my office thinks I insulted a coworker, someone threw away my shoes, and more

by Alison Green on October 7, 2024

I’m off for a few days (probably back tomorrow). Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.

1. My office thinks I insulted a coworker but I didn’t mean it like that

I work for a small nonprofit. I have one boss and about 14 coworkers with whom I’m “office friendly,” meaning I don’t socialize outside of work/discuss personal matters. Though I’ve been employed the longest, I know very little about people’s personal lives.

The other day my coworker “Susan” came into the office carrying a rock she’d found on a hike. She showed it to me saying that she thought it was a fossil and wanted to ask “Nancy,” our volunteer coordinator, what it was. Without thinking, I laughed and said, “Whatever would Nancy know about fossils? That’s not her background.” Susan gave me a strange look and walked away.

Later that day, our boss called me into her office, shut the door, and told me that “accusing a coworker of falsifying information on her resume is a serious issue.” She then asked me for proof that Nancy had lied. Apparently, Nancy has advanced degrees in paleontology and had taught at our local junior college before switching fields and joining our team. I confessed that I had no idea; what I said to Susan was based my not knowing Nancy’s background. The idea seemed ridiculous: Nancy coordinates volunteers at a nonprofit that has nothing to do with science. How was I to know her background? My response didn’t go over well. I received a verbal warning as well as “advice” about being more aware of how my words came across.

I was also asked to apologize to Nancy – which I reluctantly did. She accepted my apology, but seemed strangely hurt. I still feel that I did nothing wrong. I was merely responding to something that sounded silly to me; the others blew it all out of proportion. My boss said that my words had come across as “dismissive and sexist” because I’m a man and it sounded like I’d assumed Nancy wasn’t really a scientist. I did assume that, but not because she was a woman, because she’s working in a field that has absolutely nothing to do with her scientific background. What say you? Was I out of line? I want to return to friendly terms with my boss and coworkers, but I don’t want admit unwarranted guilt.

Yeah, your original comment was rude. If you didn’t know anything about Nancy’s background, it doesn’t really make sense that you scoffed at the idea that she could know about fossils (as opposed to saying something like, “Oh, I didn’t realize she knew about fossils”). And that does play right into some sexist tropes, even if you didn’t intend it to.

That said, your boss characterizing it as “accusing a coworker of falsifying information on her resume” is weird. That makes me wonder if this might be part of a pattern where you’ve been perceived to be dismissive or sexist before. If you’ve had that kind of feedback before, or gotten the sense people were taking you that way, I’d take this as a flag that it’s a serious problem with the way you’re perceived and your relationships with coworkers.

If not, and this is genuinely the first time this has come up, I’d still apologize. The comment was insulting, even if you didn’t intend it to be, and that alone warrants an apology. You could add that you realize now that it played right into a particular type of sexism that women in science have to deal with and that you’re resolving to be more thoughtful about that in the future.

– 2019

2. Can public support of a fired employee hurt that employee?

I regularly attend shows at a local theater, and know many of the staff and performers there. Recently, the theater announced that their beloved creative director would be leaving. This appears to be a firing. The news article about it mentioned that said director could not comment on advice of his lawyer.

The local arts community is pretty upset about this. There are planned rallies and boycotts of the theater, claiming he was wrongfully terminated and demanding he get his job back. Obviously, neither party is publicly commenting. My assumption is that it was something routine, like performance on non-artistic parts of his job — there’s nothing to indicate a scandal, and he’s a genuinely kind and good person.

My question is this — could this outpouring of public anger hurt his ability to get another job? My fear is that it will make him seem like a high risk to take on, or make a company think he’ll be vindictive if he ever left. (Or at least not willing to stop friends who are vindictive.) Or, could it potentially impact an employment case? And, is there ever any BENEFIT to this kind of outrage over a firing, at least if there’s no evidence of discrimination or illegal activity?

Oooh, that’s a really good question. I’d think the fact that other people are protesting it is unlikely to impact any legal action he pursues as long as he continues to follow his lawyer’s advice. But whether it could affect his ability to get a future job is murkier. Depending on the tenor of the protests, it’s possible that it could. At a minimum, it will certainly cause attention to his firing, which he might have otherwise been able to be more low-key about. And if a reference-checker learns, for example, that he was fired for legitimate performance issues, they might worry about how he’d handle critical feedback from them if they hired him (because no employer wants to deal with a public boycott over a fairly handled but private personnel issue). So I think it partly depends on what really happened and on whether the cause of his firing warrants the outrage or not (and also on whether the protesters have the full story, which they may not).

Even if it does warrant the public outrage, though, there are certainly employers who will see it as a risk to hire someone who was at the center of something like this, figuring that he’s more likely to rabble-rouse than someone else. He might be happy to screen out those employers though. And that might be canceled out by the employers who get more interested in him as a result of this — because they find his situation sympathetic (although it’s hard to do that when no one will say what happened) or they see it as a PR move to hire him or they just find him interesting and so are more likely to give him an interview.

