coworker doesn’t listen, candidate assumed I was a man, and more

by Alison Green on September 10, 2024

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

1. My coworker doesn’t listen and then pretends she was never told

I’m having an issue with my coworker, Christine. I am in no way her supervisor so I’m not sure there’s anything I can do, but here goes!

Basically, she complains that our boss, Lars, doesn’t tell her things and then Lars gets upset with her afterwards for not knowing. I can see why that would be incredibly frustrating. Except the last couple of times she has told me that’s happened, I was in the room with them and I know Lars told her the correct info.

For example, Lars told me and Christine that we were going to use Form X instead of Y. The next day, Christine used the wrong form and Lars asked her why. Christine tells me Lars never told her, so I said that he did in fact the day before. First she says she wasn’t in the room, I remind her she was. Then she says he must have been talking to me and not her, but it was just the three of us in a small room and I talked about it with her afterwards so I know she heard him. Then she says she just “wasn’t listening” but again, we talked about it so I know she knew.

From other experiences with her, I don’t think she has a great memory, but instead of admitting or realizing that, she just says Lars never told her things. She’s done the same to me even though I can send her screenshots of our chat or forward emails that she’s replied to. It’s mostly complaints about Lars, which doesn’t directly impede my work, but when she does it to me, it’s frustrating that I have to ask her to do something three times and then she takes zero responsibility for dropping the ball.

She is job searching, so is there really anything I can or should do or should I just hope she moves on soon? That might be part of it too — she’s just checked out mentally since she’s planning to leave. But honestly I’d rather have her just say “Yeah, I know we’re supposed to use X instead of Y but I don’t care” instead of lying to me about it!

There’s a decent chance she’s not deliberating lying but is simply a scattered mess and not keeping track of stuff. She could be genuinely surprised when she’s confronted with evidence that she was previously told things. There’s also a decent chance that she is lying — that she sees it as a way to save face and doesn’t understand how bad it makes her look.

It doesn’t really matter; it’s frustrating either way. I don’t think you need to do anything about it — as you say, you’re not her manager — but you also don’t need to pretend you don’t see it happening. If you want, the next time it occurs, you could say, “I don’t know if you realize this happens a lot — you’re sure Lars or I never told you something when we actually did. Sometimes I was there during the conversation with him, or I have emails that you replied to confirming you knew. Is everything okay?” If she thinks she’s getting away with it, this might drive home that she’s not and maybe nudge her to do it less in the future. Or it might have no effect at all! But you’re not required to pretend you don’t see it. (Similarly, the next time she complains to you about Lars not telling her something, feel free to say, “I don’t know, a lot of times when you’ve thought that in the past, it’s turned out that he did tell you.”)

2. Should I correct a candidate who assumed I was a man?

I’m a woman with a name that reflects that: let’s say Anne Smith. I don’t work in a male-dominated industry.

We’re adding new people to our team for work that we’ve got a contract to cover, and I’m pre-screening the candidates by having short phone interviews. The role is research on a very specific topic (let’s say metallic red teapots with brown spouts produced in the south in 1853), but we’re just looking for people with a MS in pottery and 2+ years of teapot experience. I’ve compiled a solid short list quickly and I think we’ll have the jobs filled in record time.

Yesterday we got an application from Fergus, a candidate finishing a PhD on exactly the topic we’re working on. And of course that PhD came with many years of experience doing research. On paper, Fergus seems perfectly (over) qualified. So I reached out to schedule a phone screen, addressing him by him by his first name and signing the email with my first name, which is the norm in our industry (but perhaps not in the region of the U.S. that he is in). He promptly wrote back with, “Mr. Smith, here are dates/times that work for me, thanks, Fergus Jones.” I ignored the “Mr.” and wrote back a quick, “Thanks, I’ll call you at date/time — Anne.” Fergus responded with, “Sir, I look forward to speaking with you then.”

It’s not bothering me that he doesn’t seem to know the gender of the person he’s talking to, but I would be mortified if I realized at the start of an interview that I had misgendered the interviewer multiple times (and I sound like a woman on the phone). So I debated responding with a clarifying email (“Just a heads-up that I’m actually Ms. Smith”) but asked my partner for his two cents. He said, “Hey, if Fergus can’t see that the signature on your emails is a big and bold line that says ‘Anne Smith (she/her),’ is he really going to be that great of a researcher? Ignore it and see how he handles it at the interview.” Good point, but I miss things sometimes too, so I also ran it by a friend who hires in a more male-dominated industry. She responded, “Do you have your pronouns in your signature? He’s doing it on purpose.”

So … uh … is this really a thing? Do I try to clarify over email in advance or see what happens in the interview? Most of us in the company have our pronouns in our signatures and many people in the agencies we work for do as well. And it’s great that his experience so closely aligns with what we’re looking for, but we do have several other strong candidates: I’m not worried about filling the positions.

I doubt he’s doing it on purpose. There are people who are hostile to the idea of pronouns in email signatures — or to respecting people’s pronouns generally — but they don’t normally take an openly hostile stand while they’re trying to get a job with you.

It’s more likely he’s (a) defaulting to the sexist assumption that anyone with hiring authority would of course be a man and (b) not paying enough attention to see the big glaring sign in front of his face that you are not. Both of these are problems if you’re hiring someone who needs to have attention to detail and an ability to work respectfully with women.

You do not need to try to save him from embarrassment over his own actions by clarifying pre-interview. Let him learn the lesson on his own (if he will, which he probably won’t).

Note: it’s possible Fergus is from a culture where Anne isn’t a common name and he doesn’t recognize it as typically feminine. His use of “sir” also might point in that direction since that’s not how we typically write emails in the U.S. But it doesn’t really matter because both the points above still hold, given that your pronouns were right there.

3. I told a networker the truth about my awful old boss but they didn’t believe me

Last year I left a role on Team A where I routinely got screamed at. As you might imagine, it was a really bad place to work: favoritism, no empathy from leadership, inconsistent expectations, high workload with high expectations and zero resources. And of course, the screaming.

Thankfully I moved onto a new team B where I’m treated very well. There is an opening on my current team and on my old team — both are essentially the same job I have now and had then. Someone on LinkedIn reached out to me and asked if I was the hiring manager (obviously I am not) and if not, could I tell them about the role(s) and/or introduce them to the hiring manager or someone else to ask questions. No problem! I am happy to help out and answer questions. It turns out they have applied only to my old department, so my response was something like, “Sure, I can introduce you to someone, but to be completely transparent, part of the reason I left that team is because I do not enjoy being screamed at.”

I know the job market is rough right now — a lot of my friends are struggling. But I believe in being honest about this kind of thing and I don’t want to encourage someone to walk into that situation. But the person who reached out to me about this clearly didn’t believe me. I think I’ve done what I can and I know I don’t have any obligation to do anything else, though I did give her the name of the hiring manager (the screamer). What I’m curious about is if there is a better way to be up-front about this kind of thing or if there’s anything you would have recommended doing differently?

Kudos to you for being straightforward about it. You’ve given them important information that’s often very hard for outside candidates to get (until they start working there and discover it too late). You can’t do more than that; if they don’t believe you, it’s not your job to convince them.

Sometimes people refuse to accept this kind of info because they want the job so they they tell themselves it couldn’t really be as bad as you said, or that you fed into the problem yourself (you deserved to be screamed at — the office version of “your skirt was too short”), or that they’ll just somehow have a different experience. It’s short-sighted, but it happens. To be fair, sometimes people do have a different experience! Some people have a higher tolerance for yellers, or vibe with the boss in a different way, or just don’t care as much as others would. But not believing you is weird.

I don’t think you need to change anything about how you approached it. Your response was pretty perfect, in fact. You gave the relevant info matter-of-factly and concisely. What someone does with it is up to them.

Related:
should I warn job candidates about how bad my company is?

4. Former employee keeps hassling me to come back after I was fired

Last winter, I was let go from a company where I had worked for seven years. Now that they’re in their busy season, a former direct report has been contacting me constantly, begging me to come back.

He was always a bit erratic when I was his manager, going through periods where he’d make bizarre claims like being independently wealthy and not needing the job, only to later demand a $10,000 raise because he was struggling financially. His work was good and he filled a niche we needed, so I tolerated his emotional outbursts, even when they involved him venting to me for 45 minutes at a time. Odd people deserve jobs too, right? However, now that I’m no longer being paid to manage this kind of behavior, I’m not thrilled about being dragged into work drama again.

I’ve offered to help out during the busy season because I’d like to repair my reputation at the company, where I was once a valued employee before burnout led to my departure. My former boss informed me that the higher-ups rejected the idea of me returning, but they didn’t tell my former employee this. Instead, it seems they’ve told him that I burned bridges, and now he’s pressuring me to “mend fences,” saying the team can’t manage without me.

I’m currently searching for my next role and am hesitant to alienate anyone who could potentially help me find work. What should I do?

Realistically, how likely is this guy to help you find work? He seems to have terrible judgment (on display when you worked there, plus now in hassling you to return after being fired; even if he doesn’t know you were fired, his belief that it’s appropriate to badger someone into returning to a job doesn’t speak well of him) and I’m skeptical that he’s a valuable contact who you need to preserve a relationship with at all costs. You could simply ignore his messages.

But if you don’t want to do that, there’s nothing wrong with saying the next time he contacts you, “I’ve offered. They’ve declined. I’m not going to pursue it further, so please stop asking me to.” Or skip the details and just say, “It’s not on the table, so please stop asking about it.”

5. Rejected by text

After a phone interview, an in-person interview, and a work sample (unpaid), I’ve just been rejected for a job over text. The rejection itself doesn’t sting as I had decided the job isn’t right for me, but I can’t get over them doing it by text!

Should I say something? Is there a way to without sounding catty? Ordinarily I think I’d just leave it, but the person who sent the message had told me they’ve only worked there seven weeks. Part of me feels like maybe someone should tell them how unprofessional it is, especially at this stage of the process.

Is a quick “Thanks for letting me know, this is news I would have rather received over email or a phone call, but all the best in your search” even worth it or should I just forget it ever happened?

Ugh, why do people do this?! This is not a casual “I’m running 10 minutes late, meet you inside” message. It’s professional news of some weight and it should be treated that way.

As for whether or not to say anything, I’m torn. On one hand, it’s good for hiring managers to get feedback about this sort of thing, and you might be telling her something she genuinely had never thought about and she might rethink it for the future. On the other hand, when you give feedback about how a rejection was delivered, there’s always a risk that it’ll bite you in some way in the future. For example, if a job opening comes up there next month that you’d be perfect for, will she not contact you about it because she’s embarrassed or feels chilly toward you now (whereas she would have contacted you otherwise)? Or if you apply there in the future, same concerns.

I really hate telling people not to deliver well-warranted feedback because it plays right into the problematic power dynamics already present in an interview situation, and also because employers will never learn if they don’t get feedback from candidates … but you’ve got to balance all that and decide how much you care about each piece of it.

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{ 491 comments }

{ 491 comments… read them below }

  1. Not A Manager*

    I genuinely don’t understand why an email is okay – and I would vastly prefer that to a rejection phone call – but a text isn’t okay. I might be biased because I check my emails when they come in, the same as texts.

      1. STLBlues*

        I agree. I get whatsapp, Teams and emails on my phone from my boss, senior leaders or colleagues all the time. Unless it’s to a large group (nearly always email), I can’t think of any super firm trends across them. The casual communicators will communicate casually in all mediums, the more formal communicators will communicate more formally (like those people who text with full punctuation and paragraphs).

        For this LW’s situation specifically, I think it might also matter on how the rest of the communication happened. Were interviews, follow-ups, etc. set up with text messages through the process? If so, I don’t see this as any different.

        If everything else to this point had been a formal email, I suppose I can see how suddenly getting this text message might be jarring. Even though… I just can’t get worked up about it. Words appear on an app on your phone.

        If the TONE of the text message was substantially different than what an email would be, I can see how that would be inappropriate. “No job for U, lolz!” But if it was essentially a short email in text form, I think the LW needs to let it go.

      2. Person from the Resume*

        Not for everyone.

        I don’t use text for work. I use my work computer which has my work email and teams on it. And that’s how work people contact me.

        Texts are personal messages. Although I may be phoning the business I’m applying to it’s more likely emailing them and I’m probably not communicating with them by text.

        1. Mookie*

          Yes, this too for me. my phone is a personal device. I dont use it for work at all. I also dont check it while I am at work.

          however , I also think that the method used to schedule the interview is okay to reply with. So if all previous communication was done with text, this is fine. If not, it’s the wrong choice.

      3. Michelle Smith*

        I don’t get instant notifications for each individual email on my watch and phone the way I do for a text. For me, they are not remotely similar in the level of intrusion.

      4. Not the class clown*

        I don’t use notifications for email, so I only see my email when I actually open it up to check it intentionally. I’d be pretty unhappy if I had a rejection text pop up while I was in the middle of doing something else and had no way to un-see it.

    2. Happy meal with extra happy*

      Because texts are still not the norm for formal business communication, so many will see it as dismissive and offhand.

      1. allathian*

        This. That said, I’d far rather get a rejection message by text than not get one at all. My preferred medium is email, and I really don’t like getting any negative news by phone. I can’t really process it in the moment, and I’m always afraid of getting overly emotional.

        Last time it happened was in the summer of 2021 when I applied for a job just to get some experience interviewing. I took it seriously but for the first time I was interviewing without being desperate to get a new job. I was in the top three candidates and the rejection call was tough for me, even if I probably would’ve turned down the job even if I’d got the offer because they required the new hire to be in office every day while the rest of the team were WFH every other day (the team sat in two-person offices and alternated days so that there was only one person in each office).

        1. Pizza Rat*

          I’m with you. I prefer all job-hunting related communications by email, that way I can refer to them later if needed.

          I have found recruiters are more often to presume it’s okay to text me any communications and I really don’t care for it. I am still someone who tries to respond to texts as soon as possible, so the only people I want to hear from by text are people I’ve explicitly said they could.

        2. Inkognyto*

          The temptation to reply:

          “Sorry who is this? Todd? Jamie? Jackie?
          Stop joking around, the company I applied too is much more professional than using text message to decline applicants.”

          Even if I knew it was legit. Like to let them know it’s unprofessional as hell and you basically cannot trust the text at all.

    3. Annie*

      It’s mostly a cultural quirk because of a technical limitation to each SMS text message length.

      Smartphone messaging apps split long text messages into two or more while in transit without breaking formatting, so it’s less relevant now.

      I can see companies sending relevant information using both email and text message to ensure the candidate didn’t miss anything due to a technical issue, however.

    4. Nodramalama*

      I think its probably changing, but id say traditionally texts are used for either casual or urgent communication

      1. Cinnamon Stick*

        There’s still a gap between people who say text messaging is asynchronous and those who drop everything to respond quickly. I think that will be here for a while.

        1. Michelle Smith*

          Even if I’m not expected to/am not going to respond quickly, I still see a text sooner than an email just because of notifications and social norms. I don’t see email instantly. The problem for me is not being able to choose when I see the item. Via text, I’m much more likely to see it while I’m in a meeting or doing something where I’m not going to be able to properly process the negative emotions. If it’s an email, I have to actively open the email app or go to the Gmail website. If I do that when I’m not in the headspace to hear back about my candidacy, that’s more on me.

    5. MK*

      I don’t think it’s the form so much, but the tone and length. An email that said “you didn’t get the job, sorry” isn’t any different than a text, but it would be unusual to send an email like that to a candidate, it would probably be more like a paragraph saying thanks for interviewing, it was a competitive process, widh you luck, which feels more polite. A text that said all these things wouldn’t be different from an email, but it would be a very long text and people generally don’t do that.

      1. STLBlues*

        But there’s no indication that the text was that short or flippant. It could have been essentially the exact same text that would have been sent in an email, but instead sent in a text message. “Thanks for your application. While it was great to get to know you and your skills, we’ve decided to move forward with other applications. We’ll keep you in mind for future opportunities, and please let me know if you have any questions.”

        That would easily fit in a text message, without even reading as crazy long.

    6. ThatOtherClare*

      It’s a bit like breaking up with someone while wearing a swimsuit. It might be more convenient (you could be about to go to swim training) and there’s nothing technically wrong with it… however. Deliving bad news makes people feel sad, and one well recognised way of acknowledging people’s sadness is to choose to deliver bad news in a more formal manner. Why? I don’t know. Somebody set the convention a long way back and we haven’t changed it, I guess.

      If you know someone well enough to be able to convey sympathy with their sadness in non-standard forms, then that’s obviously always better. But if you don’t, then using the default is a reliable way of acknowledging that your message might make the other person feel a little down – which, while not required by any means, is just a nice thing to do for a fellow human being.

      Eventually text will probably be seen as ‘more formal’ in the way that email has transitioned. Then people will speak about how they prefer rejection via SMS and they’re hurt about being rejected via gif or snapchat or something. But in general, society isn’t quite there yet.

      (And yes I know I’m old but I really hope I retire before Gen Z start sending rejections via gif)

        2. Also-ADHD*

          I don’t know about Gen Alpha (school aged), but Gen Z definitely use gifs, at least the older portion in the workplace. Though some don’t like the same repetitive and popularized gifs (some do), I imagine because “old people” also use them.

          1. Also-ADHD*

            I mention Gen Alpha because people were constantly still calling Gen Z population Millennial when I used to teach (and we weren’t teaching Millennials) years ago and I find people use the “young generation” term wrong like that. Many Gen Z are in the professional world and are college graduates now (though not the majority yet). A minority are still in K12 education—there may be schisms between older and younger (we see that more intensely in Millennials than earlier generations, possibly because of how media and technology evolved faster than during prior generations, but we also see more culture fractures in general with people in their bubbles less by region etc and more by interest/technology algorithmic).

            I have seen some articles that suggest Gen Z reacts negatively to older people using gifs to relate to them, which is normal. Old people thinking they’re cool and speaking on your wavelength has always been lame. But Gen Z sends each other gifs as far as I can see in observation and actual data, though they may do so differently.

            1. Kyrielle*

              Parent to two kids, one on the border of Gen Z / Alpha and the other firmly in Alpha, and yes, gifs and memes are still the currency of exchange at least in my kids’ groups. And yes, me trying to use them is still inherently uncool, because parent.

      2. ferrina*

        This is a really good point- the more serious email is indicative that the hiring team is taking this seriously and didn’t make this decision lightly. Whereas text is still seen as something you don’t put a lot of thought into.

        That said, the message will still sting no matter what form it comes in.

    7. Roland*

      An email inbox is easy to search, tag, categorize. If I need to refer back to an email it’s easy, and it doesn’t matter how long it’s been. Meanwhile texts are difficult to sort/search/categorize and could be deleted at any time if I get a new phone. It’s just not a good format for business communication. Sometimes I want to know who it was at company X that I spoke with Y months ago and it’s much easier with email.

    9. Mid*

      I think it’s kind of like giving someone bad news with a high-five/fist bump vs a handshake or hug (depending on how well you know them.) *Technically* there’s nothing wrong with saying “your grandma died” and giving them a high five, but it’s going to *feel* really inappropriate. Email *feels* more formal, and many people prefer email rejections instead of calls so they don’t have to react live. Texting, imho, can be good for Official Business Communication when it’s something that’s time sensitive or less formal (scheduling coffee vs an official job offer) but is always going to feel more personal and less formal than email.

    10. Your Former Password Resetter*

      It also just looks less formal in a text message. No letterhead or logo’s, much simpler signatures, everything is crammed into a much smaller space, and it’s not designed to easily store or organize individual messages. It all just signals casual, quick and relatively disposable.

      1. Kyrielle*

        And my iPhone, at least, shows them in chat bubbles like in a comic. Which is fine for most of the things I text, but would be a slightly weird look for a “you didn’t get the job” message.

    11. Pipskew*

      Along with what others are saying, texts are one of the few things that I would expect almost everyone to have actual alerts for, be it vibration or a tone. In comparison, it feels much less common for email to have the same kind of interrupting alerts on personal devices, so texts are a lot more likely to be demanding immediate attention.

