of positions, I was often working to get the students to think about what they thought and why they thought it. I never taught on AI, but for any contentious subject, it benefits students to have considered their opinion for long enough to write about it. I would also grade based on the presence of absence of an opinion (rather than of my opinion) and whether the arguments in the paper were related to the opinions. It may be possible that’s happening here, too.

      1. Dawn*

        One of my recent professors made, essentially, “are GMOs good” a graded discussion topic and my answer very nearly started with, “First of all, how dare you,”

  64. Dawn*

    #3: I’ve seen studies claiming that it takes, on average, 100-200 applications before receiving a job offer.

    I’m not certain how far I trust that information, but I definitely know that it can take an awful lot of work, and especially for people who aren’t talented writers to begin with, you should probably lean towards forgiveness; I am a talented writer and even I recycle a lot of verbiage between cover letters. I’m sure that I’ve made such an error at least once. To you it looks big because you’re only reading the cover letters for this job; on a scale of “I sent out 200 cover letters in the last six months” it’s a statistically-insignificant mistake.

    1. AC36*

      That’s an interesting perspective, but perhaps it’s taking so many applications BECAUSE of HOW people are submitting applications using AI/ChatGPT.

      1. Dawn*

        I think you’ve got your questions mixed up! #1 was about AI cover letters, #5 was about an error in a cover letter!

        1. AC36*

          I know they are different questions, but several tangents are going on in this thread overall, and that came to mind when you made your statement about the number of applications. As in, maybe the use of AI is obvious and off-putting, and perhaps a factor in why people are applying to so many jobs before getting an interview/getting hired.

          1. Dawn*

            No, I think that’s just a tough economy and far more applicants than there are open positions, as usual.

          2. Rebecca*

            No, it has taken hundreds of applications to get one offer for far longer than generative AI has been a thing.

  65. BikeWalkBarb*

    LW5, absolutely a big YES on the personal thank-you notes. If you’ve been there three summers you’ve been part of the team.

    One more way to say thank you: Occasionally touch base and let them know where your career path has taken you, particularly if you can cite something learned while working with them that you’re now putting to good use. Two reasons: 1) They’ll be tickled pink (honestly) to know that you’re doing well, still remember them, and cared enough about the experience gained to tell them how it’s benefiting you, and 2) If they know of a job opening that you’d be great for, you’ll stay top of mind for them as a thoughtful person with a growing track record they know about.

    With every intern I’ve ever had (quite a few over the years) part of my goodbye conversation with them has been “Stay in touch and let me know how you’re doing. I can continue to be a resource to you.”

    The one–ONE–person who did that with a ping about every 2 months while she was still job hunting got the prize for doing so. I heard of an unpublicized opening someone was hiring for. They told me they were only going to interview a couple of people. I suggested they also interview our outstanding intern. They did, she got the job, she ended up in her boss’s position when that person left, on and on in a highly successful career. After my referral it’s all thanks to her talents, not me, but I opened that door. And I did it because she communicated (not so frequently as to be annoying), told me additional things she was learning, where she’d applied or interviewed. She took me at my word when I said “Stay in touch.”

  66. Derry Girl*

    To the lovely person who wanted to know if they should write thank you notes – YES . I have some that I got more than 30 years ago and when I was going through a difficult time at work ( different job) I took them out and read them and remembered that I was good at what I did.

  67. toolegittoresign*

    LW5: I still have many of the thank you/farewell notes former interns have given me. These notes remind me of the person but also remind me of the ways I was able to help them learn and grow during their internship. I know someday there will be a time when I see a former intern launch their own company or become an executive, and I will absolutely take a snapshot of that thank you note to send to them, congratulating them and reminding them of “where it all began.”

  68. Fiona-a-a-a*

    for #1, just an aside that isn’t completely on topic, sometimes when you want to say on a resume that you published something relevant (like maybe you wrote a book or article in the field where you’re applying), those works are often formatted a lot like citations.

  69. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

    LW3: I think this partially depends on the role and applicant pool. In a job where attention to detail is critical and you have 300 good applicants, you can’t phone screen everyone, so I’m often looking at anything I can to whittle down the pool. The wrong company name in the cover letter would be sufficient in a pool that competitive where I only have, say, 20 slots for phone screens. In a pool of 50 for that job? Not a disqualifier on its own.

    LW4: If morale is low and you don’t have control of approvals of expenses, maybe consider whether there’s something fully in your control that would have a similar impact. Could you do a celebratory “let’s eat lunch together in the conference room” event instead where everyone brings/buys whatever they normally would, but you can still take time to appreciate peoples’ work? Or if getting expense approvals specifically (rather than getting any kind of action from your boss) is the barrier, could you write individual notes of appreciation to people on the team and have your boss or someone else in leadership send them?