– 2018

3. Someone at work threw away my shoes

I work as a server for a widely known corporate food chain. Last night, a friend of mine dropped off my shoes that I had previously worn a time out. And today an employee threw my shoes away and only one was recovered. $150 shoes that I had only worn once. My manager’s response was, “You should know not to leave your stuff here.” Are they responsible for this? Please help!

They’re not responsible for your shoes, but your manager should have been nicer about how she explained that to you. There’s a difference between “You should know not to leave your stuff here” and “Oh no! I would hate to lose shoes too. We can’t be responsible for items people leave here because there are just too many people coming through, but that really sucks and I’m sorry it happened.”

– 2015

4. My coworker uses all-caps for everything

My team recently hired a new employee to help pick up some of the slack when it comes to the admin tasks we deal with on a day-to-day basis. Our new employee (Sansa) is enthusiastic about the job, a quick learner, and well liked by everyone in our organization. Her work is also very consistent and accurate. However, she does have one habit that drives me and my counterpart absolutely mad — she prefers to TYPE IN ALL CAPS.

Now, this wouldn’t be a huge concern if it was just on internal communication (emails to staff, messages on Slack, etc.), but one of her tasks is to draft the letters and memos that go out to our clients and the public. All of the letters she drafts use templates where the writer can fill in the blank on the particulars, meaning random words will be capitalized in the middle of a paragraph. There is nothing about the details she’s entering that warrants the use of all caps (or even bold, underline, or italics). Ultimately, this means either my counterpart or I have to re-do all the work she’s just completed (defeating the point of bringing her on the team) or the letter is sent to the client looking sloppy or poorly generated by a computer.

My counterpart and I discussed this with Sansa early on. We gently questioned if Sansa prefers to write this way because it’s easier to read, hoping we could find a way to adjust her computer screen to increase the font size. She told us that it’s just her preference. I’ve even made a joke (it was appropriate in context of the conversation) about how Sansa “yells” at me through email; to which she giggled, said that’s just how she types, and that I know she’s not trying to be “shouty.” The way I see it, it is an understood rule for anyone using electronic communication THAT ALL CAPS MEANS YOU MUST BE UPSET OR YELLING OR TRYING TO DRAW ATTENTION TO THE MESSAGE.

I hope that we’re not making a bigger deal out of this situation than need be – maybe we need to hear from an outside perspective that this isn’t a big deal and we should move on. But if you think our concerns have some merit, can you offer any advice on how we can address this with Sansa? I know from reading your articles that the next step is to very directly discuss this matter with her. However, I’d hate to go into the conversation where my only defense for asking her to change is “because it’s not how you should do it” or “it looks more professional to type normally.” To me it seems like we’re trying to push our stylistic preferences on her even though our way is the conventional format. Any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated!

This isn’t stylistic preference. If she were just doing this in internal emails, then maybe — although even then, it would be reasonable to ask her to stop because it’s harder to read. But doing this in materials that go to clients and the public? No. That’s not okay, and it’s not just a stylistic preference. It’s the same as if she’d decided to send all your materials out in white font in pink paper — you would presumably simply tell her to stop. And you need to do that here too — without the hints and the jokes — just a clear, direct “we need you to do X instead of Y.”

I suspect you feel like you can’t say that so bluntly because you’re not her manager, but actually you can! She was hired to take work off your plates, and you’re having to redo it for her. You 100% have the standing to say to her, “We do need you to stop using all caps so that our materials are consistent and professional and easier to read. Please start using standard case on everything you’re producing for clients and the public.” Then, if she gives you any more work in all-caps, tell her that you can’t use it that way and ask her to re-do it. Not only do you have the standing to say that, but I’d argue you have an obligation to say it — because right now you’re wasting your own time cleaning up her work (which your organization and your manager surely don’t want) or allowing materials to go out looking like they were created by a hostile loon (which they also surely don’t want).

Talk to her today, and enjoy the soothing feel of standard case on your eyes tomorrow.

– 2019

5. My employee’s boyfriend asked for my permission to marry her

The boyfriend of one of my reports recently contacted me because he said he had something important to discuss. He said he was planning on proposing to my report and wanted to get my permission before he did. I had no idea why he would ask me, and he explained that his girlfriend was raised by her mother after her father divorced her when she was pregnant and her mother only had help from her unmarried sisters and widowed mother and said I’m the closest thing she has to a father figure. My report and I have a manager/employee relationship but that’s as far as it goes. We aren’t involved in each other’s personal lives (to the point where I didn’t even know she was raised only by her mother with no involvement from her father), I can’t recall a time when we have spoken outside of work, and we have never been alone in the same room outside of the building we work in.

I certainly care about my report as much as I do everyone I work with but I have no feeling beyond that. I know she has lived with her boyfriend for a while and she has brought him to company picnics and Christmas parties before. He even showed me texts where they discussed getting married in the future and she mentions me being like a father to her and saying my blessing would be great. But to me it feels awkward and weird since I hardly know either one of them. My report has never told me she considers me like a father or attempted to have a relationship with me besides a professional manager/employee one. I want to gently let them down. How should I handle this without making the situation even more awkward than it already is? Especially since the proposal is meant to be a surprise and I don’t want to ruin it.