      1. Nicosloanica*

        Yeah, maybe I’m in the minority here, but I don’t have my job-searching email on my phone with automatic alerts; I choose when to log in and deal with that form of communication, where as every text message I get instantly and it is more intrusive of my time. This rejection was news that could have waited until I was ready, not something I needed to stop making breakfast to see right this instant. However, I’m probably old fashioned in that way, and it will change as more and more “spam texts” take over and make immediate texting less of a thing in the future, just as phone calls and emails devolved into being too spam-heavy to warrant immediate responses.

        1. Shirley Keeldar*

          Exactly, agree with this. Last spring I got a text rejection from a job I had high hopes for just as I was settling into bed and reached for my phone to turn on my go-to-sleep audiobook….yeah, not fun. When I open email I’m in work mode, braced for whatever news may come. But texts pop up on my phone when they pop up.

          1. JP*

            Yeah last year I was on vacation (solo road trip) and I got a text from the recruiter telling me I was rejected for a job that I’d gotten through several rounds of interviewing for and was the runner-up. It made me essentially lose a day of my vacation because I was a crying depressed mess sitting in a hotel room and no longer in the mood to continue the rest of my sightseeing. I picked myself back up the next day and kept on keeping on but I’ll always now remember that about my vacation.

            Funny enough, they contacted me again recently because the guy they hired already quit. I was happy to tell them I had already started a new job and I was happy where I was.

      2. Slow Gin Lizz*

        This^. While both texting and emailing are asynchronous forms of communication, most people are immediately alerted when they receive a text and probably think it’s something important from a close contact, so are more likely to see the text asap. Whereas their email is something they will check on their own terms and see the email when they are in “email mode” or whatever. It would be jarring and probably frustrating to be in the middle of your day not thinking about the job search and suddenly get pulled into it from receiving a rejection text.

    12. Irish Teacher.*

      I think it’s more that a text reads as more casual and is usually shorter so the message is likely to come across as blunter

    14. londonedit*

      It’s probably just because I’m quite old – maybe younger people don’t have the same associations – but to me a text message just seems incredibly impersonal and not at all suitable for a job rejection. It’s like being dumped by text – the height of rudeness! To me, email just seems like a more businesslike method of communication – sending a text feels like you can’t be bothered at all.

      1. Allonge*

        I agree that it seems less formal, but then again, a lot of business is conducted by text these days that did not used for be due to technology limitations. So I also see why some businesses would not think twice.

      2. Nicosloanica*

        Haha I think of myself as quite a luddite but these days when dumped by text (rather than ghosting) I think, “wow, mad respect that they actually let me know what’s up rather than just disappeared on me.” However, these are earlier-term relationships, I’m guessing I wouldn’t feel that way if we’d been going out like six months or a year or more.

    15. Mad Scientist*

      Same here! Text or email would be totally fine with me. As long as it’s not a phone call (or heaven forbid a video call) for a rejection.

    16. AMH*

      When I get a text, I see it right away. I check my personal email once or twice a day. Sending it as a text means I have to deal with that rejection the moment it is sent, instead of at a time that makes sense for me.

      For work related stuff, I agree that teams, texts, email are all about the same, but this is a different situation.

      1. Allonge*

        So – I get why you would have a preference for this, and that is of course perfectly fine.

        I just don’t see why this needs to be a major consideration for businesses. There will be people getting notifications for every email (there will be people who set up a separate accunt for job hunting and get immediate notifications for that account); there will be people who don’t get them for texts and so on. I don’t have stats on this but I suspect your way is more common (text gets immediate views) but certainly not universal.

        Sending a text rejection is unconventional – and therefore unexpected, especially if the communication so far was in emails – but not that egregious in my view.

        1. AMH*

          Sure, not universal, and of course there will be people who have alerts set up for email but have texts muted or whatever. And businesses will continue to make the decisions that are best for them (like others, I’d prefer a text to ghosting!). But, there is to my eye a reason why it’s a norm. It doesn’t rise to complaining to the business about it, but it’s a trend I really hope doesn’t become more common.

    17. Gustavo*

      I was also confused about that. How is a text unacceptable but email is ok? I also would prefer that to having to deal with an uncomfortable phone call (on either end of the call!), but I see no difference in text vs. email. This person sounds very fussy to me and maybe that’s something that came across during their interviews and that’s why they were not hired. Maybe not, but it’s possible.

      1. Allonge*

        I understand being fussed about this – the format, timing, location, wording of a rejection (personal or professional) is a classic that humans tend to latch onto so we can find something ‘obviously wrong’ with a painful message.

        It’s difficult to argue that we should have been hired or chosen / kept as a romantic partner, because that hurts thinking about.

        It’s easy to say we should not be broken up with / rejected in an email on Sunday, Christmas, at night, in a text, in a short message, in a long message, in a pdf attachment, in a snail mail letter, while wearing a sweatshirt and so on.

        But this is also why I would not advise OP to complain: there is a strong chance it will be dismissed as ‘unhappy rejected person is unhappy’. Which does not make text rejections an awesome choice! But there are much worse options too.

      2. Lily Potter*

        I think text rejections are tacky in general. Interviews are supposed to be a two way street with respect being shown on both ends. A job seeker who’s put in time and effort into an interview process deserves a proportional, professional response in turn. Maybe a text rejection would be okay for a teenager getting rejected from a fast food job – chances are they did a two minute application on their phone, scheduled an interview with a chat bot, and spent 15 minutes talking with someone (whether on the phone, in person, or maybe even interviewed by text!) before getting rejected. A text rejection is proportional to that situation. LW5 tailored a resume, did two interviews (one likely long) and produced an unpaid work sample. They deserved better than a “Srry you didn’t get the job try again nxt yr” text message. (I realize that the text might have been spelled properly and been a bit more professionally, but I’m sure you get where I’m going here)

    18. Also-ADHD*

      I feel the same way, though it depends on how the message is composed, too. I think either would be inappropriate in “text speak” with emojis or something. (So sorry u didn’t get the job [crying face emoji] <—not good)

    19. Wyn*

      I actually don’t have email on my smartphone at all. I check email when I’m at a computer. A text really interrupts my day the way an email doesn’t, and I feel the need to respond to it much more immediately, instead of within working hours. For me, texts are for personal communication, not for work communication (unless it is truly time-sensitive), because of the way my phone is almost always with me 24/7, but work should not be with me 24/7. I like keeping them separate – I think it’s good for my mental health. I would be discomforted if a hiring team started texting me for almost any reason, when they have my email and could be using that.

    20. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

      I strongly prefer email for any consequential news/communication for the paper trail and easy search ability. That would color my reaction to a rejection text. Also, for someone record-keeping their job search in one email folder (for example), the text would be harder to capture. But I work in an atea that requires record-keeping and I might have to oull something up from long ago. Text and Teams stink for that.

    21. Boof*

      I’m in camp “there’s no perfect medium for bad news” and I can see as our emails get increasingly clogged text becoming a norm to update on a job application. Everyone really wants to move on as efficiently as possible and I think the problem is more expectation mismatch rather than “this should never be done over text”. If our AI overlords ever get their @#$#@ together (probably not, they’re just going to be trained on / learn our own biases rather than our ideals and intentions) maybe someone could check a box on an application on how they’d prefer updates, including rejections. But right now checks and boxes seem to go nowhere and probably wouldn’t actually connect to the folks doing the rejecting in any kind of convenient way. (yeah I’m pretty grumpy currently at the state of big systems)

    22. learnedthehardway*

      I suspect that things will move increasingly to text, because university students and younger seem to be almost exclusively text-ers. I struggle to get my teen & young adult kids to use email – they prefer text. My guess is that the OP is dealing with a young recruiter who lives in a text-based world.

      As for phone calls – there’s just not enough time to do phone calls for all candidates who have been rejected – I might have 5-10 candidates per project x 10-15 open roles. I hate to say it, but my time is better spent on finding candidates for the roles I have open, than for rejecting candidates by phone when an email is just as effective.

      Also, a phone conversation often leads to a discussion of why the person wasn’t right, and sometimes, it’s simply a situation where another candidate was preferred, or the candidate wants specific reasons and argues them. I can’t change the decision, so the discussion helps neither of us.

      Another reason I email – I have a record that the rejection was sent out. Some of my clients insist on having it documented. I’ve had situations where I’ve left a phone message for people, and then my hiring manager gets a note asking whether a decision was made. Cue issues of me being told that I’m not following up with candidates. Well, I did, but if it was by phone, I can’t forward that and show that yes, I did follow up. At least an email is proof that I did.

      An email is also proof that what I cited as the reason for the rejection was appropriate – I have had a candidate claim there was illegal discrimination in the decision to reject them. In another case, a candidate with a criminal conviction that was found in the background check process had their offer revoked and sued the company. In both cases, having an email trail that detailed that they were rejected appropriately was important.

    23. jasmine*

      I’d prefer a text to a phone call, but I’d prefer email to all three. A text feels flippant. Texts also feel more like my personal space. I don’t want to receive texts related to work or job hunting. I have that vibrate on for my friends and family. Everyone else can use my inbox

    25. a clockwork lemon*

      Everything comes to my phone the same way and I get notifications for everything, but I would be pretty annoyed to receive a text message for a rejection after I’d already gone through that much effort. Texting is *invasive* in a way that email is not, and it’s a poor compromise for email or as a phone call alternative unless I’ve already explicitly given permission to text me.

      I look at my emails when it is convenient for me–texts aren’t designed to be managed and organized the way emails are, and I prefer to keep my job search separate from the threads where I’m organizing pet care logistics with my spouse.

    26. Eff Walsingham*

      Depending, I guess, on your region, texts can be an extremely unreliable form of communication. I live in a house of flats near a university, and our landlord is trying to sell it. His realtor has tried on occasion to schedule showings via some form of group text that does not reach my phone unless it’s hooked up to data, not wifi. And we have wifi at home.

      So at least once a day, I have to (pay to) turn on data to see if I’m going to have to rearrange my sleep schedule around other people’s business dealings. (I often work evenings, so I usually sleep in quite late.)

      Then last time, there was no message at all by any method. I emailed the landlord immediately, and he looped in the realtor. My position is that this is a business communication, and, as such, warrants an email that we can file and track. If the other tenants prefer SMS, then they can do both. (One would think that, as the realtor stands to make a big commission, it wouldn’t be too much trouble!) His actual (emailed!) response was, Oh, I texted the numbers on the leases that the landlord provided. So just give me your cell phone number, and I’ll text that!

      I told him, for the last time, that he doesn’t need my number (which he’s successfully reached in the past, but whatever). He needs to contact me exclusively via email, which he’s currently demonstrating an ability to actually do. Because if he screws this up again, it will be strike 3 and exhibit A and they’ll see me in court. Legally, they need to provide a minimum of 24 hours’ notice before walking into our premises.

      I don’t know the difference between SMS, RMS, and MMS messages, and that may or may not be relevant in this situation. But I don’t believe that I’m obliged to set my phone or its contract up a certain way in order to have my legal rights respected.

      So anyway, I’m Team “email anything you might have to rely on in a court of law”. Because, although you can screenshot and file images of text communication just-in-case… isn’t that a bit like, y’know, reinventing email? And I’d hope that the company is preserving these communications, in case of confusion or legal challenges down the road. Texts make it seem like the company either doesn’t take themselves seriously enough; or it’s the candidate who they’re treating as a joke. And why create that impression? As AAM often says, the best candidates have the most options, and glassdoor is a thing.

    27. ThatGirl*

      It’s one thing to text with a current manager or coworker, imho, but every text I’ve ever gotten about a potential job was spam. And I get an unfortunate lot of them these days.

    28. Joielle*

      I don’t have a great rationale for this, but to me, any message that was typed with your thumbs comes across as casual. I personally hate typing with thumbs so I use email for any message I care about. Maybe that’s my age showing, though! (Millennial here)

        1. Lenora Rose*

          there’s a difference between hitting the odd space bar with your thumb while typing with your fingers, and typing entirely with your thumbs as many people do with a cell phone.

          And I just noticed that I hit the space bar at least as often with my index as my thumb while typing this on a keyboard. (I type with 2-3 fingers per hand and still manage a 50 wpm speed most of the time. I’ve been doing it since my teens, so literally over 30 years.)

    29. Nicole Maria*

      Just because you treat emails that way, doesn’t mean that the average person doesn’t consider them slightly more formal than text messages. I think overall email carries a different weight – I often send clients emails with information that I would not send in a text.

    30. Deborah Vance, Vance Refrigeration*

      Although I’d prefer a text over a call, emails are still the norm because of the paper trail they provide, are easier to find in a search, and are overall more formal than text.
      Anedoctally, there’s no phone service in the rural area where my dad leaves, but they do have internet, so the odds of never even getting the text are very high, while an email would come in just fine.

    31. LL*

      Texts feel a lot more casual to me.
      Also I have my phone with me all the time, but I’m not always checking my email so I could be getting a text at a time that I’m not prepared to get that news.

    32. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

      An email creates a trail that is easier to document and save rather than a random text. I used to keep job search files and it was much faster to use an email train than to scroll through pages of texts to find a partcular one. At least for me.

    33. Lenora Rose*

      Texts – for me – are one of “This is an emergency/needs an answer Right Now and my boss/etc are not in the office” or casual “Hey, were you coming to this meeting?” and nothing in between. Something which doesn’t have a time crunch and implies the slightest bit of formality, like this, warrants a form of communication that appears a bit more formal and thoughtful.

    34. Blue Horizon*

      I would be fine with a text if it was framed as a quick notification for timely feedback and followed up with a more detailed/polite rejection by email. People do sometimes have to juggle other options and letting them know ASAP once you’ve decided is considerate.

      If it was the only communication I received on the matter, I’d be mildly annoyed. Sadly standards around this are really low in general (they’d be doing better than the employers who just ghost you, for example) and it’s not something that I can change, so there’s no point losing sleep over it.

      1. Blue Horizon*

        As for phone… No. I’m cringing just thinking about it. This has been well covered at AAM already. Be courteous enough to let them have whatever emotional reaction they’re going to have in privacy and on their own time. Don’t force them to compose a professionally acceptable version in the moment for an audience.

  2. Jessica*

    LW2, if there is any possibility that Fergus is not from the US and/or English is not his first language, then I don’t think Alison went far enough at all with her final paragraph. I’m a woman with a name any speaker of American English would readily identify as female, but I work with a highly international audience, and I get addressed as everything under the sun. Sexism is a factor in some of it, but it’s also because my correspondents don’t find either of my names familiar, come from a surname-first culture, are native speakers of languages that don’t even have personal pronouns, are from places where pronoun usage doesn’t have the politicized cultural significance it has here, or all of the above. Ask yourself whether this cultural knowledge or this particular kind of being observant and noticing details is truly relevant to the needed skills for the job.

    1. Daria grace*

      Yup, speakers of Indonesian often have trouble with pronouns in English because Indonesian pronouns are mostly non-gendered so the idea of varying pronoun by gender is not always instinctive

      1. allathian*

        Most people in the world speak languages that don’t have gendered pronouns! Gendered pronouns are the norm in languages spoken in Europe (and in some former colonies) and so people in the Western world often think that the same is true everywhere.

        1. ThatOtherClare*

          Oh for the day that European languages grow up like the rest of the world.

          Literally the very first thing that a person gets to know about me is which cluster of vague and outdated traits loosely correlated to European historical ideas of how one’s reproductive organs should dictate their behaviour I prefer. The rest of the world grows out of greeting each other by peering in their nappies by about two years old.

          1. Allonge*

            Um. With all that, I would still rather take (Western) European / US treatment of gender over a vast majority of the rest of the world. Yes, language is important, but a couple of other things are a consideration too.

            1. allathian*

              The lack of gendered pronouns makes life easier in one particular case, namely that trans/enby people don’t have to make the decision every day whether or not to announce their pronouns or tolerate being misgendered in casual speech. (I’m in Finland and mostly use Finnish at work. I’m a member of the Swedish-speaking minority and I use Swedish with my close coworker who’s also Swedish-speaking when it’s just the two of us.)

              Other than that, gender still exists and misogyny and sexism are as common here as they are in countries where the dominant language features gendered pronouns. People make assumptions about others based on their appearance and perceived gender.

              1. Allonge*

                That was more or less my point indeed – certainly the lack of gendered pronouns / grammar make some things much easier!

                I am just objecting to the idea that non-gendered languages are automatically more ‘grown up’ or they indicate anything about the attitudes of people toward any other issue related to gender. My first language is non-gendered but I never met anyone who could not adjust to the gendered pronouns in e.g. English, French or German when learning these languages.

                Which I think makes it unlikely that OP is running into this issue with Fergus.

                1. doreen*

                  I don’t know if I’d call it “not adjusting” , but I’ve known multiple people who frequently use the wrong pronoun in English because in their native language pronouns work differently than they do in English. They will say something like “She borrowed her car” when they mean ” She borrowed his car” because the pronoun has to match “car” in their native language , not “she”.

                2. Allonge*

                  doreen, I agree people make mistakes in this and that could be why Fergus wrote what he wrote.

                  Everyone will make mistakes in a language they don’t speak that well (thinking in your own language and translating word by word is a classic sign of this in my experience). This is no reflection on them as people, it’s just a fact of life. In a few cases is it an issue for comprehension; it will lead to some amusing moments for sure.

                  What I was trying to say is that people will not be confused by the concept of gendering other people even if gendered pronouns don’t exist in their first language. In my experience there is a lot more confusion for gendering specific objects or all nouns.

                  (I am not sure OP wants to hire someone whose English is not up to a certain level any more than a misogynist though.)

                3. Orv*

                  I knew some Finns who tended to use verbally use “he” for everyone when distracted, but they rarely made that mistake in email when they had more time to think about it. (Finnish doesn’t have gendered pronouns either.)

              2. Zelda*

                As another example, Korean does not have gendered pronouns, but societal expectations are *intensely* gendered.

                1. Bast*

                  I find this thread of conversation interesting, particularly about matching pronouns to the object. My grandmother, who is a native Spanish speaker but grew up learning English from a young age, will somewhat frequently mix up her pronouns. Her grasp of English is excellent, and while she speaks with an accent, she is easily understood and has a better vocabulary than many native English speakers, however, I have noticed that sometimes she will, as you say, say something along the lines of “she borrowed his car” despite the person whose car she borrowed is also female. Spanish definitely uses pronouns; I’ve never taken into account that this may have been due to her trying to match the pronoun to the item rather than the person.

            2. ShanShan*

              Whenever someone says that they would take the culture they happened to be born into over all of the others that people like in around the world, I start to worry about where that feeling came from.

              Like, you said US/European treatment of gender as if those are not vastly different, and as if it’s not also different across Europe (and the US, for that matter). That’s kind of important.

              1. Allonge*

                I was not writing a thesis, I was making a post on an internet board.

                I am fully aware that the US and various European countries are not the same. I lived in the US, I lived in five different EU member states so far.

                Nevertheless, please look up Gender Inequality Index (GII) that is compiled by the United Nations Development Programme. Take a look at which countries are above and below world average numbers. Most European countries, including from the developing region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia are better than the average. Also better than the world average is the USA as well as other countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada that speak English, a gendered-pronoun language as (one of) their main languages. A large part of the rest of the world, gendered pronouns or not, are of course on the other side of the average.

                This index is not about transphobia of course, but I would argue that better conditions for women will likely be reflected in more advanced views on gender overall. Not in your random neighbour of course, but society in general.

                So yes, I will maintain that I will take gender attitudes of US and (Western) Europe over most of the rest of the world, and that gendered pronouns in any language are not an indicator of how enlightened the society speaking the language is.

                1. unemployed data freak*

                  As others have pointed out, this kind of pronoun error is more a thing with native speakers of East Asian languages whose countries of origin mostly do quite well on the GII metric, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. Indeed, South Korea scores better than any of the countries you mentioned, though I guess that’s because you left off the highest-scoring Anglophone country (Singapore) for some reason. On the other hand, many Arabic-speaking countries are above average too, which might have supported an argument that was about gendered language as opposed to European superiority.

                2. Allonge*

                  @unemployed data freak – please read the words I wrote. Specifically this part: “I will take gender attitudes of US and (Western) Europe over most of the rest of the world”. MOST OF. Not every single other country.

                  You having examples of other above-average, or super-high-level countries is not a counter-argument, it fits exactly into what I am saying. So I am not sure what you are not understanding. I did totally miss Singapore (although I did not claim to list all English-speaking countries either).