  70. Ellen Ripley*

    For LW2, I wouldn’t be offended but my general feeling is “is taking a meeting so urgent that you can’t have a few minutes to do X beforehand?”, where X can be anything related to personal care (taking medication, making an important call, etc). I think whenever possible our workplaces should support flexibility.

    Pumping while in a meeting gives me the feeling of “I’m not allowed to/able to take a few minutes for myself so I’m going to multitask this”. I would take note of my manager doing this because it informs how much flexibility I have.

    1. bamcheeks*

      I’m sure this varies, but it’s unlikely to be “a few minutes”! I needed about 30 minutes at a time when I was expressing, and that was 7 months after giving birth. It could be much longer if you’re back at work earlier or having difficulties establishing supply or anything.

      1. Jess*

        Yeah, it’s not “a few minutes”. 20-40 minutes is common, multiple times per day, plus washing the pump, setting it up, putting the milk in the fridge, etc.
        Totally different from taking a medication or brushing your teeth or whatever other personal care tasks you are thinking of.

  71. Overit*

    Re pumping: FTR I am a woman and a mother. And I would be extremely uncomfortable with being in a meeting with a woman pumping, albeit under a tent. If the woman pumping were my boss, I would feel wary of objecting.

  72. Name (Required)*

    LW 5: Absolutely, yes, thank-you notes are the best! And as a purely anecdotal aside, my team has filled two positions by hiring my favorite interns, both of whom wrote me the sweetest, most thoughtful thank-yous I’ve ever received. And populating the staff with people eager to express their gratitude has benefited the company culture, too!

  73. Jam on Toast*

    Citing your sources when you use Generative AI is definitely something that is becoming more and more common in college courses when submitting any written work. Allison is right that it’s not done on resumes, but remember, this as a resume *assignment*, not a live, in the wild resume. The faculty member does need to be able assess if and how and to what degree the student used AI to prepare the graded work and that’s what a citation does.

    Broadly, citations for AI should include the software or tool used, the version or edition, the date the tool was used and the prompt text that was submitted. Students always should visit their library website and/or check their college’s policy page for specific instructions for acknowledging GenAI.

  74. Melon Merengue*

    #4 reminds me of our birthday situation. We were supposed to start doing a minor celebration for birthdays which included a cake and card everyone signed. We only have about 30 people here but it became obvious that a cake for every individual bday was a lot, so we were meant to switch to 1 per month and it would have all that month’s names on it. Except it totally fell apart. So one or two people got their own cake, three people got a group cake, and then no one got any cake anymore. At least we still do the cards…

  75. Diluted Tortoiseshell*

    #2 What a weird focus … what about the men? Really?

    Here’s the thing OP. You are fine. It’s OK for people to know pumping exists, see pumping parts, hear people pump, and gasp! even men! I literally had a long high level chat with my 61 yo male colleague about pumping and gave him a pump and a ton of pump parts for his daughter who just brought his first grandbaby home from the NIC. He’s fine. Everyone is fine! Reasonable adults can handle this. Without becoming the CPR pumping lady.

    My concern is that, as a manager, you are setting a precedence that work is more important than your legally mandated pumping breaks. I think in your shoes I would take the pumping time to focus on pumping and if anyone says during a meeting (which I’m assuming are teams/remote) “oh go ahead and pump and we can keep working on the TPS report!” I would say somthing like: “No I need to focus on pumping while I pump” or “No I need to focus on the task at hand, we can catch up later!”

    Afterall your direct reports don’t have offices and will have to travel to their pumping rooms. If you normalize the breaks it can help calm the ever constant time pressure moms are under.

    1. Observer*

      What a weird focus … what about the men? Really?

      That’s a total straw man. You never want to set up a situation where access is related to gender. Period.

      It’s OK for people to know pumping exists, see pumping parts, hear people pump, and gasp! even men!

      No one said that men are not allowed to hear about pumping. In fact, the reverse is true. Everyone who has addressed this has said that it is not only OK, but necessary to not try to hide the existence of pumping, etc.

      But actually pumping in meetings is a different issue. While it’s probably going to more of a problem for men, and that’s legitimate and a problem for the LW, it’s also likely to be a problem for women.

      It’s also out of line to set up a situation where other women may feel pressured to give up their privacy around pumping.

      1. Diluted Tortoiseshell*

        But the men could also volunteer to stay on the phone while the boss pumps. Just because men aren’t volunteering as often doesn’t mean it’s not available them.

        Regardless … yeah I think it’s strange that the answer focused on this aspect of it. Usually she’s pretty good about talking about the importance of optics and setting a good example for direct reports. She has a real blind spot for working moms it seems. They are a very marginalized group and she didn’t address how the bosses behavior could impact them at all. Focusing on men, and pretty much only men, as the marginalized group impacted in this scenario was just bizzare.

    2. Fiona-a-a*

      Yes it’s fine to talk about pumping, and I, a woman, am entitled to witness my boss with her shirt on in the workplace unless there are extenuating circumstances.