This is super weird.

Tell him that you think your employee is great but as her boss it’s not your place to get involved, although you wish them both much happiness.

– 2017

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  1. Happy meal with extra happy*

    Even if Nancy didn’t have an educational background in paleontology, I feel like there are plenty enough “amateur” paleontologists where it may be interesting but not shocking if Susan indicated that Nancy could identify a fossil.

    1. Dark Macadamia*

      Yeah, her background makes it worse but it’s extremely weird to act like people can only… have a casual conversation? about things related to their formal education and employment!

      1. NotBatman*

        Yes! If my coworker was like “I’d love to show this poem to Jim the IT tech” then my response would be “huh, didn’t know Jim was into poetry”, not “don’t be ridiculous — he’s in IT.” That second one implies insult about Jim and/or IT, even if I don’t know that Jim’s a published poet.

        1. Anonys*

          To be fair, that’s not quite the situation. Susan wanted to show Nancy the rock to “ask her what it was”, not just show it to her as something she might find interesting. So this would be more similar to if your coworker said “I’ll ask Jim the IT tech what Goethe’s use of iambic pentameter in this poem signifies”.

          If I didn’t know my colleague had a background in a niche subject, I too would react puzzled in the situation. I probably would not say “whatever would Nancy know” but rather “Nancy? Why would she know what kind of rock this is?” and look confused. For someone who assumes I already know Nancy is a paleontologist, that might seem dismissive of her credentials as well.

          I do think LW should apologize for coming across the wrong way (and I assume LW’s tone probably had a big part to play in why this came across so negatively to Susan as well not just the words itself). I do still think it’s also strange that Susan didnt simply correct LW. She could have just said “of course that’s Nancy’s background, she has a graduate degree in paleontology”. Then ideally LW would have responded “Oh wow, sorry, I had no idea. How cool/interesting” and the whole thing could have been resolved without this turning into “LW accused Nancy of falsifying information on her resume”.

          1. Hobbit*

            I think OP’s statement of “that’s not her background” is what caused Susan to go to a supervisor. It’s sounds like OP is stating a fact and it may have been said with a level of confidence that made Susan think OP was giving factual information instead of making an assumption.

            1. Rainy*

              “Often wrong, never in doubt” is how my PI in undergrad used to characterize that kind of person.

            2. tangerineRose*

              Yeah, I get very frustrated with people who act like they know something when they really don’t. It would be OK to say “Why would you ask Nancy? Is she into paleontology?” But to state outright “that’s not her background”, very annoying.

          2. Gloaming*

            I feel like OP’s total resistance to apologizing is a lot of what made this a big deal to start with, and means that handling it quietly one-on-one probably wouldn’t have worked.

            Their boss is telling them that they’re wrong and should apologize, and they’re still super insincere and resentful. What hope does Susan have?

            1. physics lab*

              Right? it is weird that OP wouldn’t apologize easily, they messed up, they should say sorry.

          3. ecnaseener*

            I mean…dare I say, it would also be very possible for Jim the IT tech to be enough of a poetry buff to have a valuable opinion on Goethe’s iambic pentameter, even if you somehow knew he hadn’t gone to school for it.

            1. ferrina*

              Exactly. People have hobbies and interests outside of their formal career/education (assuming you even know their full career and education). It’s strange and kind of self-centered to assume that the only skills/knowledge that people have are the ones that you’ve seen them use.

              1. Humble Schoolmarm*

                The best random conversation I ever had about Plato was with the guy who came to install my internet. He saw my old copy of The Republic from uni on my bookshelf.

          4. JB (not in Houston)*

            But why would you feel puzzled rather than curious and interested in this knew information you learned about your coworker? We should never assume we know everything about our coworkers. In that situation, one could make the assumption “Oh, Nancy must know about rocks. How interesting, I wonder how she developed that knowledge.” The LW assumed (and it sounds like maybe you would, too?), “Nancy? That’s weird, how could someone like her possibly know about rocks.” And that is dismissive and will come across that way no matter how you phrase it. Susan shouldn’t have had to say that Nancy has a degree in paleontology because the LW shouldn’t have assumed he knew the extent of Nancy’s knowledge on any subject in the first place.

            1. Elle*

              Some people seem to default to skepticism in situations like this. I don’t think it speaks well of them.

              1. mlem*

                Worse, this specific case was false authority. It wasn’t even “I doubt she’d know” but “that isn’t her background”, as if he was the authority on her background — because he’d made entirely unwarranted assumptions!

                1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

                  Yeah, this. It wasn’t being confused or puzzled, it was confidently making a (false) assertion!

                2. Elle*

                  Exactly. Extremely confident, completely wrong, and refusing to apologize? This would not endear me to a colleague or employee.

              2. Crencestre*

                And some men default to misogyny in situations like this, and then pout, whine and get defensive when they’re called on the carpet about it!

          5. Nancy*

            Why would you be puzzled and confused that someone has an interest or expertise in something unrelated to work?