          3. Bella Ridley*

            Do you think that languages with non-gendered pronouns are such because they are somehow more evolved, less backwards, or generally more enlightened?

            1. Pescadero*

              Languages without gendered pronouns are largely SIMPLER.

              In a way it is because they are more evolved – the more commonly people have to learn a language as adults, the more the language simplifies over time and does away with things like gendered pronouns.

              1. Spencer Hastings*

                Languages that didn’t originally have grammatical gender can develop it (or, more generally, it’s possible to go from fewer genders to more). It’s not some kind of one-way thing.

          4. Crencestre*

            Well, English is getting to that point now with the use of the “singular they” (which isn’t as new as is often thought, but which has generally been considered ungrammatical until very recently.) The singular “they” is extremely useful when you don’t want to keep writing “s/he” or “him or her” over and over as well as when you don’t know the gener of the person you’re writing to or about.

            But to return to the AAM letter: When you literally write your pronouns (she, her) into your signature that should really tip off the reader that you are a woman who identifies as such! I’d really wonder about any applicant who kept on ignoring that and insisted on calling the writer by masculine pronouns…and what that could mean for his ability to regard and treat female colleagues and supervisors with respect.

            1. linger*

              they is a rare example of a language borrowing a personal pronoun; it’s an Old Norse form that replaced Old English hir. As such, they has always had more flexible use in English than formal grammars would have you believe.
              “Singular they” was used without comment for arbitrary gender reference until 18th-century grammar-writers (of which Lowth’s recommendations reached the widest audience, being copied verbatim by Murray) attempted to codify English with reference to models from Latin or formal logic. Only at this point was they reserved solely for plural reference and “singular they” actively prescribed against. (Which raised other problems. By the early 19th century, singular he was mandated as a “generic” in writing law … even though judges continued to interpret “he” as referring solely to males.)
              Nevertheless, “singular they” continued to be used in speech as the most common pronoun for referents whose gender was unknown or arbitrary (anyone, someone), and it has been actively recommended for written use since the 1970s. Which I suggest is no longer a “recent” change.

          5. I wear my sunglasses at night*

            “The rest of the world grows out of greeting each other by peering in their nappies by about two years old.”

            Uhhh are you okay???

            1. Toupeee*

              Seriously, this. I don’t know where the heck THAT take came from. It’s giving a lot of “ma’am/sir this is a Wendy’s” crossed with “God really does protect drunks and fools” energy.

          7. metadata minion*

            Most no-gendered-pronoun languages that I know of still have gendered titles and other forms of address, as well as terms like “brother” or “woman”. Lack of gendered pronouns doesn’t indicate lack of gender in other parts of the language, and *definitely* doesn’t mean lack of enforced gender norms in the culture.

          2. bamcheeks*

            And French doesn’t have gendered possessive pronouns. As an English speaker, I had to work so hard to train myself out of the idea that “sa” was “she” and “son” was “his”!

            1. Rebecca*

              They are gendered, just based on the gender of the thing that is possessed instead of the possessor. French genders everything, English genders people (and animals we have given personalities to). I find it very confusing to move into a language that genders objects.

              1. Worldwalker*

                Oddly, I don’t. I know that a pen is “la pluma” and a pencil is “el lapiz” even though I don’t suspect them of sneaking off together to make those little golf pencils.

                I think it’s because of a good (if slightly weird) HS Spanish teacher who encouraged us to learn Spanish words as synonyms rather than translations. That is, “lapiz” doesn’t mean “pencil”; it means “graphite-containing writing instrument” — another word for the same object as “pencil.” So the grammatical gender attracted to that is just a part of the word, sort of, and not a system I had to learn separately.

              2. Richard Hershberger*

                This is the difference between grammatical gender and natural gender. They are very different this with some weird overlap.

              3. amoeba*

                Or you do it like the Germans and just gender based on… both! (sein, seine, ihr, ihre…) Because would be too easy otherwise, right?

                1. bamcheeks*

                  When I was doing A level German, I was good at cases but bad at gender (this is still true!), so I worked out that mathematically I had the highest probability of being right if I used der/die/das more or less at random for all singular nominative nouns, des/die/das at random for all singular accusative nouns, dem for singular dative nouns and den for plural dative, and des for singular and der for plural genitive, and the same for ein/sein/ihr etc.

                  It wasn’t good enough to get an A but it was good enough to get a B, but when I later lived in Germany it used to infuriate my poor friend Lena.

                2. Orv*

                  My wife knows German and has remarked that it was hard for her to get used to referring to girls as “it”. (Young boys are grammatically male, young girls are grammatically neuter.)

        3. Dust Bunny*

          If they have trouble adapting to it, I would say that speakers of non-Western languages also expect it to be so everywhere, no?

          (There’s also a continuum here. English doesn’t gender inanimate objects to the degree that many other European languages do.)

      2. Decidedly Me*

        I work with a lot of people in the Phillipines and noticed they have trouble with pronouns, as well, and they’ve been speaking English since they were young and working for US companies for most/all of their adult lives. It’s not unusual for them to use the wrong pronoun when talking about their spouse or children, and they clearly know the gender of those people.

        1. Daughter of Filipinos*

          Yeah in Tagalog he, she, and it are all the same word. Both my parents will still occasionally mix up he & she, and they’ve spoken English since elementary school.

          You reminded me of a conversation I had with my dad regarding they/them pronouns and the singular use of they. He had a hard time understanding why people who use they/them wouldn’t just use it/its. To him, it wasn’t a pronoun that was mainly used to describe an object. He saw he, she, and it all as pronouns to describe a single person/thing and they/them as pronouns for groups or multiple things.

          1. Kendall^2*

            I have a nibling who prefers it/its, and I’m having a hard time with it. As a native English speaker, I’m fine with the singular they/them, but ‘it’ feels like I’m non-person-ing someone.

        2. Database Developer Dude*

          I’m a member of a co-ed club where we call each other ‘Sister’ and ‘Brother’ when being formal, and the at-the-time presiding officer was a Filipina who occassionally would address our door guard as ‘Sister’ rather than ‘Brother’ by mistake…. we all laughed with her, not at her.

    3. Jenesis*

      On the other hand, we know that Fergus lives in the USA, the company Anne works for is located in the USA, and in the absence of other information, we can assume he’s going to be mainly working with US-based coworkers for whom there is a cultural standard of not calling a woman “Mr.” or “Sir” unless she’s specifically indicated it’s okay to do so. This goes double if Anne or anyone else at Anne’s company is transgender, gender non-conforming, or otherwise finds the subject of misgendering especially fraught.

      I agree it’s more likely to be carelessness than maliciousness, but I’d still consider it a yellow flag.

      1. Allonge*

        Yes – if this is ‘just’ not being aware of / not paying attention to US professional norms, that is not that much better in this context of hiring. Sure, easier to fix than malice, but not a good sign.

      2. DJ Abbott*

        To me it sounds like he’s completely oblivious. The question is, could someone like that do this job?

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          I think there’s a reason why there’s a stereotype of serious researchers being extremely knowledgeable about their own subject matter and yet being completely oblivious to just about everything else, including and especially social norms. I wouldn’t count Fergus out just because he didn’t notice OP’s pronouns in her signature and doesn’t know that Anne is a woman’s name. As for attention to detail, I have also noticed that some people can be really good at noticing details in areas that they are interested in or know a lot about but terrible at noticing details in other aspects of life.

          1. Dust Bunny*

            Again: Soft skills are still job skills. If he can’t get the hang of something this basic in what seems like a pretty clear-cut setting (i.e. not intensely international/intercultural) who else is going to have to work with who might be more offended than the OP? (And, yes, people are allowed to be annoyed that somebody can’t get something this basic right about them. I say that as someone who has an obscure first name that people routinely don’t think they should have to learn to pronounce correctly.)

            1. Allonge*

              This. We can explain why Fergus did not notice until the cows come home, but it’s an issue. Not a red-flag issue but it’s not a good sign either.

          2. Ineffable Bastard*

            still, if he can’t be careful enough with communication when he is trying to make a good first impression and be hired, how will he behave when he becomes an employee and feels comfortable? How will it impact other people?

          3. Fig Season*

            The problem tends to come when those people dismiss details as irrelevant or from an unworthy source that are in fact crucial to their work.

            There’s a stereotype of a rockstar programmer who blows in, creates a huge body of code, and blows out after two years, then brags about how much code he wrote and how much he can contribute in a short time. Meanwhile, the team he leaves behind is stuck with a mess to clean up, like he implemented a hot new tool/framework/language that isn’t well-documented or costs the team more to learn how to keep up or isn’t compatible with the rest of their tooling, or what he created isn’t actually what the client asked for or needed but it’s what he thought they needed because he knew better.
            Like Dust Bunny said, soft skills are still job skills.

        2. ferrina*

          Yeah, this is the question for me. What is relevant to the job?
          I think the cultural thing is a red herring- it sounds like the job requires proficient English, so Fergus should be familiar with gendered pronouns.
          If Fergus is that oblivious, how much will that impact the job? I echo Slow Gin Lizz- some researchers (particularly lifelong academic researchers) are utterly oblivious to social norms, deadlines, and other cues, but do amazing research. If you plan for this role to be locked in a role and researching, this person will be very happy. I’ve managed a researcher who operated like this- she was delighted to be micromanaged, and I got some great research out to it (I just had to have daily meetings where I nixed the rabbit holes).

          But if this role is expected to liaise with clients or other teams, a certain baseline of communication skills will be needed, and so far, Fergus has not impressed.

          1. Escapee from Corporate Management*

            I’ve seen this so much in hiring scientists from academia. They may be fine alone in a lab, but someone who misses social cues, is oblivious to deadlines, and doesn’t pick up when they are potentially insulting someone tends to fail quickly in industry. Soft skills matter!

      3. ScruffyInternHerder*

        That’s where I fall, because I know I’m in a “predominantly male profession that needs the misogyny beat out of it”. It could be lack of attention to detail, it could be sexism, it could be any number of things. I wouldn’t bring it up ahead of time, but I’d certainly be paying attention to how the interview went….

        In my own profession? He is 99% doing this on purpose if you have pronouns in your signature.

        1. abca*

          Yes. I’m in tech which is terribly misogynistic and “oh but that poor man who was born in X country but lives and works here just doesn’t understand this!” is such a common trope and really harmful. Sad to see it here. I am not from the US either, and from a country where sexism is even worse than in the US. The idea that it is okay that men from my country who are smart enough to get a phd and speak English well enough to get a job where that is a requirement would not pick up things like gender and pronouns is frankly offensive.

        2. Mad Scientist*

          Yeah, in my profession I wouldn’t necessarily assume that it’s someone doing it intentionally out of transphobia, more that it was Alison’s reason (a) defaulting to the sexist assumption that anyone with hiring authority would of course be a man.

        3. Elle*

          I frankly don’t care what his reason is. When you’re applying for a job, everything you do and say as part of that process is under scrutiny. I’d address it in an interview and see how he handles it.

          1. Mad Scientist*

            I’m inclined to agree here. I understand still giving the person a chance with an interview, but this doesn’t make a great impression as a candidate, regardless of the reason.

      4. el l*

        Yeah, while it’s useful and can explain things to know a person’s cultural background – you can’t ignore that you’re an American company, located in the US, doing business the American way with American coworkers. Local cultural norms will generally dictate.

        I’d suggest treating this the same as if they messed up your name (repeatedly) in this situation. Is it “Do not hire this person” territory? No. But it is “This person is behaving in an immature/oblivious way in a low-trust situation” territory.

        Meaning, if you end up deepening the relationship, coaching them or accepting significant limitations may end up being part of the deal.

      6. linger*

        It may help to consider Fergus’s communication from the other end.
        As a recent PhD with a student loan to support, Fergus is very likely applying to every relevant research-adjacent job, using shortcuts such as copy-pasted text for applications and emails.
        So it’s careless (because he is in fact not taking full care on each individual application), but highly unlikely to be any intentional personal slight.
        Let it go for now, see how he interviews.

        1. NotBatman*

          That is a good point that might explain the weirdness. If he got Anne’s last name right, but failed to notice her pronouns, that’s still a concerning degree of carelessness. But it might be down to excessive copy-pasting.

      7. Jellyfish Catcher*

        Not necessarily careless or malicious., just miscommunication. I was a female officer in the military back when officers were 95% male. We had a new guy coming; I was his liaison.

        When he arrived, I introduced myself; he stared for a second, then gave me a great smile, and laugh saying “Oh, this explains the months of mystery!”
        He somehow missed my first name, and my low voice can be mistaken as male on the phone. He heard a feminine tempo, thought I was male, and was so glad that the base was so out and “liberal” for the times.
        I never felt misgendered;we had a good laugh about it.

    4. Coverage Associate*

      I agree, although I wonder about a doctoral program that could get the candidate almost through without imparting to the candidate some basics of professional communication in the language the candidate would be working in, especially if the language is English, which is often the language of universities even outside English speaking countries.

      Like, I know people who have PhDs in teapot glazing, and I know that the semester of German and semester of Greek they had to take as part of their master’s doesn’t make them conversant in those languages, but I also know that a positive of the life consuming experience that is graduate school, which is often negative, is that you learn the professional norms of the field.

      Maybe it’s different if you’re a teapot glaze engineer instead of a teapot glaze sociologist, especially if the graduate education was also not in a Western culture.

      1. WS*

        A good number of doctoral programs are very much not about professional norms, though. They’re solely about the academic experience and the idea of going “into industry” is a great betrayal. And others are very much focused on the exact opposite! There are absolutely people who speak multiple languages, are terrific in their field, and would have absolutely no idea how to address a business email. And this will become clear when Fergus is interviewed.

        1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          But surely Fergus had at least one woman professor who used she/her pronouns? Even if they always addressed the person as Professor so and so, they would should have realized that the second email would start Ma’am not Sir.

          Its the second one that show obliviousness. The first one, okay, messed up. The second one was a default to masculine without thinking about it.

        2. ferrina*

          This. I am extremely wary of hiring a PhD who has spent their career in academia- it’s basically hiring a new grad who has a deeper knowledge base in their special subject. And you’re more likely to run into resistance when you try to teach them the office norms.

          1. supply closet badger*

            Ferrina, I’d respectfully encourage you to re-think this. Doing a PhD or postdoc is generally *not* just about getting deep subject-specific expertise — you gain transferable skills in research, project management, problem-solving, communication, teaching/training, often in grant-writing and budget management … it really feels a bit unfair to reduce that to ‘basically a new grad with a deeper knowledge base’.

            1. Learn ALL the things*

              I think what ferrina was trying to get across is that norms in academia tend to be vastly different from the norms of working in industry. In a lot of cases, people who have only ever worked in academia won’t have the context to know how much experience they don’t have. They will be knowledgeable and experienced, but they may not have the level of social competence that a non-academia workplace would expect from an employee at a similar experience level, because the norms are so different.

            2. ferrina*

              I’ve hired several straight-from-academia PhDs, and I stand by my description.

              An academic often learns a very specific set of skills that only apply to academia. Business communication is very, very different than academic expectations. The same is true of research (exceptions made for specific roles/fields)- explaining to PhDs that sometimes Wikipedia is good enough is a speech I memorized (and good gawd, don’t give the VP a lit review they haven’t asked for). The project management, problem-solving and teaching/training element is certainly not universal- I was Lead Project Manager when supervising these PhDs, and er, yeah, I didn’t see any evidence of what you are describing. I did notice that they could be very good at training for high-level knowledge, but if you asked them to train someone with low-level/beginner knowledge, they struggled (basically they could teach a 500-level course but not a 100-level course). I don’t do grant work, and the budget-management element is irrelevant when they aren’t controlling a budget…..but much worse when they think they should be controlling a budget and I have to tell them that the allocation is $0. Adjusting between what they expected their resources to be and what the actual resources were was a difficult process for each and every one. And academic deadlines are much longer than what our corporate deadlines were. I remember asking one job candidate for her quickest turn around, and she proudly announced that she had done a certain project in 8-weeks and it was super stressful. We had just finished a similar project in 4 weeks, and our standard was 6 weeks. (we didn’t go with that candidate, but I’ve had to have conversations about timelines with every single PhD that I’ve hired. With undergraduate new grads, the conversation goes “that timeline is over-optimistic and you need to make it longer”. With PhD new grads, the conversation goes “that timeline is way too conservative, and you need to cut it in half. And no, we will not be verifying every single step of the process.” (not the norm on the business side of the industry, but standard in peer-reviewed studies in the field)

              Obviously #NotAllPhDs, but a strong majority in my experience.
              This also is not true of PhDs who have work experience outside academia- I’ve actually had better experiences with them than most other candidates.

              1. NotBatman*

                PhD here — I fully agree with all of this. I have coworkers who email me at 6:00 AM with “REPLY IMMEDIATELY” in the subject line, coworkers who stand in the hall talking at you for 45+ minutes if you say hello, coworkers who insult my chosen field to my face… No one teaches professional norms in academia. Some learn as they go, but some don’t.

                The old joke goes: How do you tell a physicist from a biologist? The biologist looks at your shoes when they talk to you. The physicist looks at their own shoes.

      2. Tangerine steak*

        Pronouns and office norms have absolutely nothing to do with a doctoral program (unless that’s your topic) ime. Have you made a new and novel contribution to your field of sufficient substance? Yes – congratulations Dr. No – then you don’t graduate.

        I have colleagues who come from non-English speaking backgrounds who stuff up pronouns in speech often. They’ll misgender their kids and spouses – I’ve not noticed it written, but definitely spoken. Sometimes I’ll find myself having to figure out if there’s one or two people being spoken about.

        1. bamcheeks*

          I also think the harder the science, the less your conventional communication skills matter. If you can think in six dimensions at once and your ideas can be conveyed in mathematical equations, scientific notation, computer code or diagrams, your peers care way less about your ability to speak or write English! I’ve known a few PhD graduates in the sciences whose written or spoken English wasn’t great, or who had great conversational English but a poor command of written business English or business norms, because those things just weren’t being measured. I have also known arts and humanities graduates who could write good academic English but struggled with business communication, but generally speaking there’s more of a crossover between the skillsets. So it depend for me whether the candidate’s relevant doctoral study meant “six years in a lab surrounded by the same dozen people who all speak Science as their first language”, or something much more interactive and people-focussed.

      3. Cabbagepants*

        As a STEM PhD who works in industry with other STEM PhDs, the idea that we all graduated with knowledge of professional norms is laughable.

    5. NoName*

      I agree with this. Much as it grates me every time I get an email starting with ‚dear sir, I want to be a researcher at your institution‘. I know some of our departments greatly value applicants from all parts of the world despite their lack of professional communication skills used in our area. So I just deal, and don’t correct them. They can figure that out once this researcher has proven themselves to be academically competent and is working in the lab.

    6. Janne*

      Funnily, Anne used to be a men’s name in the northern part of the Netherlands. I read that the origin of the name is the German word for eagle.

      I think the most well-known male Anne is Anne de Vries, the writer of the book “Bartje” (there’s a statue of Bartje in Assen).

      However I don’t think this was the cause of Fergus’ confusion! I just wanted to tell an interesting fact ;)

      1. UKDancer*

        There was also Anne de Montmorency, a French nobleman and constable of France in the 16th century. That always struck me as interesting.

        1. Emmy Noether*

          That is interesting! Apparently Anne used to be a unisex name. Anne de Montmorency was named for his godmother, Anne de Bretagne, queen of France. And to make confusion complete, Anne’s mother was also named Anne, and he had two daughters named Anne (one extramarital).

          There were only like a dozen first names to go around among the nobility at the time anyway. The gender switch for one generation is interesting, though.

          Anyway, Anne is probably not the LW’s actual name anyway!

      2. Lexi Vipond*

        There’s also Arne – I used to work in the same department as a man whose name was mine apart from one extra letter, and people from completely different language backgrounds mixed our names fairly regularly without actually getting mixed up about which of us was which.

        I also regularly get ‘Dear Sir’ from foreign students with every intention of being polite!

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I suspect ‘Dear Sir’ or ‘Dear Sirs’ is (or at least used to be) widely taught as the polite way to address business correspondence.

          I did a bit of ESL tutoring last year, and the lesson plan stated that all emails addressed to one’s supervisor should start with “Dear Mr/Mrs Lastname” and end with “Regards”. I *may* have gone off-lesson-plan for that one.