      I am very body and sex positive. I am very baby, breast, and pumping positive. I am entitled to only meet with my boss while her shirt is on as long as there is no true emergency that necessitates shirtlessness.

      1. Diluted Tortoiseshell*

        You and I may be envisioning different meetings. I read it as, folks are meeting virtually. Boss says she has to pump, and women are saying oh go ahead I’m fine.

        There is no witnessing to be had as I’m reading it.

        1. Dahlia*

          You might want to go back and reread the letter!

          Relevant quotes include:
          “I am very fortunate to have an office of my own”
          “I even, on a couple of occasions, pumped during meetings in my office with one of my female supervisee”

          There is nothing indicating they’re virtual meetings at all!

  76. umami*

    For #1, the assignment isn’t to create a resume for the LW, it’s about what a resume created using AI tools would be like, and to write an essay discussing the ethics of doing so. Students are being asked to make a ‘dummy’ resume using the tool and using some critical thinking in evaluating its effectiveness and ethics, not their own CV for job hunting.

  77. A Disappointing Australian in London*

    Re. OP1 and terrible college advice:

    I was required to sit through a student skills workshop during Australian grad school. It was vaguely possible that there were some students in the Masters by coursework who had never been a university student, and who knows, perhaps there would be some tips & tricks I could benefit from.

    My jaw dropped when the presenter from Student Aid confidently gave advice that would have had every international student deported for violating the terms of their student visa. This, in turn, could have resulted in visa refusals for the rest of their lives.

    Later in the same session, they gave advice that would have cut off all domestic students receiving student welfare money. I was so dismayed to see every student nodding seriously and writing notes that I finally quickly checked on my tablet to confirm that the two laws hadn’t changed since I last looked. They hadn’t.

    I did find a way to say all this out loud. I was asked to leave the lecture hall. I complained to the Head of Student Services and the Vice-Chancellor. They agreed I was correct on both counts, but that was it; there was no promise to amend the material or publish retractions and corrections. As far as I know, there were no consequences for the staff or their team, who were responsible for shattering the dreams of who knows how many students. Perhaps to this day they are still saying such wicked things.

    TL;DR: Whenever I mentor someone still in university or college, I tell them to ignore everything said on campus about employment, immigration, or welfare as dangerously incompetent and out of touch. I teach them how to go to the primary sources and the actual government department websites.

  78. Audiophile*

    LW #3: I left a pretty obvious typo in my resume for a recent job application. Not only did I get a call back the day after applying, but after two rounds, I got a job offer.

    To say that I’m glad my mistake didn’t ultimately cost me a job would be an understatement. These are some of the nicest people and one of the most welcoming companies I’ve ever worked with. It’s nice to know some hiring managers and companies can understand that we’re all human and make mistakes.

    One mistake does not indicate laziness, lack of attention to detail, or any other negative connations we regularly associate with mistakes. Sometimes, excitement about a prospective job and concern over the requisition closing can get the better of you during your final check(s).

  79. RedinSC*

    I love reading the cards from our interns so do write one. it could be one card for everyone or individual. but it’s just lovely to get them.

  80. Amelia*

    To LW5 I say do it! We take on summer interns from both highschool and college levels. One of our first wrote us a thank you note after every summer she worked with us, we have them hanging on a wall we appreciated them so much.

  81. Project Manager*

    I think you missed the point of the question on the 1st one…he’s not talking about citing where he worked, he’s talking about citing the fact he used ChatGPT to help write the resume. In academia, any prudent professor is going to ask you to cite ChatGPT and other AI if you use it to write a response or paper. Some schools/departments are even requiring it, and depending on the age of the student/course it’s also a good idea to ask them to write a blurb on why they thought it was helpful or what their prompts were and what the responses were.

    Yes, the working world is not academia, but maybe that’s the point of the question? I mean, they’re asking! They probably want you to say, “no, that would be well outside working and resume norms.” Critical thinking skills.

    1. Moose*

      I don’t think Alison’s answer misses the point, ChatGPT-related or not. As your second paragraph says, it’s never normal to cite sources on a resume and you wouldn’t start doing it just because ChatGPT is involved.

  82. Michelle Smith*

    LW5: I still have a couple of really nice thank-you notes that were given to me over 20 years and however many jobs ago. Definitely write them. For people like me, they will be exceptionally meaningful.

  83. Moose*

    LW 1: I think the college is misapplying academic norms here. Most major style guides recommend citing AI tools just as you’d cite other sources…in research papers or academic assignments. Those guidelines have nothing to do with resume writing, though. The answer to their question would still be “no” because of that.

  84. Anony8383*

    5. Are thank-you cards from an intern too much?

    I gave a nice thank you card (not those dollar store ones) to my mentor and manager on my last day of internship. Don’t go all out and pour your feelings into it, but a sincere, brief note will do. It’s never wrong to say thank you.

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