            1. linger*

              This does seem part and parcel of OP’s explicitly admitted lack of interest in anyone’s lives outside work. OP actually doesn’t see anyone as more than their work role, because that is the only aspect he interacts with, or chooses to interact with. This is in itself reductive, and easily gives rise to dismissive assumptions that “X should not be assumed to know about Non-work topic”. (Possibly OP also reduces himself to his work role. In which case he really needs to get out more.)
              But there may also a sexist/classist filter operating on that, if OP applies this assumption more to female coworkers and/or to perceived subordinates (“just a secretary”). And certainly it reads as more dismissive (and more sexist/classist) the more actual knowledge/skill is disregarded. This example is fairly egregious, and OP needs to listen to those telling him to apologize.

          6. MigraineMonth*

            Even if I knew Jim the IT tech didn’t know any poetry that wasn’t Dr Suess, laughing/scoffing in a colleague’s face at how ridiculous they’re being is one heck of an aggressive choice.

            1. Linda*

              That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought of it before, but LW was also dismissing the fossil-finder’s knowledge of who to ask

          7. Observer*

            I probably would not say “whatever would Nancy know” but rather “Nancy? Why would she know what kind of rock this is?” and look confused

            What the LW said was much ruder and went much further than that. He didn’t just *ask*. He stated – as a fact – that this is not her background. That’s really out of line. It also explains why Susan didn’t explain anything to him.

            Then ideally LW would have responded “Oh wow, sorry, I had no idea. How cool/interesting” and the whole thing could have been resolved

            Yeah, that’s the ideal response. But it’s also pretty clear that it would not have happened. I mean, look at his response to his boss. And look at what he writes here. He insists that it was correct to assume that Nancy *could not* have sufficient knowledge of the field to answer the question – that is what he says, not what I am assuming – and that all of the women here are “over-reacting” because he was not in the least bit rude and really doesn’t owe anyone any apologies whatsoever.

        2. I am Emily's failing memory*

          Yeah, I think my phrasing would have been something like, “Oh? Does Nancy know about fossils?” (hazarding a guess at information that would make the comment make sense, and mildly surprised because it’s new information) rather than “Why would Nancy know about fossils?” (assuming the comment simply doesn’t make sense, and that my co-worker must not have a good reason for wanting to ask her).

          1. Elizabeth West*

            My response would be the same, and then upon finding out she had that degree, I would probably nerd out for a second. “THAT’S SO COOL,” etc.

    2. Daria grace*

      I wouldn’t even find it weird to ask friends who aren’t into palaeontology but are interested in nature or science to take a look at a cool rock I found. It’s not diagnosing medical conditions or something serious like that where accuracy matters, not big deal for someone to take a guess about the nature of rocks outside of their expertise

    3. TheBunny*

      Even though it’s been years, I’d be curious how this resolved. While OP wasn’t being intentionally (and by that I mean consciously) dismissive and sexist, I’m willing to bet if Nancy were Ned, OP wouldn’t have dismissed Ned potentially having that knowledge, even knowing Ned wasn’t currently using it in his role.

      1. Trout 'Waver*

        Can we not?

        In my personal experience, sexist jerks (even if they’re unconscious about it) don’t tend to have the introspection to write in to advice columnists. OP#1 realizes that there’s something else going on here because they got what they felt was a disproportionate response to a relatively innocuous, although rude, comment. Should OP#1 have learned this before now? Yeah, probably. If they continue the behavior after learning all this, then yeah they’re a sexist jerk.

        Besides, uncharitable speculation is against the commenting policy on this site.

        1. Nonsense*

          …there are several examples on this very site of people writing in for validation/justification/explanation and it’s extremely obvious that they’re the ones in the wrong. Don’t even get me started on the advice column world at large. This is no where a slam dunk defense as you think.

        2. Florence Reece*

          OP #1 realizes there’s something going on here because multiple people told him, and he still wrote to another authority figure to say “was I out of line? My boss is angry and my colleague is hurt but I’d hate to apologize if there’s any chance it’s an unwarranted apology.” That doesn’t seem especially introspective to me.

            1. ferrina*

              It depends on the tone behind it. There’s plenty of people that ask that question in introspection. But there are also some people that ask it as a rhetorical question. One advice columnist (I think Carolyn Hax?) described it as “Who is right, and why is it me?”

            2. Diane Chambers*

              And many would say that saying your boss gave you “advice” on how your words come across is pretty much the central sign of a lack of introspection.

              1. Trout 'Waver*

                I think it’s important to distinguish between how aware someone is of social injustice and whether they’re trying to improve or not. Someone can be introspective and trying to learn even if they’re pretty clueless.

          2. Diane Chambers*

            Also, there are *two* women being insulted in this story- the person who can’t possibly know about fossils and the person who got laughed at for saying that she wanted to show a fossil to #1. A man being so dismissive to/about TWO women is noticeable, and it’s not uncharitable speculation to point that out.

          3. Elitist Semicolon*

            The whole “unwarranted guilt” thing really gets me. Like, they’re not asking this person to take on the weight of the world’s sins – just to make a polite apology. Being able to say, “gee, I’m sorry; I wasn’t thinking” and then move on is an important social and professional skill that this person seems opposed to developing.