          1. metadata minion*

            Yeah, this is one case where I want to give Fergus some leeway if he’s clearly not a native English speaker. I get applications for student jobs all the time starting “Dear Sirs”, who otherwise have a perfectly adequate grasp of business-appropriate English. They were just clearly taught that This Is How You Address A Business Letter, from a textbook that appears to have been written in the 1970s.

        2. Orv*

          I still struggle with how to start business letters when I don’t know the gender of the person who’ll be reading it. I wasn’t taught that in class, only “Dear Sir:”. “To whom it may concern:” sounds both dismissive and flowery at the same time.

    7. Audrey Puffins*

      I used to work with a woman who was born and raised in the same English town as me but from a different cultural background (also I believe English is her first language). She went through her entire life never hearing the name Harriet, and when she did finally come across it in the office one day, she assumed it was a man’s name, whereas I have known the existence of the name Harriet, as a woman’s name, for longer than I can remember. Although it’s not a common name, I didn’t think it was so rare that someone could be so completely unaware of it, but I guess these things can happen!

      1. bamcheeks*

        At some point in my childhood I conceived the notion that Frances was the male version of the name and Francess was the female version, and despite having updated my knowledge to Francis/Frances I still have to check the urge to add an extra S.

        1. TSS*

          The male tennis player Frances Tiafoe uses the “es” spelling, and I think he’s “Jr,” so presumably his dad or granddad uses that spelling as well. Just to mess up the handy “‘es’ is for women, ‘is’ is for men” pattern.

        2. Turquoisecow*

          I thought that Lindsey/Lindsay was gendered and one used an and one used e. but Lindsey Buckingham and Lindsey Stirling both use the e and one is a man and the other a woman. I also know a woman who spells it Lindsay and one who uses Lindsey. So I guess it’s anything goes? If I got an email from a new Lindsay I would have no idea unless they included pronouns.

          1. KaciHall*

            My cousin spells it Lyndsey, and she has at least one boy named after her spelled identically. just to confuse things more.

            Granted, my name is Kaci and while it’s a unisex name, to me the spelling is ridiculously feminine and I’m constantly confused by all the people assuming I’m a guy. (Even in a pregnancy subreddit; apparently I should let women decide how they/we feel?)

          2. Banana Pyjamas*

            Lindsey/Lindsay started as a toponymic surname, then became popular for men, then women. This is a pretty normal evolution for more traditional unisex names like Avery, Stacy, and Kelly. Also a Quick Look at Behind the Name shows that Lindsey was a primarily American spelling, and it only became widespread once Lindsey became a popular girls name.

            1. Orv*

              It says something about Western culture that names frequently go from being male names to female names, but never the other way around.

                1. metadata minion*

                  It’s not true that it never happens, but it is pretty dramatically skewed to male names shifting female rather than female names shifting male.

    8. Irish Teacher.*

      Yeah, I hadn’t thought of this until Alison mentioned it, but yeah, it does make sense. There was a rather funny moment when Enda Kenny became taoiseach (prime minister) here and an American newspaper (it might have been the New York Times; I don’t remember) clearly misread Enda as Edna and reported that Ireland had elected our first female taoiseach, when no, he is a man. So I guess it is possible Anne resembles a name that is usually male in Fergus’s culture.

      I think it’s more likely he just assumed boss=male and didn’t pay much attention to the signature though.

      1. UKDancer*

        I thought it was Emma Kenny the first time he became Taeoseach and I heard the announcement as I’d not come across Enda as a name before.

        i think if you’ve not seen a name before it may not be obvious what it is.

    9. Carmina*

      This – I also have a western feminine name (no pronouns in my signature though) and get addressed as “Sir” all the time. This is a tech job and most of the confused interlocutors seem to be south asian (which is a demographic quite over-represented in the sector so not sure if that’s representative, but something to keep in mind if that happens to also be the case here?)

      I’d just take it as a flag to pay attention to how he treats women and minorities, but not a dealbreaker in and of itself. If he’s only had an academic career so far, it could have been pretty removed from typical professional norms; and depending on the field, perhaps so heavily male-dominated that such assumptions have not been wrong before? It all depends on whether he’s humble and willing to learn.

      1. snaketime*

        This is the exact same thought I had. My immediate reaction to the letter was “wow, that sounds exactly like the responses I get from a lot of students from India that I interview”. The frequent use of “sir” in particular is characteristic of Indian English.

        Who knows where Fergus is actually from, but I’d encourage giving him some grace here (assuming he does have an international background like we’re speculating). It’s inobservant to not notice some of the things described, but there can be major cultural differences even between people who all speak English. It shouldn’t be treated as a blank check for insensitivity, but it means it may be worth looking a bit deeper.

        1. Edwina*

          I work with a lot of people who are from India, and I used to assume a name ending in “a” is female. I have found that to NOT be a safe assumption. I also want to know how to pronounce people names, so I bookmarked several web sites with info on how to pronounce Irish names, Indian names, etc. I do ask people how to pronounce their names, but I’ve gotten either a confused response – like, why am I even worried about getting it right (which really puzzles me), or people are so accustomed to their names being mispronounced, they’ve given up, and say that the way I’m saying their name is fine (when it actually isn’t).

          1. 2 Cents*

            Yes! I made the same incorrect assumption that -a names = female. Now I have a “common Indian names” list bookmarked.

          2. Bast*

            Yes — I had a professor who asked that we just call him “Dr. D” because he was so tired of people butchering his full name that he didn’t even want to hear the attempts anymore.

          3. Katara's side braids*

            As an Indian American, I appreciate the effort you put into learning and pronouncing our names! But I also want to push back slightly against the idea that people have just “given up” on having their names pronounced correctly, or that the way you say it isn’t actually fine.

            Sometimes that really is the case, but sometimes we actually don’t care, or even prefer the “incorrect” version when interacting with people outside of family/cultural spaces. The latter is the case for me – I love the “correct” pronunciation of my name, but associate it so strongly with my family and culture that it feels almost uncomfortably intimate to hear it from people who don’t share those things with me. It would almost be like hearing my coworkers call me by a family pet name. There’s a lot of intra-community discourse about whether going by an “incorrect” pronunciation is self-hating, internalized racism, etc, but I think it’ll always come down to just calling people what they want to be called, even if it’s not “correct.”

            As another example: The NPR reporter Lakshmi Singh famously pronounces her first name “LACK-shmi” instead of “LUCK-shmi”, which would be the “correct” pronunciation according to most South Asians. But she got that name from her Indo-Trinidadian family, who pronounce it the “incorrect” way. I’ve heard lots of fellow South Asian Americans complain that she’s intentionally softening her name to seem less “threatening” to her majority-white audience, but she’s publicly said that that IS the correct pronunciation within her cultural context! Again, I’m not saying that it’s never the case for someone to prefer a more “traditional” pronunciation – just that if someone repeatedly says your pronunciation is fine, it may actually be fine.

        2. TechWorker*

          I have one Indian American colleague who calls me ‘ma’am’ and it is weird af. But I get over it because it’s not really worth a debate ;)

        3. Lily Rowan*

          And you might not be able to clock that someone is Indian from their name — I worked with a guy from India whose name was (not actually) Thomas Steven, having taken his father’s first name as his last in the traditional way in his culture.

          2. mango chiffon*

            My dad ended up using his own given name as our last name when he was applying to grad school in the US in the 80s because our specific area in South India does not use “last names” in the traditional sense, but people are known by their father’s first name initial and then their given name. He didn’t switch them around when applying for the documents he needed, so my last name ended up as my dad’s first name. Some people use their father’s name as last name, some people use “caste” names. But we mainly just have given names (not first names). People who immigrate to other countries often have to adopt the standards of that new country, so as someone born in the US, I have a first, middle, and last name of my own. But my dad continues to introduce himself to people with his given name (which is legally our last name). Many other cultures are like this as well.

            1. Katara's side braids*

              Yup! It was really fun explaining to my 7th grade teacher why I couldn’t just put my last name into ancestry dot com to research for our family history project.

      2. i am a human*

        This was my read on it, too. I get “dear sir” on a weekly basis (I’m sure it would be more if I were faculty).

      3. Telephone Sanitizer, Third Class*

        It almost reminds me of how in the military, female soldiers are still “Mr. Lastname”

        1. Bella Ridley*

          This is not done. Female officers are addressed either by ma’am or by their rank. Female enlisted, just as male, are referred to by their rank. (Exceptions may apply if the rank in question is airman or seaman, but even a female airman will be referred to like that.)

          Warrant officers in the US military, commonly referred to as “Mr. So-and-so,” if they are female will be “Ms/Miss So-and-so.”

          1. 40 Years In the Hole*

            Retired Canadian military here (she/her). Basically the same rank structure and gender-specific salutations here (more aligned with the British system), though we’ve gone to more gender neutral terminology for the junior ranks: Master Seaman to Master Sailor, Leading/Able/Ordinary Seaman, to Sailors 1st/2nd/3rd Class for navy. Aviator Basic and Aviator Trained for formerly Air Force Privates, etc.
            I had been “Sir’d” more times than I can count, in person, on the phone and in emails over 35 years. So my mind immediately went to “this guy is former military;” hard habit to break.

          1. Bella Ridley*

            This is something people get from TV because it is not done in any military I’ve ever heard of. Or served in.

      4. Stinky Socks*

        Came here to say this. I would be watchful for clues that the candidate would have trouble reporting to, getting feedback from, getting assignments from a female supervisor. Extreme example– a woman I know was tech lead on a team that had to visit multiple sites in an Asian nation where the misogyny runs deep and visible in some areas. Some of the men she had to get information from and give feedback/corrections to would not even speak to her directly. *Everything* was directed at her male underling.

    10. Eldritch Office Worker*

      I’ve also had candidates who use “sir” for everyone, even face to face. I don’t know if that’s cultural, or language barrier, or quirky way to be gender neutral, or something else, but I’ve run into it more than once.

    11. Good Wilhelmina Hunting*

      Yes, I was rather hoping this would be Alison’s first thought, rather than last, when I read the letter. My real first name is a Celtic name that is unfamiliar to even native English speakers unless they share common heritage, while my real surname somewhat resembles a Germanic male first name, apart from the Anglicised spelling – imagine something like Sian Fritts. I would routinely get “Dear Mr Sian,” or “Could I speak to Fritz?” It wasn’t malicious. They just lacked cultural knowledge.

      1. Bast*

        Even if the name were a common one, people would still muck it up, although the cultural component in your name could certainly be at play. Old Boss had a name akin to “Susan Thomas” and would frequently get mail addressed to “Thomas” and calls asking for “Thomas” despite having a first name that in our culture is very female — they couldn’t get over the male last name, and were blind to the “Susan” part.

      2. Ali + Nino*

        I was going to mention this. My name sounds feminine to most native English-speakers, but in some languages it’s a nickname for a common male name. I wouldn’t take it personally if someone accidentally addressed me incorrectly.
        Maybe this is far-fetched, but…any chance auto-correct is contributing to this researcher’s errors?

    12. Coffee Protein Drink*

      I’ve been called Mr. or Sir, but it’s not a dealbreaker even though my pronouns are in my signature. I live in a major metropolitan area and the population is diverse.

      If I’m replying to an email where someone has done that, I will put, “You can call me Coffee Protein Drink, I use she/her/hers, not he/him.”

      Personally, I would rather be corrected sooner rather than later in the conversation.

    13. Tradd*

      Absolutely with this. I’m female. A huge component of my job is dealing with an international audience, and I’m also addressed as everything under the sun. My first name is easily seen as male by Asia (think Danielle/Daniel) and I’m addressed as sir all the time. My office doesn’t use pronouns, but I have seen some other overseas counterparts put Ms. in front of their name in their email signature. Also, I’ve seen other commenters here in the past get upset by being addressed by sir/ma’am, but in other cultures such as India or the Philippines, this is normal for business communication.

    14. Khatul Madame*

      I have read a fiction book about India. There was a female character in a very important job normally held by men, and her subordinates addressed her “Madam Sir”. I don’t know the culture enough to determine if this detail is tongue in cheek or mainstream.

    15. learnedthehardway*

      Agreeing – I would not assume the person is being intentional or trying to derail their chances (the OP’s friend’s interpretation was just weird).

      My assumption is that the person is a native speaker of NOT English. The level of formality in the messages also indicates that the candidate comes from another culture (other than US or Canada).

      As a recruiter, I would definitely move forward with a very well qualified candidate and would a) look at how they treat female interviewers and b) assess their overall communications skills.

    16. Ms. Whatsit*

      I came here to offer the same possibility. I work in a very international context and people with fluent and otherwise excellent English will mix up third person singular pronouns. It’s just not uncommon so I would guess this is the case. Respectful titles/forms of address can also be the same for men and women. I would not assume someone doesn’t pay attention to detail or is doing this on purpose at all.

      If this person is otherwise someone you’d interview, please do. And if an opportunity arises either in email or in person to gently request you be referred to as Ms./ma’am, most people would appreciate being clued in to a mistake that could create a wrong impression if done kindly.

    17. 2 Cents*

      I am job hunting and have received many calls from recruiters based in Southeast Asian countries (like India). I’ve been called “Sir” many times, despite my “would 100% assume I’m using she/her pronouns if you didn’t know better” first and middle names. I chalk it up to the language gap. It’s happened approximately 500 times by now lol. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest, and I don’t put any weight on it.

    18. jasmine*

      I’ve lived abroad, have immigrant parents, and speak a language with non-gendered pronouns. I’m not sure I agree with this take. Most people globally are familiar with American culture and common American names. Even if English isn’t their first language, or even if it’s a language they outright struggle with, the email is very strange. “Mr” could’ve been a typo, but “sir” was careless

    19. GenX, PhD, Enters the Chat*

      I feel like anyone who is fluent enough in English to get a PhD in an English-speaking country is familiar with gendered personal pronouns.

      1. bamcheeks*

        I’ve been working with taught postgraduates and postgraduate researchers for 15+ years and this isn’t my experience. Particularly in highly technical or practical subjects, someone’s ability to community in written and spoken English or to adapt to Anglophone business norms isn’t necessarily correlated with their ability to do a PhD.

        1. Carmina*

          Yep same here; they know it well enough to communicate, understand and be understood, but it can be very unpolished. They get a native speaker to review the thesis and articles from a pure language point of view.

    20. Katie*

      This is what I thought too! I work with people from India and the Philippines and it sounded exactly how they would phrase things.

      I would not hold the misgendering against them either way though. People in general are terrible about paying attention to email signatures. (I have never signed my name Kathy but still am called that even though my signature has Katie).

    21. LL*

      yeah, I was thinking something like this too. I don’t know how names are gendered in other cultures, so I’m not surprised that people from other cultures don’t know how names are gendered in mine.

    22. 1 Non Blonde*

      I agree. I once saw a post from linked in about how this person spelled out the pronunciation of his very simplistic, very American first name, saying he does so because — guess what! — not everyone is in the USA and familiar with their names. I liked the idea but the [American] commenters (I saw it in a roast group) said otherwise.

  3. Certaintroublemaker*

    I don’t know about LW5 saying anything. We see questions SO OFTEN from people who get completely ghosted by interviewers, even at late stages, that maybe a text is better than nothing?

    1. Elbe*

      The bar really is on the ground. But, it is better than nothing. I completely get where the LW is coming from, but it also does feel weird to fault someone when it’s so common for interviewers to do worse.

      1. NotBatman*

        It’s so true. I always reply “thank you for letting me know!” to every rejection I receive, because I’m desperately hoping it’ll make them more common.

      1. Pizza Rat*

        I don’t want the calls either, especially since the odds of getting any kind of feedback are slim at best. There’s very little I have to say when rejected and it’s usually in four-letter words that I don’t use when I behave professionally.

    3. el l*

      OP should remember this person’s name as someone who’s at best callow and at worst callous. It’s low.

      But don’t say anything. Because – general principle – what’s the chance this person will learn from this? Probably low.

    4. M2*

      Yeah. In my organization HR sends all the rejection emails… or they should. But I have received emails from people after a rejection should have gone out and am very surprised HR does not always do it.

      I sometimes send personal emails or have HR add to a finalist who was not selected if they want feedback or a quick call I am happy to do it. If I have a call I always have another member of my team usually an EA on the call but if someone is hostile or rude I have HR deal with it. If it’s an internal hire I usually tell them personally or after the rejection email is sent I offer to talk with them about it but when do this in a conference room that is all glass. It’s sad I have to do this but we had an internal candidate once not get a role and said a manager (not me) said something to them and there had to be an investigation and the manager was in the clear. Again I don’t do this for everyone. Only finalists or internal candidate (that get interviewed not just an HR screeen).

  4. Rainy*

    LW3–after I left my last job, I told someone in that organization who had been wanting to find a role in my old unit that it’s not a good place to work right now. I don’t know if she believed me, or if she’ll take my advice, and I can’t control that at all. I did my best, and that has to be enough because it’s all I can do. You did everything you can do. What that person chooses to do with that is up to them.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      If someone is desperate for a job to pay the bills they may well believe what you are saying but regard e.g. being screamed at as a minor issue compared to missing meals, having utilities cut off, or losing their home.

      1. Nicosloanica*

        Yes, I actually thought the posted response missed the most common reason why someone may seem to “ignore” the warning; they desperately need a job so badly they decide they’ll just have to live with getting screamed at. Being able to filter jobs because you want to find the best fit is actually a luxury position for a lot of people, especially in the US where insurance is still tied to employment and a lot of those “McJobs” that “everyone can get” don’t offer it.

        1. zolk*

          LW3 here–this is in Canada, so healthcare thankfully isn’t an issue, including dental if your income is low enough

        2. Cat Tree*

          Yep. I once had a terrible, miserable job with an unstable owner. I got out as fast as I could, about 8 months after I started. But I left that job on good terms (well as good as possible considering I quit so fast). And if I really needed a job, I’d go back there. If I had to, I would absolutely go back there to feed and house my family. I’d spend every spare moment looking for something better. But I would willingly work there.

          1. Nicosloanica*

            Yep. I guess I’d rather be screamed at then loose my house and all my savings, or avoid treating an urgent medical problem because I can’t afford to address it.

      2. zolk*

        LW3 here – from their LinkedIn they appear to be currently employed! I know that’s not a perfect barometer, but… oh well. I tried!

        1. NotBatman*

          I was once warned off a job and ended up taking it anyway. I was desperate, I needed SOMETHING on my resume, and I went ahead — but I kept my resume up to date and quietly started applying the moment I was in the door. Eight months later I’d parlayed Awful Job into the job I actually wanted. I still appreciated the warning, and passed it on to the people who applied to replace me.

          1. Rainy*

            That’s a great outcome for a tough situation for you. I’m glad you appreciated the warning and also passed it on. I don’t know about zolk but it definitely makes me feel a little bit better about the warning I gave.

  5. Daria grace*

    #2 Fergus should have gotten this right given the info is right there but I wouldn’t make this a deal breaker on its own. In addition to the possibility it’s a glitch of being an English as a second language speaker thing, there’s weird outdated norms in some fields. I used to have a job that involved a lot of correspondence with lawyers and they tended to address things “dear sir” if they didn’t know the gender of the recipient

    1. Testing*

      Yup, I’ve given feedback about this to cold-emailers, and have been told that “Dear Sirs” is a business norm! Don’t forget that there’s a lot of very outdated information out there, and that it can be hard to distinguish good from bad advice (as we’ve noticed in other work-related matters).

      1. Freya*

        Yeah, this always weirds me out, and is a signal to me that it’s a cold email and not worth my time – the majority of the time, an email that’s worth my (female-presenting) time starts with “good afternoon” or “hello myname” or similar

      2. The Prettiest Curse*

        My dad was a solicitor (lawyer) and I would sometimes type letters for him when I was a teenager. I never shook the feeling that starting a letter with “Dear Sirs” meant you were challenging multiple people to a sword fight, or some other old-timey dispute resolution method.

      3. General von Klinkerhoffen*

        It’s very much still a cultural norm in my (international, law) field.

        But we are also absolutely assiduous about using the correct title when addressing a particular individual. “Dear Sir” is ok for a first contact, but “Dear Mr Smith” is absolutely not. The number of times I’ve scoured company websites for a profile or photo, or even baby naming websites for a consensus, so I can at least make an educated guess!