        3. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

          Yes, but all you’re saying is that LW was a sexist non-jerk, not someone who is neither a sexist nor a jerk. Having the implicit bias is enough by itself to make a sexist, doubling down after just makes the jerk.

          1. Trout 'Waver*

            No, I’m saying we don’t have enough information to know if he’s A) A sexist jerk or B) rudely and unknowingly making comments that fit the pattern of systemic sexism.

            B) doesn’t automatically make him sexist.

        4. Diane Chambers*

          Um, what? Sexist jerks have written in here plenty of times! (“I told my employee it’s a good thing she’s pretty,” ‘I want to borrow my boss’s assistant”) And you don’t need introspection to write to an advice column- see, e.g. Leap Year Boss, Graduation Boss, How Dare You Ask to be Paid on time Boss.

    4. Ilia*

      I was a member of a Lapidary and Rockhound club. A lapidary is a person who cuts and shapes gemstones and other semiprecious stones for jewelry. A rockhound likes to go on field trips and find these things in the wild and dig them up. It’s a hobby, not a profession, for me.

      However, I learned how to identify minerals, semiprecious stones, and gemstones in their natural setting. Fossils are also part of that. I work in administration. At no point would you ever think that I, a person filing paperwork, would grab a hammer, pry bar, pickaxe, bucket, and dolly and go tromping off into the wilderness to dig up rocks.

      OP saying that stuff to me would be eternally labeled as a sexist jerk in my brain. Or at the very least, incredibly ignorant.

      1. what even*

        You wouldn’t just say, “Oh, I actually have a background in the subject matter.” and then just move on with your day?

        2. Venus*

          To add: A lot of opinions about whether a statement is sexist are informed by what we already know of the person and how they interact with the world before a statement. It seems very likely that LW isn’t being given the benefit of the doubt because of past behavior.

          1. Jessica*

            Yeah, some of the “behavior is only sexist if you can prove in a court of law that the person had malicious intent” gaslighting responses here are… why women leave STEM fields.

            2. MigraineMonth*

              It’s also a cumulative effect on the receiving end. I’m friendly to the taxi driver who picked me up from a software development company and then was surprised to learn I’m a software developer. I am not enraged by the fact that no tech conference shirts come in women’s cuts. I smile when I correct someone at the IT potluck that actually, I’m not [coworker’s] wife, I work at the department in an IT role.

              None of those people were sexist pigs who need to be publicly pilloried. *All* of those instances were part of a sexist pattern of assuming that I don’t really belong here because of my gender.

              1. CdnAcct*

                The world is saturated with sexism because of history. Recognizing that isn’t ‘diluting’ anything.

        3. mlem*

          To someone who confidently but wrongly asserted he KNEW your background wasn’t in the subject matter?

          1. Observer*

            To someone who confidently but wrongly asserted he KNEW your background wasn’t in the subject matter?

            Agreed. Why would you spend the energy?

            I think it’s important to realize that someone like the LW is quite likely to not react well. Even if the person pointing it out were the person with the degree, it’s easy to see wonder if he’d argue with her about it.

            I know that sounds wild, but from experience, I know that people can be *really* weird that way when they are overly confident and low on knowledge. Like people who argue with others about whether the other person has x or y number of kids, or if they even have kids. Or the other person’s birthday or other significant anniversaries. (Seen or been on the receiving end of all of these.) So, if I’m dealing with someone like that, I’m not telling them that I have X Degree. Whether I go to my manager or HR depends on the specifics, but that would be my next stop if necessary.

            Especially if I had reason to worry about what they would say to someone else.

          2. tangerineRose*

            I would absolutely be noting that this person makes confident statements about things when he has no knowledge. It’s important to know what you don’t know.

        1. Grimalkin*

          I recognized the term, but only because there happens to be a lapidary museum in my neck of the woods. (Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art in Oak Brook, a suburb of Chicago. I’ve got no connection to the place beyond having visited a few times over the years, but if you’re in the neighborhood and have any interest in rocks/gems, it’s a nice way to spend a couple hours!)
          Now I need to look up the etymology of “lapidary” because it absolutely does sound like it should be rabbit-related…

          1. Grimalkin*

            Responding to myself re: the etymology of “lapidary” to save the rest of y’all the Google search:
            From the Latin “lapidarius”, meaning stonecutter, by way of Middle English. The “lapis” in lapis lazuli is from the same Latin root.
            And now I know!

    5. allathian*

      Sure, some unintended/unconscious sexism could be at play here. But more significant, I think, is that the LW apparently doesn’t want to engage in any casual small talk at work. You get a reputation for sticking just to business, no matter how professional you are, without sharing anything personal at all, and people are less willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when you say something you later regret. If the LW had a warm professional relationship with his coworkers, they probably would’ve said something like “Oh, didn’t you know Nancy has a degree in paleontology?” and that would’ve been that.

      1. MK*

        I don’t agree that the problem is that OP won’t engage in smalltalk; it’s that being dismissive and slightly rude and not admitting fault seems to be their standard attitude, if one goes by the letter. He knows nothing g of Nancy’s background, but assumed she doesn’t know anything about fossils… because she is volunteering another skill to their organization. That assumption might have made some sense if she had a paying job at something unrelated, but many people volunteer in areas that have nothing to do with their career. As it was, the assumption had no basis, but he doubled down calling the idea that Nancy would know about fossils “silly”, when him jumping to conclusions about her background to the point that he is firmly stating “this is not her field” based on her volunteer work fits that description better.

        1. Nocturna*

          Nancy is the volunteer coordinator, which is a almost always a staff position. So the LW is making assumptions based on her paid job, which is unrelated to paleontology. I do think the LW’s assumptions were still dismissive and sexist in origin, as others have pointed out, but I think it’s important to judge on the facts.

          1. MK*

            I read “volunteer coordinator” as someone who is herself a volunteer, but you could be right.

            1. Anon for this sensitive topic*

              the letter writer said that their boss talked to them and said that accusing someone of falsifying information on the resume is serious. I doubt volunteers to give the organization a full resume, and I doubt the organization would be as concerned if they lied about something like this on it. so I believe it is a staff position.

              1. TooTiredToThink*

                I do agree that the volunteer coordinator is a paid position; but I have had to give my resume before for volunteer positions – especially anything where children might be – they need to be asking for all the details to run background checks; etc.

            2. Myrin*

              I totally missed it at first because I only skimmed the letter (because I had a surprisingly good recollection from when it was first posted which is usually never the case!) but OP actually spells it out later on: “Nancy coordinates volunteers at a nonprofit”.
              One of the pitfalls of the English language!

            3. GenX, PhD, Enters the Chat*

              Typically the volunteer coordinator in a non-profit is a paid staff position.

          2. Eldritch Office Worker*

            People often have backgrounds that differ from their current jobs. I find this to be especially true in nonprofits. And people typically respond to this with curiosity, not dismissiveness.

            The issue with systemic sexism is that it can often be justified on a situation-by-situation basis if you nitpick. The point is on the whole, in you switch genders in this scenario the likelihood increases exponentially that the kneejerk response is not “that’s not possible”

            1. SimonTheGreyWarden*

              This. I only needed to have a MA (any MA) to get my current job, which is just about as unrelated to my MA field as can be. It’s related to my BA and that’s why I can do it as well as I can, but looking at me and my role you’d never guess the field my MA is in.

              1. Elizabeth West*

                This, but with bachelor degrees. For a long time, admin jobs required a BS or BA in anything just to show you went to college.

            2. dePizan*

              Coming from the humanities, where almost no one I went to college with is working in the field we got our degrees in, I’m almost more baffled by the people who are surprised at having degrees not related to their jobs…..

        2. Marion Ravenwood*

          This. The ‘reluctant’ apology adds fuel to that for me. Like “I’m only doing this because they told me to, not because I genuinely feel bad about it”.

          1. Bear Expert*

            Thats the part where it shifts to “oh yeah, this dude is an arrogant jackhole” for me.

            Don’t know someone has an advanced degree in a field? That’s fine and normal, I love the surprised look on people’s faces when I whip out my philosophy degree working in tech.

            Confidently stating something you have no idea about? Personal bugaboo for me, because a lot of my work in on testing what people believe vs. what we actually know vs. what we can demonstrate with evidence to third parties. So I spend a lot of time listening to people confidently defend things I know don’t work like that, but I have to let them finish and be careful with their emotions before I bring out the “Well akkkktualllly…” (because they can’t be embarrassed and pissed for whatever I need them to do next.) But lots of people spout stuff they don’t actually know all of the time.

            “Oh, I confidently declared someone’s documented expertise to be non existent, but I shouldn’t have to apologize to them for that.” is where I believe this dude is insufferable all of the time. He wants to be able to spout reputation harming nonsense that he fully admits he has no clue about and have that just be “how he is” but I bet he still wants people to believe him about the areas he says are his area of expertise.

            Dude needs to learn to say “I don’t know” with some humility and how to apologize when he insults someone.

            1. ferrina*

              Yeah, for me that’s the point in the letter where it went from ‘maybe rude’ to ‘definitely rude’. If I had accidentally insulted someone’s expertise, I’d mortified and eager to apologize. I don’t put it on everyone else to ensure that I know what areas of expertise my colleagues do and don’t have (also, it’s weird that his first reaction was “Nancy doesn’t know that”, not “I didn’t know that Nancy knew that”)

              1. Observer*

                also, it’s weird that his first reaction was “Nancy doesn’t know that”, not “I didn’t know that Nancy knew that”

                Very “weird”. Unless he believes that women just don’t know these kinds of things.

                Which is one of the reasons so many people are jumping to sexism. For the folks who are wondering where that conclusion is coming from.

            2. Observer*

              “Oh, I confidently declared someone’s documented expertise to be non existent, but I shouldn’t have to apologize to them for that.” is where I believe this dude is insufferable all of the time.

              Exactly! This is not a one time mistake. This is a fundamental attitude. And even if he’s not sexist (although all of the other evidence says he probably is), this is still the attitude of a major league jerk.