      4. honeygrim*

        “Dear Sirs” always makes me think of the silly complaint letters featured on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”

      5. Nicosloanica*

        To be fair, it’s very possible that bringing in this candidate, an overqualified academic, will involve a LOT of missed business norms / strange notions of professional behavior – so I would still consider the “dear Sir” email to be a yellow flag that the speaker may have either a poor grasp of communication or some very out-of-touch norms – but I’d certainly bring them in and have an interview with them anyway. Although if I had another exchange with them, I’d correct them as to my gender just because at that point I would be a bit irked by it.

        1. Mad Scientist*

          Fully agree with this. It’s a separate but valid concern. If there aren’t a lot (or any) other PhDs on the team, they could have a hard time adjusting to the culture and level of formality. For example it probably wouldn’t go over well if they expect to be called “Dr. LastName” on a team where everyone else is on a first name basis.

          1. amoeba*

            Huh. I’m a PhD, most of my friends have one, and I live and work in a country that tends to be more formal than the US. I have never, ever met anybody that wants to be called “Dr. X” and it would be considered extremely out of touch – everybody is generally on first name terms, both in Academia and Industry! And we do know how to write e-mails, in general. Also, the grad students and postdocs and professors we collaborate with write perfectly normal, nice mails, have no problem whatsoever with business norms, etc.
            If anything, academia was less formal than Industry, because well, everybody was friends and got drunk together.

            Not saying it might not be true in some other fields, but for us, that would absolutely not be a concern.

            1. Mad Scientist*

              Yeah, both my parents have PhDs and use their first names at work and have no issues with communication, so I totally understand that it’s not always a concern. But simultaneously, in my field, I’ve encountered several PhDs who make it A Thing and expect to be called Dr. LastName. Certainly not everyone, but it happens. It could actually be *because* most of your friends / colleagues have PhDs that you haven’t encountered this? The more common it is, the less you feel the need to make a point of it, maybe.

              1. amoeba*

                That’s very possible! I’ve honestly mostly encountered this with people working in other fields such as law (I’m a scientist – some people go into patent law, for instance). I mean, not as in literally insisting people call them Dr.! But as in, having it in their name on their LinkedIn profile or signing e-mails with it. I got the feeling that it’s more those fields who put a lot of emphasis on formal titles and such, but of course I don’t know.

                OTOH, it’s also always first names only within the whole company, and while we do of course have a lot of PhDs, the majority certainly doesn’t. (Pretty sure the CEO doesn’t as he doesn’t have a science background – but then I don’t actually know because, again, first names for everybody…)

              2. sparkle emoji*

                Yeah, I’ve experienced this a couple times with people who got PhDs and then left academia in fields where academia would be the main reason to get one. As a kid I had a substitute teacher who was very insistent about being addressed as Dr. Lastname, and got frustrated when she had to remind students it was Dr. and not Ms. I understand she was proud of the achievement but the reaction felt over-the-top given it was elementary school and we saw her maybe once a year.

            2. Emmy Noether*

              Yeah, university research departments tend to be informal places. I’m sure people that insist on Dr. X in first-name environments exist, but that’s 100% them personally, not their PhD.

            3. Orv*

              I had a female friend who had a PhD and used “Dr.”, but it was because she liked having a title that didn’t depend on her gender or marital status.

          2. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

            That is a weird take. I don’t know any PhDs (including myself) who expect that. Unfamiliarity with business norms is a valid concern, but not this particular manifestation – if anything they’re likely to expect LESS formality in interactions than is typical.

            1. Mad Scientist*

              Re: expecting less formality, I can definitely see that happening as well. Didn’t we have someone on a recent open thread in their first job outside of academia struggling to understand the concept of having set business hours? It’s not that academia is more formal, per se, but that the appropriate level of formality in different contexts and the norms about formality in general are simply different. Neither is wrong or right, but it’s an adjustment that some people could struggle with.

      6. Lauren*

        Dear Sirs hasn’t been a business norm in at least 30 some years, in my experience. When I was taking business courses, it was always something gender neutral or “dear sir or madam”.

      7. Cranky Old Bat*

        Interesting. I have been in the workforce coming up on 40 years and I have never been told it was a business norm. I was using “Dear Sir or Madam,” pre-Internet because many companies didn’t want to answer who the hiring manager was when you called.

        Allison and people here have mentioned that there is a plethora of outdated and just plain bad guidelines out there.

      8. NotRealAnonForThis*

        In high school TYPING class (so that should date this information reasonably on its own, but it was the early 1990s) we were taught to use “Dear Sirs or Madams”

        I do not have a clue if this was ever exactly a thing, but I guess points to my otherwise useless typing instructor?

        1. Turquoisecow*

          I was taught that “To Whom It May Concern” was a good opener if you were not writing to a specific individual, unless you knew with 100% certainty a man was going to read your letter. If there was even the slightest chance a woman would open it you did not write “dear sirs.”

      9. PhyllisB*

        Right. Back in the lste 60s/early 70’s when I was learning business norms, all business correspondence (especially applications) were addressed as Dear Sir. Of course, if you had a name furnished you would address to them, but it was always Mr., Mrs., or Miss Smith. No first names. If they were female but you didn’t know marital status, Mrs. was the default.
        Later it was considered correct to say Dear Sir or Madam. The last time I had to submit a mailed application and I didn’t know who it was going to, I said Dear Hiring Manager. I’m not sure what the default is now. Yes, I realize people don’t write mailed letters anymore, but there’s still email.

    2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      When I started professional jobs in the early 1980s I considered “Dear Sir/Madam” ridiculously outdated and used the name instead whenever I knew it.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        I didn’t start professional jobs until the turn of the millennium, but I avoided the issue (and that of remembering the difference between “yours sincerely” and “yours faithfully”) by starting and ending in Irish. This is an established acceptable practice in Irish business mail and the Irish version of “Dear Hiring Manager”/”Dear Sir/Madam” basically translates as something like “Dear Friend”. (It also made some sense as I was applying to teaching jobs and while I am an English and History teacher and was applying to jobs teaching those subjects, I am also qualified to teach Irish to the younger students.)

    3. Beany*

      I’ve had correspondence recently with someone from an international academic publishing company, and their name was nothing like any I’d encountered before. They also didn’t use any kind of honorific (gendered or otherwise) or pronouns.

      I hit LinkedIn to find a photo and made a determination of their gender for the purposes of replying. But photos aren’t conclusive evidence of gender, so this isn’t ideal.

      What’s the best alternative? I *could* just say “Dear FirstName LastName […]”, but that seems like a weird imbalance, since they used my honorific when writing to me. Or I could ignore their name altogether and say “Hi. […]”

      1. Mad Scientist*

        When I’m unsure, I usually go with a simple “Good morning/afternoon/evening” and leave gender out of it entirely. It’s usually the right balance of formal and friendly for my industry, but YMMV.

      2. no_title*

        This is one among many reasons why I’m eager for the honorific “Mx” to go more mainstream. Think of the person-hours we’d save if it were standard to call someone “Mx Lastname” pending further information about their preferred title, in the same way that it’s standard to call a woman “Ms Lastname” pending further information about their marital status (or desire to indicate such).

        1. Eigenvogel*

          I like “Mx”, but I think my transgender wife would interpret it as someone trying to avoid acknowledging her as female. (She’s had stuff like that from time to time, including one bizarre article that studiously used her name every time just to avoid having to use her pronouns.)

          1. Ineffable Bastard*

            OMG that’s absurd! How infuriating!
            I go by Mx. and can totally see how it would impact transgender people who go by gendered honorifics/pronouns so it will not become standard.
            What could become standard is everyone including their pronouns in all emails, social media profiles, and when introducing oneself and others to people.

            1. Orv*

              Yes. I’d also like to see more drop-down selections, checkboxes, etc. offer “Mx” as an honorific, especially on forms that require one.

      3. Turquoisecow*

        Maybe it’s that my industry is not very formal but I’ve never addressed someone as Mr or Ms in a job. If I get an email from John Smith and I don’t know if John is a male or female name, I probably write back with Hi John, and I’ve gotten work emails that addressed me as Hi FirstName. If I was in a more formal situation I might write “Dear John Smith.” But in my experience John would write back “Hi Firstname,” close it with “Thanks, John,” and we’d go with first names from there. But again, that’s my industry.

    4. Turquoisecow*

      I have an uncommon spelling of a not that uncommon name and even though my email address and signature have the correct spelling I have people reply to my emails addressing me incorrectly. So to use OP’s example, say my name is Ann and everything in the email says Ann, but people then respond to my emails with Anne. If people can see my signature and address and then write “Anne,” I completely believe that they can see pronouns that say “she/her” and write “dear sir.”

      If OP is hiring for a copy editor, this is bad, because noticing details in text is part of the job – if he misses pronouns, he’ll miss things like missing commas or spelling errors or whatever. But if it’s a job that doesn’t require a lot of written communication (my job doesn’t really) or attention to textual details, it’s not as important. My coworkers are generally terrible at this sort of thing – I have received emails I found barely coherent – from native English speakers! – but it wasn’t relevant to their jobs, just personally annoying. Is not noticing pronouns in signatures going to be a huge issue for the job – will he potentially misgender clients or important stakeholders to the point where they’re offended and don’t want to work with him? Is it a more insulated job where he’ll work on a small team with his boss and some coworkers and not have to email outside people? All of that can be found out in an interview, or at least explored in more detail.

    5. ferrina*

      Except….Anne’s gender is included in her sign-off. I agree that the ‘Dear Sir’ can be someone who was taught in outdated cultural norms, but it was never taught “if you know the person is female, call them sir”.

      So either Fergus is oblivious enough not to notice the pronouns in the sign-off (which may or may not be a problem depending on the needs of the role) or he’s doing it deliberately (which is definitely a problem). Either way, not a good thing in a candidate. I really want an update after that interview!!

    7. Joielle*

      I once rejected an applicant partially because he addressed his email and cover letter to “Dear Mr. Hiring Manager” despite all the contact information given in the posting being for unambiguously female names. This was a person who had gone to college and law school in our same state and had a 10-year working history in our metro area, so plenty of time to have adapted to modern US business norms, if that was the issue (although there was no indication it was). And it was so unnecessary! Just say “Dear Hiring Manager.”

      It was a competitive field with plenty of qualified applicants, so we weren’t losing much by rejecting him. If he had been a very strong candidate I guess I would have interviewed him, but I would have been very alert for signs of sexism. I’d rather hire nobody than someone who has that kind of attitude.

      1. Rainy*

        In my previous role I received a ton of emails from (always male, almost always international) students to “Dear Sir” or “Dear [first half of my double-barreled surname as though it were my given name]” and I always found it super lazy. If they’re getting my name from the directory there’s a photo of me RIGHT THERE, next to my actual name. It always smacked of “you’re important so you couldn’t *possibly* be a woman and I will make sure not to offend the man who answers my email by implying he might be a woman.”

    8. Chirpy*

      The “professional norm” of calling people “sir” when you don’t know their gender just makes me think of Ursula Le Guin’s excellent essay on gender where she calls this out as silly. It’s just so outdated to use “universal he” now, and has been for decades.

      I’d say this is a yellow flag- definitely pay attention to how this guy treats women (or nonbinary/trans) interviewers.

    9. Elizabeth West*

      In cover letters, I’ve defaulted to “Dear Recruiter” unless the job post says to address correspondence to a specific person. On LinkedIn, job posts often list the person who posted them (“Meet the hiring team – Bard McBardface” and then their title). If that’s the case, they get the greeting.

      My closing is “Best regards.” Most of the time I have no idea who will actually see that unless/until they contact me.

  6. Nodramalama*

    LW2 I agree with Alison and am a bit confused what the motivation would be if he was doing it on purpose. To rail against pronouns?!

    LW3 I’m curious what didn’t believe you means–if it means they just straight up don’t think it happened, or they don’t think it was that bad. If it’s the later i’d say even from reading this column that people seem to have quite different intepretations and thresholds of what “screaming” means in a work context. E.g whether it is should be in anger or can extend to any raised voice.

    Maybe in the future if you’re concerned about it you could try a specific example of what happened to paint a picture. But I think you went above and beyond in warning this person

    1. Despachito*

      I think it is really up to the person what they do with OP’s information. OP did what they could, and they cannot control the other person’s acts.

    2. MendraMarie*

      If he’s doing it on purpose, it’s likely he’s someone who assumes that having your pronouns in your signature = you are transgender (because otherwise why would you need to specify pronouns) = you are “really” the other gender. So it’s not railing against pronouns specifically, but just regular old transphobia – which many transphobes believe eliminates the need for respect, even in situations where they have no power.

      (I personally love normalising having pronouns in signatures. It’s so helpful when working cross-culturally. Let people be who they believe themselves to be!)

      1. Worldwalker*

        On the other side, I don’t like it because it puts my gender front and center. It feels like saying that the most important thing about me is what’s in my pants, with the assumption that I will conform to the stereotypes assigned to that gender. Nobody needs to know any of that to interact with me. And in fact, since I differ greatly from what I “should” be, it would get the relationship off on the wrong foot from the beginning.

        I’m fairly open about my gender here, but not in many other places online. A major reason for this is that people will argue that I don’t actually believe/like/etc. things that are actually central and important to me, even when I’ve said I do, because that wouldn’t conform to the stereotype. I’d rather they concentrate on what I said, rather than what “someone like me” should (in their view) have said. I’ve even had arguments like that with people standing in front of me IRL, as recently as two or three years ago.

        So call me anything but late to dinner.

        1. Orv*

          The problem is the way our language is structured means someone *does* need to know what gender you present as to interact with you. (They don’t need to know what’s in your pants, though, that’s your business.)

          1. Aquatic*

            Ironically, I don’t need to know your gender to interact with you, since one-on-one interactions are covered by one of the English language’s genderless pronouns: you.

        2. Kella*

          Of the many complex aspects that make up gender, pronouns are one of the only ones that *are* relevant to your interactions with a stranger. Pronouns *don’t* tell you anything about what’s in someone’s pants or what stereotype they should expect you conform to. They only tell you what language to use to refer to the person you’re talking to, which is necessary since English doesn’t make defaulting to gender-neutral options easy.

          1. Ineffable Bastard*

            I wanted to say this but you worded it much better than I would.
            In Canada it is becoming standard to learn and use one’s preferred name and pronouns (and pronouncing their name correctly!), and seeing one’s pronouns in their signature signalizes to me that they are a safe person to talk to and not a transphobe.

    3. Irish Teacher.*

      Well, there are people who assume that anybody who puts pronouns in their signature is likely trans, so I guess it’s just possible somebody might assume somebody with she/her is a trans woman and if they were transphobic might decide to address her as male, but in this case, it strikes me as pretty unlikely. Most people wouldn’t decide to deliberately misgender somebody they were applying for a job from. (Though given the whole Enoch Burke debacle here…I guess it’s not impossible.)

      1. Elizabeth West*

        Honestly, if this turned out to be the case, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. Not because I think Fergus in particular is a jerk (absent further information) but because I know those people are out there.

  7. Cat Secrets*

    I work in a setting where I interact with people from many different cultures and countries. My email signature says “Kaitlyn (she/her)” and many of my non-US contacts address me as “Sir”. I’ve found that level of formality combined with misgendering really common when someone is not a native English speaker or from a Western country. I doubt the job applicant is deliberately misgendering OP.

    On the flip side, whenever I encounter a name that is unfamiliar to me I usually Google to see whether it’s more commonly a male or female name in the country/culture of the person I’m corresponding with. Most of the time it steers me in the right direction.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Yes, I’d suspect the applicant is not from a country where “Ann” is a common female name and that he is in a predominantly male field; also where pronouns in signatures are not expected and hence he doesn’t check there. Don’t assume your Western culture is universal.

      I retired a few years ago from a 95% male niche engineering field and I’ve never seen pronouns stated, including in more recent communications with various private and govt departments where most people seem female.

      1. Quoth the Raven*

        I work for a convention and constantly communicate with people from all over the world, and I can count with one hand how many email signatures stating preferred pronouns I’ve seen over the years. Most of these have been from English speakers; now that I think about it, I’ve never seen anyone state their pronouns in email in my native language (Spanish).

        Furthermore, a lot of people don’t necessarily check the signature or only quickly glance at it.

        1. Turquoisecow*

          Yeah, if the email says it’s from Bob Jones I don’t necessarily read the signature saying Bob Jones at the bottom like you might with a letter – I know who wrote it! I glance at it briefly but don’t really read it unless they’re including their address or phone number and I need one of those. So I might not even notice if they put pronouns in there.

        2. Also-ADHD*

          In some of my email platforms, signatures are hidden below the “fold” or parts of them are. The phrasing sounded potentially like a non native EL speaking phrasing so would personally just chalk it up to cultural confusion (though LW has a better idea if that makes sense). I think it’s very likely not malicious at all.

      2. Beany*

        LW2 states: “I don’t work in a male-dominated industry.”

        I suppose it’s *possible* that the academic track leading to this industry is male-dominated, and the gender balance somehow resolves itself when candidates hit the industry proper. But is it likely?

        Moreover, whatever his country of origin, the candidate is apparently doing his PhD in the US, so he’s likely to be familiar with Western culture by now.

      3. jasmine*

        I’m originally from a non-Western country and I don’t know a single person who doesn’t know Ann is a female name. American culture is everywhere. Perhaps this kind of thing is more common from applicants originally from some non-Western countries, but I’d attribute that to misogyny, not ignorance.

        Not that someone would do it on purpose, but it’s more likely they didn’t bother to check the name in the signature and then simply assumed the hiring manager is male

        1. Mad Scientist*

          Yeah, the assumption that boss = man would be my most likely guess if this happened in my industry, regardless of the person’s country of origin.

      4. Dancing Otter*

        Yes, the first duc de Montmorency (16th century France) was named Anne.

        Also, in some cultures children are given saints’ names, frequently hyphenated, that don’t necessarily correspond to their anatomy. Is Josephe-Marie male or female? What about Marie-Josephe, does the order make a difference?

        But ignoring the pronouns in the signature does not look like mere confusion over the name.

        1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

          Oh, for sure, some names are harder to tell. But my guess is that this candidate was being oblivious and/or has internalized sexism about who the boss would be; this isn’t a Klaus-Maria type name (there’s a male actor by that name, although his last name and literally anything about him escape me for the moment).

        2. Ineffable Bastard*

          Portuguese speaker here. Portuguese does not hyphenise names or surnames, and the first name of all tells you the person’s gender. So Josephe Marie (José Maria) is a male name, while Marie Josephe (Maria José) is a female name.

          There are very few non-gendered names, such as Doraci, Darcy/Darci, Adair and Lucimar, which are not saints’ names.

    2. Eldritch Office Worker*

      That’s been my experience too. Not mine personally necessarily, I have a gender neutral name that works as it’s own social experiment sometimes, but for my hiring teams I’ve observed “sir” to be a very common default for non-native English speakers, sometimes even in person or when they otherwise clearly know the person’s gender. I’ve never gotten the vibe it’s malicious.

      1. metadata minion*

        Yeah, there’s a lot of idiomatic weirdness in titles and you really can’t expect them to make sense based on other features of the language, and this opens the door to *so* much misunderstanding/mislearning. I wouldn’t be surprised if plenty of people end up accidentally learning that “sir” is the universal business formal address (because hello, outdated business textbooks assuming everyone is male), even if they learn “ma’am” as a title for women in another context.

        Case in point, “dear” is, going by its meaning in the rest of the language, an incredibly weird way to address a stranger in English, but it’s understood to be the normal salutation for business and other formal correspondence.

  8. Elbe*

    If Fergus is such a great candidate, then I think that it still makes sense to at least move forward with an interview. But I think that both LW’s partner and friend are correct – it’s either a sign of poor attention to detail or outright hostility. Even if Fergus is a non-native English speaker who is unfamiliar with the LW’s name, the pronouns were right there in the email, twice.

    It’s possible that Fergus is applying to a bunch of jobs and is juggling a lot of communications, so a little inattention to detail may be fine initially. If he’s respectful and pleasant in the interview, the LW should feel fine if she wants to let it slide.

    If Fergus is from a country where ‘Ann’ is a common name for women, I think it’s definitely possible that he is doing it on purpose. If he’s so overqualified, he may be confident enough to not be cautious about his behavior, or he may think that what he is doing is hostile is such a subtle way that the LW won’t be able to actually fault him for it.

    Either way, she’ll be better able to get a feel for the situation after meeting him for the interview.

    1. Roeslein*

      Exactly. English isn’t my first language either, and I have lived and worked in many different countries with varying professional norms, but that is a red herring. The point is Fergus is ignoring someone’s pronouns which are explicitly stated in their signature. It so happens that part of following professional norms in the country where he is applying is not misgendering people after being made aware of their pronouns, as that is offensive to many people. If Anne’s stated pronouns were “they / them”, he would be expected to respect that as well, regardless of his cultural background.

    2. ferrina*

      This is why I’m cautious about overqualified candidates (and why overqualified candidates should include in their letter why they want this particular job instead of one where they aren’t overqualified). There is more likely to be an arrogance that “I know better about how things should be”. This can translate into them being reluctant to ask questions, treating people/processes as how they assume it should behave rather than how it actually does, and being resistant to correction from anyone they see as “not knowing as well as I do” (which can definitely include their own manager). I’m very curious about that interview.

  9. Real Person*

    #2 – Fergus might be using AI to write his email replies. If this is the case, it’s another indication that he does not pay attention to detail.

    1. US university program director*

      9/10 times these things happen because someone either doesn’t know or skips a detail. I find it’s seldom that someone does things like this out of hostility (and when hostility is the cause, they tend to be very vocal about it!)

      But do stay on the lookout as the candidate moves forward for other indicators of problematic behavior

      1. US university program director*

        And PS I agree with you that it could be poor attention to detail, which IS problematic! Just also agreeing that the intent may not be malicious.

    2. Seashell*

      That was my thought too. Sometimes my email prompts me on what to write. If he’s written Dear Sir to others, it might have been suggested by his email provider.

    3. Peanut Hamper*

      This is kind of a bizarre assumption. I think it takes more work to copy paste an email into an AI portal, tell it to formulate a response saying that next week Wednesday is fine, and then copying and pasting the response back into an email.

  10. Sue*

    #1 This sounds so bad my mind went right to early dementia or medication issue. I guess someone can be so scatterbrained they can’t remember anything but it ramps up with can’t remember/never acknowledges it.
    It would absolutely terrify me to be personally dealing with this.

    1. Elbe*

      Agreed. I would be panicking if I was forgetting entire conversations that happened only a few days before. The fact that she seems so casual about all of this, including being caught outright blaming other people for her mistakes, seems really odd.

      1. Pipskew*

        Unless it’s a new change it could just be ego combined with poor executive function. I’ve definitely had times where I’d swear on my life I never heard or said something while multiple (kind, reliable) witnesses insist I did, but as it’s a lifelong thing it’s neither surprising nor worrying.

        1. ferrina*

          Yep. I knew someone who would swear up and down that he “didn’t know”, and if you had incontrovertible proof, then he “forgot” and you should have reminded him. Amazingly, that only happened when it was something he didn’t want to do- he remembered his social commitments and gaming stats, yet somehow couldn’t remember the chores he promised to do.

          Some people are just like this and think that “you didn’t tell me”/”I forgot” is a trump card. It’s called weaponized incompetence.

        2. fhqwhgads*

          Yeah this person also at one point indicated she wasn’t listening…even though LW said they’d discussed it after and she confirmed. But point is: someone who’ll openly state “not listening” as an excuse is someone who is going to deny no matter what. It’s not just a save face thing, because doing that did not save face.

        3. Worldwalker*

          My mother has done this all of my life. It led to a years-long estrangement when she did it in front of my husband, and said *I* was lying about what she’d said a few minutes earlier. Some people, apparently, are just like that: a combination of a poor memory and an insistence that they’re never wrong.

        4. Reed Weird (they/them)*

          Ugh, same here. It got so much worse after COVID, the brainfog and ADHD gave me a one-two punch to the memory. I’ve had entire conversations with my partner that just evaporate, and they have to tell me later that we already settled something and remind me what we decided.

          1. ferrina*

            The difference is in how you handle it. I’ve got ADHD, so I know the sensation of conversations disappearing.

            But it’s one thing to say ” Hey, we never discussed this! Wait, we did? I’m sorry! That conversation totally disappeared from my brain. Remind me what we talked about?”
            It’s another thing to say “You never told me! Well he was clearly not talking to me. Well, you should have known I wasn’t listening!”

          2. I Have RBF*

            I had a stroke 29 years ago. My memory for things is very hit and miss. If I need to remember it, either make sure I write it down, or send me a note to remind me. If you tell me in person, I may well not remember it. OTOH, I will tell you that I don’t remember, and that it’s a brain fart. If I’m under stress or distracted, odds are higher that I will totally space it.

    2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      I hope it is just that she is totally checked out while job-searching and is not bothering to listen.

      1. LW #1*

        I do think this is it – she is under 30, so I don’t think it’s dementia/medical but also not my place to diagnose her! I think it’s more likely she is trying to save face while she is job searching. If it’s something that interests her, her memory seems great! This only seems to come up when she doesn’t want to do something or is put on the spot about something she didn’t do.

        I do wish her the best, but working with her can be very frustrating!!

        1. Tess McGill*

          I had a coworker sort of like this. She was at least 45 min late to every meeting, and when she was at work, constantly on her phone monitoring her cats’ Instagram page and not paying attention. When she missed information (which was all the time) she’d claim she was never told and that her boss was conspiring against her. She eventually lost her job, in government where it’s difficult to fire people. Her boss posted her job with an updated job description because “her position was being eliminated” and she didn’t apply for the new job. She was hoping the union would step in because “it’s not against the law to be late to meetings”. They didn’t. Hot. Mess.

          1. Shirley Keeldar*

            That sounds terribly frustrating to deal with but is kind of hilarious from a distance—what an excuse! Yes, it s not against the law to be late to meetings, which is why she is not in jail. It’s also not against the law to strip off all your clothes and sing “Henry the Eighth” at the top of your lungs in meetings, but they can still fire you if you insist on doing it.

        2. Nocturna*

          Medical reasons for memory issues are not limited to older populations and are not solely a sign of developing dementia; for instance, ADHD often comes with memory issues, and mental illnesses such as depression can also affect memory.

          Though I do hope for her sake that this is indeed her being checked out and not her struggling with memory for medical reasons.

          1. Tess*

            Thank you for pointing this out!! I suddenly was having weird short-term memory issues only related to certain tasks at work, and I was 24. I just thought maybe I wasn’t sleeping, or whatever other excuse I could think of. Long story short someone eventually said something, and I got checked out and ended up having hypothyroidism! I always recommend saying something just in case.

      2. el l*

        Yes. But I’d treat her the same way as I would someone who regularly tells “white lies”:

        Know that I’m going to be frustrated dealing with them.
        Know to “consider the source” anytime I hear anything from them. If something they tell me matters, find corroboration.

    3. MsSolo (UK)*

      If she keeps insisting conversations didn’t happen that LW was present for (and that she was engaged in) I would definitely suggest she checks in with her doctor. Either there’s a real memory issue that needs dealing with, or she’s going to get a reality check that she needs to start paying attention / stop lying.

    4. General von Klinkerhoffen*

      On the other hand, speaking as someone who has been guilty of such “forgetfulness” since childhood, it could be a processing issue rather than a memory issue.

      I don’t always retain information I’m given only verbally. I am elephantine in my memory of written information, however. Over time I (and others I interact with regularly including boss and spouse) have learned that it must be written down to be remembered. I don’t even necessarily need to keep the note to remember it – I just need to have *seen* it.

      When she says she wasn’t told, she may believe she’s telling the truth. She may feel you are blaming her unfairly.

      I note that LW1 is only talking about in-person oral instructions. I would strongly recommend working out if she also forgets instructions that arrive by email, or if it’s only verbal instructions she loses track of. If that’s the case, it’s very easily solved (and a useful “weakness overcome with personalised workaround strategies” anecdote for her future interviews).

      1. Annie*

        For your last paragraph, she already has. The coworker’s forgetfulness extends to emails and company chat messages.

        Whatever the root cause, out of sight = out of mind.

        Aside from ruling out a resolvable medical cause, one possible fix would be to educate on ways to “pin” messages in email and chat programs used or have a separate to-do list (written or electronic) that always stays on top.

      2. Myrin*

        Re: your last paragraph, it happens with written communication, too:

        She’s done the same to me even though I can send her screenshots of our chat or forward emails that she’s replied to.

        1. Festively Dressed Earl*

          It does, and I did notice that part of the letter. But having the email/screenshots to refer to makes the “I wasn’t told” argument shorter and moves things along to the “get it fixed” phase faster. In my experience, the forgetful person will learn to look back at emails before starting down the “no one told me” path in order to save face.

      3. Allonge*

        I would be really interested to hear how you would want a colleague to approach this. I have someone on my team who has some kind of auditory processing issue – she often asks people to repeat themselves, especially on video calls.

        What would be both acceptable and helpful from a peer in this case?

        1. Turquoisecow*

          I generally find it easier to remember and pay attention to things I’ve read vs things I’ve heard, so if I’m in a meeting where I’m getting important info, I take notes. If I have a conversation with my boss about a task they want me to do, I often ask if they can send a follow up summary email or even teams message to confirm (my current boss has an accent that means I have to pay extra close attention to absorb what he’s saying in the moment and that makes it sometimes harder for me to then remember it after we hang up the phone). If you have a coworker or employee who seems to forget what you’ve told them five minutes later, a follow up summary email is always helpful.

          I’ve also worked with people who are the opposite – I send them what I think is a clear and concise email and they immediately want to talk about it over the phone.

        2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          What works for me is getting it in writing. Ideally that means send it to me by email, but if we’re talking in person I just need time to jot it down in sufficient detail (typically 30 seconds or less). Let me minute the meeting.

          I believe this puts nearly all the burden on me (rightly) and only requires minimal accommodation.

        3. I Have RBF*

          I am a person for whom “If it’s not in writing, it may not exist.”

          I try to keep notes, but some people talk too fast. So I either have to ask for repeats and follow up email.

          I have had people say, to my face, “Well just write it down when you get back to your desk” – after they’ve stopped me in the hall on my way to the bathroom. I have to tell them that by the time I get back to my desk I will already have forgotten. They don’t believe me. 99 times out of a hundred, I will have forgotten by the time I am washing my hands.

    5. JSPA*

      I’ve been this tired. Turned out to be several medical issues, two of them easily solvable, the others more protracted.

      I’d therefore be able to say to Christine, “You know, when I had untreated [x and y], I was forgetting entire conversations, mostly because my brain was that sleep-deprived, on top of some other physical problems.

      What I’m hearing from you now sounds so much like how I was reacting, then! I have all the sympathy in the world for what it feels like. But I also can’t function as your back-up brain, poking you little by little to remember conversations.”

      Then, ONLY if she asks (no unsolicited medical advice!):

      “It’s scary to admit when something is messing with your brain. But the sooner you commit to finding out, and seeing what can be done, the better your situation will be.”

    6. Ganymede II*

      It could also be something like ADHD – that’s one of the things that clued me in that I had a problem bigger than “scatter-brained” – my partner showing me proof tat we’d discussed something the day before and I truly, completely, did not remember it happen.
      If LW and the colleague were closer, it may be a good idea to nudge saying “hey, I’ve noticed you forget things, and sometimes that may be a sign of something else” but it doesn’t sound like they have a relationship that would make this sound ok. Best to stay out of it and let the manager handle it.

      1. LW #1*

        Yes I don’t think I can or should go down this route. We are not close enough and I’m not going to ask/imply she has a medical problem when she hasn’t said anything of the sort!

        Also the overarching problem is that when confronted or if I do have proof, she just says “oh I wasn’t listening” and doesn’t seem concerned at all. So if there is a medical reason for it, I don’t think she’d tell me and I don’t think I should ask.

    7. AndersonDarling*

      Way, way, way back in the day, I had the Christine problem. I was speechless when a coworker corrected me with, “No, he just said that. I was standing right hear and heard him.”
      I was in a terribly toxic workplace and my boss was a gaslighting, screaming, occasionally violent monster. He would throw things across the room and his behavior was completely unpredictable.
      I think I was blocking him out for my wellbeing. I was young and had no idea how to handle the situation so I tried to suffer through. I ended up with PTSD, medical leave, and then I walked off the job.
      And life became better.
      To sum it all up, I wasn’t hearing real conversations because I was an absolute mental mess.

    8. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I think there are lots of people who are scatterbrained for a lot of reasons, but a lot of folks have noticed an uptick in this since 2020 where colleagues that were previously reliable suddenly have zero recollection of things you were present for that they normally would have remembered. No one likes to talk about long covid brain fog, but it’s very real and it’s out there. Not saying that this colleague has it (we shouldn’t be diagnosing!), but I think it’s generally important to remember that it’s a thing that’s out there that many of our colleagues (and ourselves!) are dealing with, whether we realise it or not.

    9. IlsaRene*

      Early signs on dementia was exactly what this sounded like to me. Forgetting things that happened, things that were planned, changes to the usual procedure – especially if this happens often with both conversations (audio) and text/email (visual) – is usually one of the earliest signs that something is changing in the brain. And this can happen even to someone in their 40s (or earlier), though it is obviously more common in the 60+ bracket. Unfortunately, most people have a hard time hearing that this is happening to them. Usually if you are friendly with them you would want to say something to one of their loved ones, since they are better equipped to help, but that might not be an option for you.

    10. Boof*

      Honestly me too. They sound like they are covering for knowledge gaps and whether that knowledge gap is because of inattention, dementia, or some kind of bizzaro malice (seems pretty unlikely) I think handling it in a concerned “hey, we did go over this and you were there, are things ok? Maybe you should look into this more, it’s happening pretty frequently?” is very reasonable (if it’s intentional, it probably won’t be the payoff they want; if it’s not intentional, maybe they’ll actually go see someone and figure out what’s going on / how to treat or work with it)
      Yes it’s frustrating they won’t seem to admit they are forgetting things a lot, but some of the conditions that do that come with a weird level of certainty / inability to see the problem (not all of them, but some of them!)

    11. Also-ADHD*

      It doesn’t sound that bad to me, though I do have ADHD and I can’t tell how communication flows. If you tell me something (live especially but luckily I’m remote now) while I’m working in or thinking about other stuff, and make an ad hoc change to SOP such as form x to y, I could absolutely have a conversation about it but still feel I wasn’t really told. I’m not always listening in those moments, and I can’t communicate that way. Granted, I tell people that and request changes like that in writing or in a setting where I can write it down (actively communicating, not just telling me in an office room). I have also found more success as a manager with all types with communication not being so ad hoc especially if I’m making a change to something people have previous muscle memory in (like the form example) because it’s fairly common not to remember stuff after one notification unless it’s made more officially. It sounds like this coworker is also checked out and looking for a new job, which might exacerbate the issue, but I’m guessing more their way of working clashes with Fergus and the way the team is managed and has for long enough they’re checked out and not putting in their best work. Maybe they’re also lying, but I don’t think it’s dementia (or even necessarily ADHD—I’ve worked with so many people and most of them wouldn’t remember a change if told once live).

    12. Dust Bunny*

      My dad is like this and has been since forever. He’s arrogant, though, and impatient–he’s already moving on to the next idea and doesn’t care that you’re still telling him something. He doesn’t think he should have to listen and then gets mad when you tell him you already told him. He can remember anything if he cares about it but if he’s not interested? Forget it. In one ear and out the other. It’s almost like he does it on purpose.

    13. Spreadsheet Queen*

      I miss a LOT of things said verbally. They just disappear. POOF!

      If you want me to remember something, write it down, or send an email. (I remember almost all my work tasks just from reading an email once or having it written down.)

      That said, I don’t go around telling people they are lying if they said they said something and I don’t remember it. I’ll say I don’t remember that, or that it sounds vaguely familiar but didn’t save in the ol’ memory banks. And I apologize. (*Interestingly if someone says they said something, and I hadn’t remembered, that “but I said _____” will often trigger a really vague hint of memory on it – I can generally tell if they actually said whatever it is or if they’re throwing me under the bus.)

      But seriously, if you want me to remember to do something don’t just throw words in the air when I don’t have anything to write with. SEND AN EMAIL.

    14. Festively Dressed Earl*

      Me too. My aunt is in the early stages of dementia and this is exactly what she does. But since we can’t diagnose and neither can OP 1, the solution is the same one I use: all important oral communication gets ‘recapped’ in an email, and get Lars to start doing the same thing. Christine will still drop the ball, but having written documentation will reduce the length of the argument re: whether Christine knew, and you can let her save some face if she insists she wasn’t told/wasn’t sure who the comment was addressed to/didn’t hear. If Christine loses enough of those arguments, it’s likely she’ll start referring back to emails on her own before complaining about not having the info and embarrassing herself.

    15. Kella*

      I knew someone like this. Once, we had a chat-based conversation go like this:

      Me: Hey, do you know anyone who could do [Task]?
      Them: I don’t but I will ask [People] and see if they know anyone.
      Me: Great! Thanks!
      [One week later]
      Me: Hey, just following up. Did you get a chance to ask [People] about who could do [Task]?
      Them: Oh. I didn’t know you were expecting me to do that for you.

      The text where they offered was LITERALLY right above our exchange. It was maddening. I think it was a combination of a cognitive condition that causes memory issues + inability to accept being wrong or be held accountable. I have memory issues too. But I don’t default to blaming other people when information slips through my systems and I forget something important.

  11. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    #5 I’d just forget it and move on. I’d always chose EMail to communicate such news formally, but for some people, text is the standard medium to communicate anything.

    Also, I don’t understand the wish/need to correct someone unless they are your report or your job is proofreading their communications.. In this case, a correction might even offend someone and damage your prospects in a future job search.

    1. ecnaseener*

      Well, it wouldn’t be a correction. It would be feedback on how the message landed with its audience. I don’t think LW should say anything either, but if they did it would be “this came off as overly casual in a context where I’m guessing you wanted me to feel respected,” not “texting is incorrect, you ought to have emailed.”

  12. Merus*

    #4 – it’s entirely possible, given how erratic this guy seems to be, that he simply wasn’t told a reason and assumed entirely on his own that the LW had been the one to burn the bridges and that they need to mend fences.

    2. JSPA*

      My guess? Nobody else is willing to put up with his difficult aspects, he’s always millimeters from a PIP or being fired, and he wants his dependable buffer back (never mind reality, as he’s not particularly reality-based).

      Or he’s been promoted, his reports can’t deal, and he wants the LW to be a buffer below him.

      Or heck, maybe he’s been throwing her under the bus in her absence (or even before she was let go) and is making friendly overtures as cover.

      But in none of these scenarios are his functioning, moods, flummery, cajoling, sulks, etc any of the LW’s worry, anymore!

      Send some pleasant boilerplate reply, and wipe it from your mind.

      “sounds tough, sorry I can’t help, wishing you good luck and smoother seas, as always!”

      1. Lw#4*

        He hasn’t been promoted but he’s being asked questions he should be able to answer and likely doesn’t want to be the decider-er on.

    2. Lily Potter*

      If LW5 doesn’t care about professional blowback (per Allison’s response), a thumbs down emoji would make their feelings known without giving that tacky organization a taste of their own medicine. Not that I think that HR/hiring manager will care. They’re in the mindset that they have “so much to do” that they can’t take the time to write an email. It’s even tackier than the person here from a few months back who received a canned, post-interview rejection email before they’d gotten into their car to go home. Like rejection by text, this response is better than ghosting but barely – both scream “You’re so insignificant that I can’t be bothered to reject you properly”.

  14. US university program director*

    I’d want more context (more than can likely be provided here) to better understand the gender question.

    Basically, it depends on the student and where they’re from.

    Most of the time, I’d think it was pretty weird for someone who has completed a PhD in the US (so has been here for 5-6 years) not to have figured out the pronouns based on the signature and first name. Usually, they’ve had to write things and interact with people, and someone should have given them that feedback by now.

    That said, people who are native speakers of some languages really do struggle with pronouns for many of the reasons people have stated here (those languages don’t handle pronouns in the same way English does, etc). In these cases, you’d see similar errors all over the rest of the email correspondence (people often get more formal application materials such as cover letters and resumes checked by advisors or friends, but usually write their own emails).