          2. GammaGirl1908*

            Especially because he’s acting like giving an apology will hurt or cheapen or weaken him somehow. Dude, you were rude, dismissive, and wrong on several levels, even before you quibble about the sexist implications. An apology will make you look better, not worse. Apologies are free!

        3. annony*

          I disagree. I think the small talk does play into it. OP doesn’t know the backgrounds of his coworkers when apparently everyone else does. He then feels confident asserting what is not in their backgrounds. Not knowing what appears to be common knowledge in the office and then feeling that dismissing someone’s expertise is fine and doesn’t warrant an apology makes his assertion that he is “office friendly” clearly false and something he should actively work towards though non-dismissive small talk.

          1. BeachyBum*

            Agree.

            This isn’t about “I prefer to leave my work at work and my home at home and I don’t want to be friends with coworkers.”

            You don’t have to be BFFs with your coworkers to have the same amount of cultural office knowledge as everyone else. You just need to pay attention to what’s going on around you and be open to absorbing new information as it passes by your ears. OP’s statement indicates that they have no interest in learning new information.

          2. NotAnotherManager!*

            But the problem really isn’t the small talk, it’s the confidence in his assertion about something he knows zero about. He could easily make appropriate office pleasantries without the small talk, but, when he chooses not to participate in office small talk enough to know who his coworkers are as people, he gives up his right to make presumptive (scoffing) comments about them without looking like a buffoon.

            2. Observer*

              It’s the combination that really stands out. Making confident assertions when you have no clue? Bad. Claiming you “could not” have known when you CHOSE not to know? Bad. Combining the two? OK, bud, what planet do you live on that makes that reasonable?

              Which seems to be what your last sentence is saying.

      2. Jolie*

        I think there is something in there – if OP kinda makes the leap from “I don’t want to talk about anything other than work, ever” to “no one in here should ever talk talk about anything other than work. Reminds me a bit of (possibly?) a previous letter where someone reacted to very normal chit-chat like” How are you, how was your weekend?” with a very stilted and abrupt” I don’t talk personal matters at work “.

        1. Not That Kind of Doctor*

          There’s the Silent Bob effect also: if OP rarely engages in small talk, then it really stands out that they broke their silence to rudely (and incorrectly!) pooh-pooh someone’s expertise.

      3. Trout 'Waver*

        It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, though. Some people chose not to socialize at work because of previous toxic encounters. So now, when they do speak up, people are going to assume ill-will? That’s rough.

        I think a big part of working on diverse teams is assuming good will unless proven otherwise. I also strongly believe that assuming good will means correcting rude behavior in the moment because of course the rude person doesn’t want to be rude, right? Holding grudges and escalating behavior are a symptom of a toxic environment.

        1. SunnyShine*

          In this letter, it’s hard to assume goodwill. Instead of him assuming that Nancy knew anything about fossils, he laughed out loud and dismissed it. He assumed she didn’t. He also laughed AT Susan for thinking Nancy knew. Basically, he laughed and dismissed two female coworkers.

          His intent doesn’t matter at all at this point.

          2. House On The Rock*

            This is a really good point, thank you for articulating it.

            Not only was he dismissive of Nancy’s knowledge, he reacted in a way that read as correcting Susan (who, by his own admission, is more friendly with coworkers than he is). The combination of the two is really telling. It’s such a low stakes thing to snap at someone over – Susan wasn’t going to ask Nancy about an urgent work matter outside her expertise, she was remarking about a topic that’s very much outside of work. Why react like that (or react at all) if there wasn’t some underlying bias?

        2. Jessica*

          This isn’t about assuming goodwill.

          This is about prioritizing impact over intent, which is the only way you get a safe working environment for marginalized groups.

          Insisting that it matters whether men were intentionally malicious when they’re bigoted toward women and that we have to spend time dissecting intent is a delaying tactic to protect a prejudiced status quo.

          1. Bitte Meddler*

            Thank you.

            This is why I hate, HATE seeing people simp for misogyny in the comments section here. “But how do we *know* that he is biased against women and not simply a jerk, hmmmm???”

            Good gravy, one of the things that makes someone a jerk is being biased against a group of people, particularly when the jerk is in a historically preferred, power group and the people they are biased against are in a group that Jerk’s group have historically disenfranchised.

            1. Elle*

              Whenever someone is extremely caught up in proving that someone’s motivation was general unkindness rather than unkindness motivated specifically by race, gender, orientation, expression, etc, I like to ask them why it’s important to them to make that distinction. Why are they emotionally hung up on that point?

              The way I see it, if your behavior can be interpreted as racist, the damage is done. You cannot undo that damage by arguing a different intent. You can only do further damage. By being a baby about it.

            2. Observer*

              “But how do we *know* that he is biased against women and not simply a jerk, hmmmm???”

              Yeah, nine times out of ten, the answer is “Who cares?” If someone is being a jerk, they need to stop. And reasonable management knows that even if they don’t have a *legal* obligation, they have an ethical and pragmatic obligation.