    It could also be a chatGPT error that got copied over (again, something I’d give more consideration for if the person’s native language is not English – it’s possible chatGPT added “sir” and the person just went with that, thinking chatGPT was right)**

    If the person is a native English speaker, though, they would very likely know that Anne Smith (she/her) should not be addressed as “dear sir” and, at the very least, the person may lack detail orientation. In that case, I’d continue to watch the interactions closely for other anomalies.

    Or, the person may be my overusing chatGPT.

    **this doesn’t necessarily mean the person was using chatGPT to cheat or do all of their work; they may have used it to check their message and kept an incorrect edit.

    1. Nodramalama*

      There’s also the possibility they just haven’t paid that much attention to LWs email. A lot of people skim over a sig block so it could be similar to the kind of faux pas like, leaving in the wrong company’s name in a cover letter or accidentally calling someone by their last name rather than their first

      1. londonedit*

        Yeah, I really think a lot of people just don’t pay that much attention. My name is fairly ordinary – let’s say it’s something like Kat. My email address is kat@, the name that comes up on my emails in the ‘from’ field is Kat Smith, my signature is Kat Smith. There is literally no other name associated with my email. And yet I frequently get emails starting ‘Hi Kate’ or ‘Hi Kay’ or ‘Hi Katie’ or whatever. It’s like people just see the first two letters and their brain fills in the rest. And I’ve definitely had emails from people in other countries where they’ve assumed my first name is ‘Smith’. A friend of mine has it even worse, where his name is something like Matthew Charles (Charles being his surname) and he constantly gets ‘Hi Charles’.

        Of course, if you’re applying for a job then you should be super careful about checking all the names and making sure you get it right. But it’s definitely a thing that people seem to be blind to the name that’s right in front of them, and if there’s a cultural difference at play as well (maybe the candidate is from a country where ‘Sir’ is still seen as the polite way to start an email) then I can see how it might have happened. I’m assuming it’ll be obvious that the OP is a woman when Fergus arrives for the interview, and in the unlikely event that he still refers to her as ‘Sir’ or ‘Mr’ after they’ve met in person, she can absolutely then say ‘By the way, my name is Anne and I am female’ or whatever.

        1. Mad Scientist*

          Oh, that really sucks for your friend “Matthew Charles”. Common first names as surnames can really trip the wires in people’s brains sometimes! Especially because some email software formats names as [FirstName LastName] but other software formats names as [LastName, FirstName]. Sometimes even in the same email, if the addresses are from different organizations. I am currently looking at an email in which my coworker’s address shows up as [LastName, FirstName] but our clients show up as the opposite. So at a quick glance it would be an easy mixup.

          Years ago, I was emailing with a coworker I’d never met face to face, and he had a very uncommon first name that I’d never heard before (and my brain automatically registered that as his last name), but his last name was Scott. So after I sent a couple emails starting with “Hi Scott” he very kindly corrected me with a “by the way” and I was obviously embarrassed but very grateful that he told me!

          I also currently have a coworker who occasionally messages me with “Hi LastName” despite the fact that we frequently see each other in person and she definitely knows my name. I usually just assume she hasn’t had her coffee yet and let it go.

          1. londonedit*

            Yeah, there are people I’ve worked with for several years who still sometimes send me a ‘Hi Kate’ email. I just put it down to a slip of the fingers or one of those brain-autocorrects that sometimes happen when you’re used to typing one thing and then have to type something similar. Sometimes I get a quick ‘Sorry! I meant hi Kat!!’ follow-up but sometimes they don’t notice, but it’s fine because I know they do know my actual name!

        2. sparkle emoji*

          Yep. Say my name is Emma Schmidt and I’m unmarried. I regularly get emails from job applicants that address me as Erin or Mrs. Smith. Typically I don’t register it other than to laugh, because that level of attention to detail isn’t needed for the jobs I help with, but it could be a yellow flag in roles that need more polish.

  15. LandlinesRUs*

    I don’t get reliable cell service in my apartment, a lot of times when I’m out and about I’m in places that don’t get service (ex: subway) or you have to turn off your phone (ex: hospital). I’ve always used my landline when job hunting (I only give out my cell number to a small number of people – it can take me hours if not days to get texts because I so rarely get sufficient service). Also, I had it drilled and drilled into me to always use a landline for phone interviews so I probably would have just given it out anyway. It never occurred to me someone would try to text job hunt related info to that number. It would just silently fail to be received if they tried.

      1. Seashell*

        I do. I will keep it in case of emergency. I was in lower Manhattan on 9/11, and lots of cell phones didn’t work. I had a relative who was in a hurricane in the past few years and couldn’t be contacted because the electricity was out and her phone couldn’t be charged. We didn’t know for days if she was safe or not.

        1. Beka Cooper*

          We keep thinking of getting one since our kids don’t have phones. How would they call 911? I guess I should teach them how to do that on my cell phone regardless, but this is a great point.

        1. Mad Scientist*

          I did not realize this! That is an excellent reason to have one and I suddenly wish I did. I don’t own my home though and have been renting for my entire adult life, and nowhere I’ve rented has had a landline (nor would it be practical for me to install one, as a tenant) so that might be part of it.

        2. NotRealAnonForThis*

          Sometimes. Our local telephone service did NOT work during the 2003 Eastern Half of the USA Blackout.

        3. Turquoisecow*

          As long as the battery on the cordless phone is charged! If it’s a corded phone no problem, but if it’s a cordless it may have a limited life with no power.

      4. sb51*

        I do, and I’d use it if I was job searching, because the audio quality is still so much better; I do not want to be going “uh, could you say that again” every thirty seconds in my first conversation with someone I’m trying to be hired by.

        Though ours is VOIP and not POTS now, so it goes out in power outages.

        1. Orv*

          I find these days a lot of businesses are using VoIP systems with call quality far below what my cell phone does, sadly.

      5. LL*

        Yep. They usually aren’t traditional landlines anymore, though, they’re internet landlines that come bundled with your internet and cable (which is now often delivered through the internet!) it’s annoying that everything is so dependent on the internet now, because if there’s an internet problem, you’re screwed.

  17. Doublespicy*

    LW#1 – you don’t share her age but this sounds a lot like the kind of brain fog that can come with perimenopause, which can start earlier than you expect. One of my colleagues ended up on a performance plan and worried she had early onset dementia before she was properly treated. Not much you can do if you’re not close/ not her manager. Encouraging awareness and support on this more broadly across the company is always a good thing if you’re in a position to do so – we’ve had great success from this.

    1. Agent Diane*

      +1 on this. There can also be brain fog due having a baby, or COVID. Or all three!

      However, all you can do is name the pattern not attempt to diagnose the reason. It’s for Christine to seek support if she is having memory issues due to brain fog. I like Alison’s “Is everything OK?” script for that as it isn’t judging her behaviour.

      If it’s a health thing, Christine can decide to seek help or accommodations. If she’s lying, she’ll become aware the pattern has been noticed by her colleague and might dial it back.

      Either way if her memory lapses are causing you work problems, you should name the pattern to Lars as well. I can’t believe he isn’t already aware, but you need to be clear this is on him to manage.

    2. Mad Scientist*

      Good point! Or as another comment pointed out, it could be a medication issue or something similar. I take medication that affects my memory and I could definitely see myself temporarily having issues with something like this when adjusting dosage / switching to generic / whatever. But in LW’s case it doesn’t seem to be a new issue / recent change.

  18. Cinn*

    “One of the qualities we’re looking for in candidates is attention to detail. But we also know people are human, so what checks and balances do you use to avoid repeating mistakes? For example misgendering someone twice when their pronouns are in their email signature.”

    I mean, don’t actually do that, but there’s a part of me that really wants you to build an interview question around it to see how he handles it. (But then my diplomacy skills are pretty darn low.) Because as other commenter have mentioned, there’s plenty of reasons for Fergus to make this mistake, some are things that can be worked on and others are red flags. So asking directly might give you a feel for which?

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      But then my diplomacy skills are pretty darn low.

      Yes, this approach seems somewhat hostile and aggressive so I would suggest not doing this. If he’s a PhD in a technical field, I would not at all be surprised by this mistake, depending on where he’s originally from. If you’re doing a PhD in particle physics, you really don’t have the time to concern yourself with email signatures. It’s just not even on your radar.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        I get your point, but when you’re trying to get a job outside of academia, you really do need to *make time* to concern yourself with email signatures (and developing professional relationships in general, which includes respecting someone’s pronouns).

      2. aqua*

        “If you’re doing a PhD in particle physics, you really don’t have the time to concern yourself with email signatures.”

        What?

      3. Emmy Noether*

        I happen to have a PhD in particle physics, and I can assure you that I did have time to concern myself with trying not to misgender people.

        You have a weird and clichéd view of what a physics PhD entails and what physicists are like.

      4. supply closet badger*

        Wha? Why would people doing PhDs in particle physics have any less time for email signatures than the rest of us?

    1. Mad Scientist*

      I was wondering that too. Also, if I had received a response like that, especially from someone I don’t know, I’d take it with a grain of salt. Some people use phrases like “getting screamed at” or more commonly “getting yelled at” very loosely/ colloquially to refer to any negative feedback. I’ve known several people who say things like “she yelled at me” when it was really just someone correcting an error. Without knowing the person, it’s hard to know whether or not they mean it literally or colloquially.

    2. ecnaseener*

      I’m wondering this too. I know it’s hard to tell how much detail to include in a letter, but over text as this was, I wouldn’t conclude they definitely didn’t believe me unless they explicitly said so. They might well have believed that LW got screamed at and still felt it was worth applying.

    3. Antilles*

      I was wondering that too.
      If I reached out to someone on LinkedIn and got this kind of response, I’d absolutely keep it in mind, but I’d also still go ahead with the process. Partly because I’d want to get other viewpoints (every company has at least a few ex-employees who think it was horrible) and also partly because it doesn’t cost me anything to just continue the process. If it turns into a phone screen or interview, I can dig deeper at that point. Then I can decide from there whether I want to proceed based on their answers, my feeling on their responses, how desperate I am for a job any job, etc.

      1. Mad Scientist*

        “every company has at least a few ex-employees who think it was horrible”

        Exactly this! Not assuming LW falls into that category, but it’s simply impossible to know for sure as a stranger. I’ve certainly had coworkers who would believe they were treated unfairly when I wouldn’t agree that was the case.

    4. zolk*

      LW3 here–partly their tone, partly the fact that they still wanted to connect with the hiring manager. When I say scream I quite literally mean scream.

      I know a lot of people have issues with _any_ feedback, but that’s not me. My work requires feedback, edits, and input from multiple other areas of the business, and it makes my output stronger. This boss has been known to get everyone on her team in a room and literally scream at the top of her lungs for 20 minutes and then start the meeting as if nothing happened. :(

      1. Mad Scientist*

        That sounds awful, and I’m sorry. But a stranger wouldn’t know for sure that you meant it literally. And even if they do believe you, that might not rule out the job for them.

  20. Thomas*

    #5, I feel whatever medium an employer uses to communicate a rejection, some candidate or other will be annoyed by it. I’d focus more on the message than the medium. Was it courteous, or was it blunt and terse?

    That said consistency or lack thereof matters IMHO. If loads of stuff was previously by text then text for this makes sense. If everything before was another medium and this is the first time a text is used, not so much.

    1. Mad Scientist*

      Agree! I’ve recently had a hiring manager primarily contact me via text (to set up the initial screening call, then schedule the formal interview, etc.) I actually suspect she’s somehow texting from Teams given our other interactions. I don’t mind at all and getting a rejection via text would make sense considering that’s how we’ve communicated thus far.

    2. Peanut Hamper*

      Yep, totally.

      I really want to get out of my current position, and as a result, I really don’t care HOW they contact me at this point. Phone call, email, text message, carrier pigeon, I don’t care. I just want the contact.

  21. Magdalena*

    OP2 [pronouns]
    I would treat it as a red flag and look very carefully at how he acts toward women in the interview and before/after. And definitely address this / explicitly ask about it in the interview.

    Especially in the context of him being potentially overqualified.
    Also, where is he finishing his PhD? In another US state? If so, he’s used to dealing with professional forms of address in the US, yes?

    I wouldn’t want to work with someone who treats masculine pronouns and forms of address as the default after spending significant time in a US educational institution.

    Disclosure: I work in an educational institution and have dealt with students and junior faculty who demonstrated similar assumptions and who knew how to show the minimum of respect to female coworkers they could get away with while kissing up to male faculty / administrators. It’s exhausting and can be difficult to address without support from above.

    I really hope I’m wrong in this case.

  22. Tangerine steak*

    LW2 i was contacted by a female looking for an internship that addressed me as Sir (I’m obviously female) and i provided the feedback not to use that address (and why) and how to address people in my country.

    She responded with an apology and explained that in her country that was what they were taught as the “polite” way to address someone (yes including women).

    It’s something to keep in mind if there’s a chance they aren’t local to your country and think they’re being polite. If they are doing their PhD in your country then they’re either being rude deliberately (while trying to land a job, would be an odd choice) or they got your gender wrong in their head and they won’t realise until it clashes.

    I wouldn’t think too much of it being in your email signature, people don’t read email signatures unless they’re going looking for information.

    If you’ll control hiring and can go another direction if you get any feeling that he wouldn’t work well with women, then just interview him and see how he goes. If you might get over-ruled then screen earlier – say something and check the response, and keep him off the interview list if he can’t recognise the boss is female.

    1. Magdalena*

      I think that’s a very good point.
      If you know your concerns will be taken seriously if he does raise more red flags during the hiring process than it’s safer to give him a chance.

  23. Mad Scientist*

    Tangentially related to LW#2, I work in an industry that still occasionally uses “Gentlemen” by default when addressing a group of people. I hate it! I cringe every time I see it. But thankfully I see it less and less often these days. “Gents” is kind of a fun variation though.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      “Gents” could also be short for “gentlepeople” which basically covers anybody in the room.

      I could support this shift in meaning.

      2. Mad Scientist*

        Yeah, “gents” does not bother me. It makes me feel like a “gentlelady” (probably not a real word but I don’t care). It feels like an acceptably gender neutral alternative.

        Personally, I’ve also replaced “guys” with “y’all” and “folks” in an effort to use more gender neutral language.

        2. Nightengale*

          The US House of Representatives uses gentlewoman

          “The chair recognizes the gentlewoman from California”

    2. Orv*

      I’m in a very informal job, so I usually address a group of people by saying, “OK, let’s get started.”

    3. Good Enough For Government Work*

      I frequently address my core friendship group (all AFAB; a mixture of she/her and they/them pronouns) as ‘lads’.

      It’s not something I’d use with people I *haven’t* known for 20-plus years, though!

  24. Elle*

    LW1: Regardless of any health issues your boss needs to follow up any in person meeting with an email reiterating was you guys were told. That way you all have proof of the meeting, what was discussed and next steps. If that doesn’t work the manager should move forward with addressing the issue.

    1. Allonge*

      That sounds like a lot of work for the manager!

      I would expect that people either recall what they hear from their manager (or at work, in general) or have ways to take notes. Everything in writing from the manager could be an accommodation for some cases, but that needs some process before it’s expected.

    2. LW #1*

      I agree – I think this is part of the issue as well. When things like this happen, like when he asked her why she didn’t use form Y and she says she didn’t know, he just says “ok well start using it going forward” and there’s no real accountability on either end.

      She’s under 30, so I certainly hope it’s not medical! I’d prefer it just be that she’s checked out because she’s job searching!

    3. Boof*

      Honestly at a certain point Christine should take her own notes if she’s particularly forgetful or inattentive, that’s on her to manage not her manger to compensate for by doing a lot of extra meeting notes for her (which she may well ignore too who knows; christine needs to find her own strategy that works for her is what I’m saying)

  25. I wear my sunglasses at night*

    LW 4–you were let go and were burned out anyway, the guy harassing you about coming back is unreliable as a direct report/coworker at best, downright unstable at worst, and the company’s powers that be don’t actually want you to come back (and are lying about the circumstances of your leaving—-classy!!)

    Why are you even taking this guy’s calls or emails? Tell him no one more time (or the first time if you haven’t), AND correct the lie that upper management is spreading about why you left, then block his number and email address. And if you didn’t already, forward his emails to the company higher ups in a “FYI” way.

    I know it sucks to be pushed out from somewhere you loved and were at for a long time but that whole environment sounds like a möbius strip of dysfunction.

    1. Momma Bear*

      I agree. I’d say it’s not an option and you no longer want to be contacted about returning.

      If the situation is that dire, he needs to be talking to his managers about why you or someone like you is needed. If the team can’t manage, that’s a them problem, not a you problem.

  26. Can’t think of anything clever*

    LW4…I was out shopping the other day and overheard a conversation between two people about their job searches. One was expressing some frustration with “not even a text” when being rejected and just “being ghosted”. Ghosting would probably frustrate me more than a text because the text at least closes a loop.

  27. I should really pick a name*

    Not really the point of the question, but this jumped out at me:

    I tolerated his emotional outbursts, even when they involved him venting to me for 45 minutes at a time. Odd people deserve jobs too, right?

    As a manager, you’re in a position to cut this short. I don’t see any benefit to letting someone vent at you for 45 minutes. Accepting a bit of oddness doesn’t meaning putting up with everything with no pushback.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      I caught that too. And while I feel that odd people do deserve jobs, that oddness doesn’t mean that they can carry that much oddness over into the workplace.

      If I gave everybody else five minutes to vent, I might be willing to give him ten minutes from time to time. But that’s it, and I would definitely work on pulling him back toward the office norms in regard to this kind of behavior.

      1. Nicosloanica*

        I thought that was a charming sentence and from a societal perspective I agree, but it’s not something that I would take as my mantra if I were a manager (I’d probably think nobody “deserves” a job just for showing up if I wanted to keep a high bar for performance on my team). And it may not have done this employee any favors – I’m guessing he has struggled in OP’s absence, perhaps in part because other people are not willing to put up with this much oddness.

      2. Eldritch Office Worker*

        Agreed. I can see giving 45 minutes to someone in a true meltdown, but once and with follow up about better managing big feelings. That’s a big chunk of a day!

        1. No body no crime*

          Ummm even in a literal preschool or day care center, I wouldn’t devote 45 minutes to one person’s true meltdown, WTF. And then following up with the “now here’s how we manage our Big Feelings okay???” like we’re Miss Frizzle or whatever.

          No, not everyone “deserves” a job just because.

          1. Eldritch Office Worker*

            I wouldn’t actually use the term big feelings to an employee. But there have absolutely been instances where I’ve set aside an hour for someone who was going through something, having an unusually outsized reaction to a situation, or processing a big event – and ranting is often part of those conversations.

  29. Reid*

    LW#1 I think you should say something both to Lars and your coworker. As much as she is complaining about Lars to you she is likely complaining to you about others. This could affect your reputation.

    Address it from a place of concern as Allison suggested. But I would certainly want it flagged that this is occurring.

  30. Somehow I Manage*

    OP4 – This former employee clearly doesn’t have all the information and isn’t approaching this situation well. Go ahead and be very direct. It is going to feel uncomfortably direct probably, but I think you need to be, given their weird desire to “help” everyone involved. And I think you need to include some sort of phrasing that lets them know the conversation is over.

    “I offered to come back to help. They said no. That’s the end of this conversation.”

    Feels a bit terse, but you’re not trying to have a long-term friendship with this former employee. It is very likely that he doesn’t have all the information about your departure, but that’s a moot point. Just shut it down and move on.

    1. LW#4*

      My biggest concern is by telling him they said no i could be causing issues between him and my former management which, given my past experience with them, they would absolutely blame on me for telling him and not covering for leadership -yes i know that’s absurd since i don’t even work there anymore. I’m having such a difficult time finding work i just don’t want them spreading that im not a team player WHEN IM NOT EVEN ON THEIR TEAM ANYMORE. The whole situation is ridiculous i know.

      1. Momma Bear*

        You’re human so you have feelings about it all. But it’s true that they said no and you want to move on. I think you need to be direct one way or another with this person to get them to stop asking.

    1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

      For sure! My preferences would be 1) email 2) text 3) call 4) ghost. And I’m not sure I wouldn’t reverse 3 and 4. Rejection calls are so cringey for both sides!

  32. Benihana scene stealer*

    Personally text, phone, email, really doesn’t make a difference- the news is the same either way. For those that it does matter to, you’ll have just as many say they prefer one over the other, so I think in the end it’s all the same.

  33. Alan*

    For #2, it would be interesting to see if he shows up for the interview and looks past the interviewer for a man :-). My female boss once asked (male) me to help her interview a candidate, and when she asked him a question, he directed the answers to me. It was bizarre. (And no, he didn’t get the job.)

  34. dulcinea47*

    I’d be really curious about how male-assuming candidate would act in an interview…. I can understand making that mistake once but persisting is weird.

    1. I should really pick a name*

      We have customers who still address their emails to someone who left the company years ago.

  35. Czhorat*

    For LW2, the correct protocol when someone mistakes you for a man is to remove your headgear, let your hair flow free, proclaim “I AM NO MAN” and then slay him.

    This mostly applies if Fergus happens to be the Witch King of Angmar.

    2. Heidi*

      If Fergus wants to quit being Lord of the Nazgul to pursue his lifelong passion for pottery, does he still give the standard 2 weeks notice when he resigns?

      1. Strive to Excel*

        Nah, prior experience with the Lord of the Ring is that people attempting to give notice get brutally murdered. Managers only get reasonable notice if they are reasonable when notice is given. That’s grounds for a day-off quitting, if not quitting from a distance via letter delivered by giant eagle.

  36. Bookworm*

    I had an interview set up via text (although I ended up being ghosted period, with no rejection at all) and I honestly don’t understand this. I am an old, perhaps, but I prefer email? Texting stuff like setting up an interview seems way too casual for certain jobs. It might make sense for some organizations/fields, but I applied to a job in a field that is not *that* casual, at least not yet.

    Communication styles have changed but this is a little weird for me.

    1. hDC*

      Text based interviews are almost always scams. I no longer take interviews over Skype period and i tell them I’m only available for phone or video prescreens.

  37. tabloidtained*

    #2: If the candidate is not from a Western country, doesn’t speak English as a first language, and could conceivably be unaware that Anne is a female name, etc., I think it would be fair to give him a pass, or at least consider it a yellow flag at most. People from non-Western countries and/or people with non-English names extend a lot of grace to others, particularly to English speakers, and people with “normal” English names tend to assume everyone knows what they know. It’s not great that people assume the default is male, but we all make silly assumptions sometimes.

    1. dulcinea47*

      when it says she/her pronouns in the signature? nah, anyone with any english knows what she/her means.

      1. Strive to Excel*

        Using pronouns in signatures is a very White Western World behavior, and not yet common in most places outside of the US. I agree that it’s a lack of attention to detail but I’d be hesitant to discount him based only on that.

          1. Pescadero*

            I work at a R1 university in Engineering. Nation wide leader. 40,000+ students, etc.

            0% of faculty have pronouns in signatures.
            10% of graduate students.
            Maybe 15% of staff.

            It’s definitely not common in my department at my university.

  38. Pizza Rat*

    LW3: I agree with Allison that you did the right thing. Nobody should be screamed at. I lived through that and it was just awful. Even when it wasn’t me being yelled at. Slammed doors, including in a consultant’s face. What made it worse was this boss didn’t really understand the projects her people were working on.

    I had nightmares for three months after leaving that job.

    1. zolk*

      I’m sorry you went through that! Every few years I seem to encounter a job that gives me what I call “Work PTSD” and I think it takes 2+ years to get over it every time. I hope you’re doing better now! (LW3)

  39. samwise*

    LW 2 — a lot of folks just are not reading the signature and noticing pronouns. Some commenters are saying, Fergus is an azz and doing it deliberately because Look! pronouns in the signature!

    I do check pronouns but I had to really train myself to do it, because I’m focussing on the content of the email and am inclined just skip all the stuff at the bottom, anything after the actual message. So now I glance for pronouns, but I’m sure plenty of people don’t.

    1. Mad Scientist*

      I get this in most circumstances, but if you were applying for a job, wouldn’t you check the signature for other reasons? Such as knowing the hiring manager’s title for example?

    2. Dust Bunny*

      I think it’s really weird that in a situation in which you are (or should be) trying to make a good early impression, you wouldn’t make a point of getting this right.

    3. Pescadero*

      Also – some email programs will “trim” (hide) the signature depending on the delimiter used to separate it from the email.

    4. LL*

      ok, but he’s applying for the job, in his situation, I would be looking at the signature to make sure I’m using the correct name and spelling and it would be pretty hard to miss the pronouns.

  40. learnedthehardway*

    OP#1 – your manager should be the person to deliver performance feedback to your co-worker.

    If you are good work friends, you might have an opportunity to provide some coaching to your co-worker to point out that her memory lapses are noticeable, and that taking notes of what she’s been told to do would help her. But that is as far as I would go, and I would only do that if you are, in fact, good work friends.

    Ultimately, it’s up to your co-worker to recognize and deal with her memory issues, though. They are a serious issue and could derail her career, but she has to recognize that she has this problem.

    I speak as someone who has an absolutely lousy memory. I take copious notes for everything, highlight my “to-do” items in bright colours, have a “to do” list posted near my desk where I can see it, use calendaring to remind myself of deadlines, and generally do a lot of double-checking to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. I’ve developed coping strategies over time to deal with my terrible memory. And I find that at least I recognize I have the problem, and that helps. (A lot of people have worse memories than they think.)

  41. LlamaLibrarian*

    Re LW #1: what do you do when it’s your boss who does this? My supervisor constantly says I never told her things that I did, and I have emails showing I did, and text messages where we’ve talked about it, and mountains of evidence, and yet she will continue to insist that she wasn’t informed or consulted about things I did inform or consult her about. “A scattered mess” definitely describes her; at one point I asked for her AA to be in our meetings to take notes to prove that I did, in fact, discuss what I said I did with her, but she’s since stopped and gets angry when I suggest it again. Help?

    1. ArtsNerd*

      Yes, that’s my question, too. I’m on my THIRD boss who exhibits this exact kind of behavior to varying extents and I never did learn how to navigate it gracefully. Right now my strategy is to mentally translate “you never told me” to “I’m just now paying attention to this” in our conversations but it’s going to effect my performance review so I’m not sure how to protect myself there.

      1. LlamaLibrarian*

        Yes, it’s impacting how she reviews my performance as well, which is infuriating when I can show her the emails I sent following up after every meeting where I noted what we discussed, but which she ignores, and then continues to insist I didn’t inform her of things. At least it helps a little for me to know I’m not the only one going through this?

        1. Sar*

          I think you need to experiment with alternative ways of informing her. If you’ve already had the “is e-mail the way you’d like me to inform you of stuff given that it’s not going great” conversation and she continues to insist that, no, email is best, I would keep doing the emails but I would also supplement with other forms. Post-its on her chair? Morning text message with action items? Bolding and bullet points in the emails? Making the emails way shorter?

          1. ArtsNerd*

            In my experience, this kind of thing is absolutely helpful for bosses who are overwhelmed but also secure in their expertise. Whether my bosses (just remembered a fourth) absorb the information the first time(s) I share it with them is basically irrelevant. It’s that it drops out of their brains as soon as they focus on anything else AND some weird terror about showing “weakness” in the workplace. It’s an emotional labor issue, not a logistical one.

            I’m an ADHD “scattered mess” myself. My whole sector attracts neurodivergent folks. I have all kinds of strategies to get answers and approvals I need from people who are busy and distracted. I’m even happy to coddle and pump up egos* when it’s productive, e.g. “Oh, I apologize for not following up sooner! Of course it slipped off your radar because of how busy your are with the much more important work you’re doing on X project…”

            I just don’t know if there’s a way to let people this brittle feel safe enough to admit that they were mistaken about *anything* at all, even in the face of objective proof. I’m thinking no.

            *And despite stereotypes, this is always bureaucrats in management. The overwhelming majority of artists/creatives I’ve worked with have been entirely reasonable.

    2. NotARealManager*

      I quit when it happened to me.

      My former boss told me to do something, I did, then he said “why are you doing this? It could get us in trouble.” So I showed him the email chain where he not only told me to do it, but I had raised doubts about it and he told me to do it anyway.

      Then he got mad I had “wasted time” finding the email chain (which took less than two minutes of Gmail’s search function), instead of fixing the problem (which took hours).

      1. Sar*

        Yup, that’s a toxic boss. Not acknowledging that bad idea was theirs when expressly confronted with the facts: not a trustworthy supervisor. That’s a house full of evil bees.

    3. Strive to Excel*

      YBSAIGTC.

      While job hunting, this is when you start being Extra Pedantic about your CYA procedures. Start sending recap emails. Send progress emails. Pull back from texting, or if you do, follow up with an email with “just to confirm, you have instructed me to do X per our text conversation on Y date”.

      You can also try the approach of “I know you’ve been unhappy about this before, what would you like me to do to prevent these issues”? Ideally do this via email. If she tells you verbally do the thing where you recap your meeting in an email.

      Finally – is there anyone you can escalate to? If this is resulting in projects being backed up or other issues to occur, can you loop in other managers or grand-bosses?

  42. Frosty*

    LW#3 – honestly if someone told me that their workplace was toxic but I was already planning on applying, I’d likely still apply for the job. My situation has fluctuated but there have been times when I’ve been desperate for work, and I’d put up with something unpleasant as a stop-gap.

    Even if I wasn’t “desperate” I might still go through with it because it’s a chance to practice my application/interview skills. I think being honest with them was great, and then they can use that info as they see fit.

    And just because they still applied doesn’t mean they don’t believe you – just that they might balance that info differently :)

    1. zolk*

      It was more her tone/the things she said next that make me think she didn’t believe me. She does seem to be currently employed, but like I said in the letter–I do get it! The market is rough right now! (LW3)

      1. Frosty*

        I think you handled it really well! It can feel hard to be honest in these situations and I don’t know if I would have said anything… I like to think I would!

  43. Ms. Whatsit*

    For LW1, I know others have raised the possibility of a medical issue, and I would just add that that can be related to physical or mental health, and mental includes both things like dementia (although I understand she’s young) as well as depression. But it can be really, really hard to see that sort of thing from inside it. Mostly I’d agree it’s up to your manager to fix, but I think being consistent that you remember X happening, without getting too bogged down, is probably a good idea. You will feel you’re answering and she’ll either start to put together that she’s missing something or, if it is a choice, realize it’s not going to work with you.

  44. Spicy Tuna*

    I once received a rejection letter that was riddled with typos and grammatical errors. It took every fiber of my being not to make corrections on it in red pen and send it back to the company

    1. Orv*

      If it had been a job as a copy editor that would have been genius. Probably passive-aggressive for anything else. ;)

  45. Spicy Tuna*

    #2 – some folks are super inattentive, which should not be taken personally, but may have bearing on their ability to do a job well. I have a standard, American name (about as basic as “Anne”) that people repeatedly get wrong. They get it wrong verbally, they get it wrong in writing, they get it wrong when it’s printed out right in front of them. 95% of people are ONLY thinking about themselves.

  46. Sled Dog Mama*

    LW #2-I am in a male dominated industry and I’ve had the lovely experience of being misgendered to my face. I have a female presenting name that a hefty chunk of the world would recognize as female like Mary and I am female presenting.
    We were recently considering changing one of our service providers at work. The guy came in, was introduced to all the people at the meeting by name and title. So “This is Sled, she is the engineer responsible for the production line that are looking at having you do maintence on.” I few minutes later the guy says “when we come into an existing site we like to have meeting with the engineer go over the machines with us and get his input on thing X,Y,Z”

    1. Mad Scientist*

      As a fellow engineer, I feel this. And lots of specifications are still written assuming he/him for the engineer as well.

  47. Fiona*

    I think there’s a pretty high chance that the misgendering applicant is not American – I can imagine someone being trained by a very old-fashioned English teacher to always use “Sir” in proper business correspondence, etc – and the student not even really clocking that “sir” is gendered. (The same I was taught “To Whom It May Concern”).

    I would absolutely still do the interview and see how this person reacts in an actual conversation. If he seems put off that the hiring manager is a woman, then you have all the information you need. But a phone screen is a pretty easy and not-time-intensive way to get this info.

    2. Spreadsheet Queen*

      I was taught “Dear Sir or Madam:” if you didn’t know. Now that we (rightfully) consider non-binary folks, I’d probably use “To Whom It May Concern” in very formal correspondence now. Also, I don’t know any women who want to be addressed as “Madam” any more than they want to be called “Sir”.

      For semi-formal correspondence, I’d do similar to addressing a group – something like “Good Morning!” (or whatever time of day) as my salutation instead of names, and then proceed in a fairly formal manner.

      I’ve also just used the full name if I had the name but not the appropriate title, that is, “Dear Tracy Smith:”

  48. Anne Shirley Blythe*

    The only thing that makes sense (to me) with LW2 is that Fergus’s first language is not English. His use of “sir” especially makes me think this. Makes me think of my high school Moroccan penpal who called me “Dear Brother.” :)

    If Fergus’s first language is English, this is a head-scratcher.

  49. Heffalump*

    #1: 20-odd years ago I saw a similar sitch, but more clear-cut. I went to work as a CAD drafter at a manufacturer of industrial machinery. On Monday of my second week, my manager announced that Fergus Farkleworth, another drafter, had been fired at the end of the day the previous Friday, after a number of warnings about the quality of his work. I had been hired to replace another person who had left, and then they hired someone to replace Fergus, so it wasn’t, “We have another warm body in the person of Heffalump, now we can fire Fergus.”

    I personally didn’t have a problem with Fergus during the week I worked with him, but I worked a lot with Oscar, one of the mechanical engineers, and he said Fergus had been problematic. If you tried to tell him something, he’d say, “I know what I’m doing,” and when things went pear-shaped, he’d say, “You never told me that.” The guys on the production line sometimes asked Oscar, “What the hell is with Fergus?” so apparently, he was temperamental.

    Oscar usually referred to Fergus as just Farkleworth, so apparently, he didn’t have much respect for him. I was once revising a CAD model that Fergus had made, and I found a place where he’d taken an approach that didn’t make sense. Oscar said, “That’s the sort of thing Fergus would do.”

  50. Ex-prof*

    LW 2: Oddly, some English as a Foreign Language texts actually teach this. I’ve seen printed dialogues in textbooks printed in Asian countries, where one speaker calls the other speaker “sir” or “mister” despite the other speaker being female.

    This was some years back, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the books are still in use, or were when the applicant was in school.

    Still, depending on how long the applicant has been in the US, he should’ve picked up on this by now.

    1. NotBatman*

      Also: AI will sometimes do this. If you ask some AI services “write me a formal email thanking a recruiter for a job offer” without providing the recruiter’s name, sometimes you’ll get back a reply that starts “Dear sir.” It’s still on the candidate to check the bot’s homework, but might account for the error.

  51. Parenthesis Guy*

    LW #3: One time I accepted a job and was told by their former employee that boss was a screamer. Maybe that was true, but I was never screamed at. The one time a team member did get really aggressive, she shut them down privately but in a way that I knew it happened.

    Having that info from somebody I don’t know would be something I appreciate, but I’m not sure how seriously I’d take it. It’s hard to tell where the manager is actually a screamer or if something else was the issue. If we were friends and I knew you did good work, then I’d worry more.

    I do think that you’ve done what you can though.

    1. Mad Scientist*

      Agree. I used to work with someone who complained about being micromanaged, but the “micromanagement” was stuff like his supervisor calling him out for putting 40 hours on his timesheet when he very blatantly worked much less than that. He regularly gave me terrible (and unsolicited) career advice. To a stranger on LinkedIn, he would probably seem like a normal, professional guy. But if a stranger took his complaints about our company at face value, they would miss out on a great opportunity.

  52. The Not-An-Underpants Gnome*

    Am I the only one who sees “Fergus” used as a name and immediately internally goes “This week on “DAGNABIT FERGUS”…”?

    1. Orv*

      Fergus, The Worst Boss in the World. He’s a bit like a management version of Florida Man, the world’s worst superhero.

  53. So Long and Thanks for All the Fish*

    As most people have noted, the problem with L1’s letter has as much to do with the reaction to the memory problem as the memory problem itself. But I just wanted to share a little in case compassion is a little more warranted than might be expected in other circumstances.

    I started having cognitive and memory problems after COVID last year, and it is terrifying. It messes with your sense of reality. It’s not like forgetting where your keys are, when you know something is lost and you just have to search all the usual places to find them. I usually have no idea when I have forgotten something. It’s caused conflicts with people close to me sometimes because I will forget major things–not on a day to day basis, necessarily, but I can forget life goals I have shared and difficult, important conversations. Not struggle to remember them, but in my mind it’s as if they never existed at all. And then my friend can come along and tell me about something I said or did that I forgot, and I become aware of how much I am not storing anymore. I have to deal with the fact that my reality and how I am making decisions and going along with my life, is missing huge chunks of information and I don’t even know it. It’s frightening and distressing when someone can come along and tell you a conversation that you had or something that you did when you didn’t just not remember a key takeaway from the conversation, but maybe didn’t remember the conversation happened at all. That’s especially true if the onset of memory difficulties is new.

    I’m not saying this is what’s happening, but if it is anything close to what’s happening, I can see why a person would be resistant to admitting that they’re having memory problems, even to themselves, but especially in their workplace. And age isn’t really that relevant with long COVID type-stuff. I’m in my mid thirties and I’m in long COVID groups online where most of the participants are younger than me.

    This doesn’t help with the work stuff! I don’t know if there’s anything LW1 can do there. But maybe it will help their sanity if they consider believing (or pretending, for their own sake) that she really does not remember conversations from a day before and is struggling to make sense of a scary situation and trying to justify her forgetfulness, rather than trying to lie directly to LW1.

  54. CatMouse*

    Rejection by text is cruddy, but I know I would be happy to have a rejection instead of being ghosted. Maybe we’ve lowered our expectations and they feel they can get away with bare minimum

  55. Coin_Operated*

    Lettrt 1: Email, email, email, email. I come across this all the time with co-workers and volunteers I work with, and even myself. I always prefer instructions by email, and I send instructions by email. That way you have a record of your communication to reference if someone claims they were never told, even if you talked about it before hand, I like to reiterate with an email followup afterwords.

  57. Alisaurus*

    LW #2 – My immediate thought was that autocorrect “fixed” a mistype when he meant to send, “Sure, I look forward to speaking with you then.”

  58. iglwif*

    LW1, I worked with someone like this in my last job! Consistently wading into conversations weeks after a decision was made to claim they hadn’t been informed/consulted and demand the decision be changed. Once, in a planning meeting I was leading, this person asked a question, someone else answered it, and 10 minutes later they asked the same question again.

    Alas, they were 3 levels above me in the hierarchy, so there was absolutely nothing I could do about it — even returning the awkward to sender was dangerous.

  59. 75 from the neck up*

    The only caveat I would present to being rejected by text is that a lot of applicant tracking systems use text, if the candidate prefers it. We communicate with candidates via text all the time, but it looks on our end the same way that an email does – it just automatically communicates with the candidate based on their specified preference.

    Just a quick glance through our current candidates, and nearly 85% have requested text as their preferred method of communication, so the system will convert to that every time. I would recommend that LW 5 make sure that they didn’t request text as a preference (or even an option) when they applied.

  60. Slaw*

    I know this is besides the point, but LW4 definitely did not just leave his job due to “burnout” if he was both A. Fired and B. Considered having burnt bridges.

  61. All Outrage, All The Time*

    OP1 this was me. Convinced I had not been given information or the wrong information and that is why I was making mistakes. I started discreetly recording meetings on my phone because I became convinced I was being set up and gas lit. I ended up getting fired due to making too many mistakes. Then I was diagnosed with early onset dementia. I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion she is lying. She might just be disorganised with a bad memory or there might be something medical going on causing “brain fog” or such

  62. closetpuritan*

    Sometimes at my previous job, where I often talked to people who didn’t live in the US (where I was) and was in a position of authority, I would get “sir”ed by people whose first language wasn’t English. I was a woman standing in front of them, and there didn’t seem to be any obvious trolling motivation—I think it was just a vocabulary problem. I don’t think this is the most likely possibility, but it’s a reason to interview Fergus and see what happens and see if you can get a better read on whether it’s likely.

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