              I mean all the rest of what you are saying is true. But when someone acts like this guy, it doesn’t REALLY matter if he would have done the same if the players were all men. Because it’s still gross enough that it *really* needs to stop.

              The fact that we have very good reason to believe that sexism played a role here just makes it worse, and in many contexts would add a legal obligation for the employer.

              There is also a reason why a lot of employers have “respect in the workplace” type policies. It cuts down on all sorts of bad behavior, including a lot of sexist garbage.

        3. Observer*

          So now, when they do speak up, people are going to assume ill-will? That’s rough.

          Except that is not close to what happened. He did not just choose to “speak up”. He *chose* to be rude to a coworker and then make scoffing, derogatory and and *incorrect* statement of “fact”, which was actually not a “fact” but his imagination. Whoops.

          And when called on it, he refused to acknowledge that his “mistake” was offensive, insisted that he “could not” have known, and that his assumption was the only “reasonable” way to to interpret the situation rather that acknowledging that someone had just told him something new about a colleague.

          And his behavior was rude enough that it’s easy to see why someone would be hesitant to respond to it. Also, he was talking definitively enough that a reasonable person might wonder if he knew something that no one else knew, which is why Susan probably went to her manager to find out what is going on. And then he did not actually apologize and acknowledge that he was offensive. One of the things he specifically says in his email is that he did not admit guilt and he doesn’t understand why she’s hurt.

          It’s simply impossible to impute good will to his behavior, unless you mean that he’s not an evil cartoon villain twirling his mustache and trying to see how he can make people miserable. That, I will agree on. But he’s a jerk and he is painted as such by his own statements.

      4. anonfortoday*

        I agree with you. Had you taken some time to talk with your colleagues you might have known this and no be in this situation. I get not sharing personal drama, medical issues, etc at work. But getting to know your colleagues and their background is a good thing, in my opinion, for just existing as a human at work. You spend more time there than you do anywhere else.

        1. Bitte Meddler*

          I don’t engage in small talk with my co-workers beyond surface level stuff like, “Been loving this weather later, eh?”

          And yet… if Susan had told me she was going to ask Nancy if her rock is a fossil, I would say something like, “I didn’t know that Nancy was a fossil expert. How cool is that?”

          I would NOT mock Susan and Nancy.

          This dude’s response, and then doubling-down on insisting he did nothing wrong, has NOTHING to do with him not making small talk with his co-workers.

      5. Binky*

        I wonder if OP’s lack of small talk extends to not listening when his colleagues talk about anything not-work related. I get the feeling that Nancy’s background is very well known in the office, to the point that everyone assumes he’s aware of it. Which would make his comment seem much more aggressive.

        And ignoring your colleagues to that extent is a work issue. You’re not “office friendly” if you’re missing such well-known background info that your colleagues are freely sharing.

        1. Neurodiverse and Tired*

          This guy’s rudeness aside and lack of emotional intelligence – your comment has made my little autistic heart curl up and wither. Not ALL of us listen to others’ conversations or event want to. Not ALL of us enjoy small talk to the extent that even being approached about someone’s rock wouldn’t cause a wave of anxiety about how to respond to such information. I have no interest in conversations that I am not directly involved in – I wear a noise- cancelling headset due to sensory issues and colleagues judge me the same as you would as they “freely share” what I don’t want. Diversity and inclusion is all words; the push for conformity and only seeing the world through neurotypical lens is alive and well. Not everyone wants or understands these types of interactions – but we are held to task for “ignoring” them.

          I agree – having been “trained” in neurotypical conversations – that he made a biased assumption – not sure if her gender//sex had anything to do with it or just his ignorance of the world. Why was he approached? He should have been held accountable for his mistake but this toxic environment of forced interaction would have met with a polite nod and a “How nice” from me. I’ve learned not to comment on the doings of social groups and/or individuals because I can’t always predict how it will be taken.

          1. Joielle*

            You’re handling it just fine, though – you recognize that you don’t know anything about your colleagues so you would say “how nice” in this situation and not mock Nancy or Susan. If the OP had done that, they wouldn’t be in trouble.

          2. mlem*

            I agree with Joielle — “how nice” is totally fine.

            There have been pregnancies in my work team. Coworkers have assumed I knew because “everyone knows”, but … I didn’t. I’m not super thrilled by the slightly mocking surprise I tend to get when my not having known comes up, but it’s fortunately brief, and we move on.

            But you and I both seem to default to “Oh, I didn’t know, that’s interesting” rather than asserting we know X can’t be true (based only on our own biased assumptions), and that’s important.

          3. Jessica*

            You’re welcome to not be interested in your colleagues’ hobbies or passions, or their previous careers, or their educational backgrounds, and therefore to not have any information about those parts of their lives.

            You’re not welcome to mock the idea that they have any existence outside the performance of their exact job duties that might give them expertise in other areas, simply because you lack interest and information about other parts of their lives.

            See the difference?

          4. Starbuck*

            “this toxic environment of forced interaction”

            This is not what was going on here and it’s unfortunate and not a good sign that you’d interpret it that way. It does not sound like it was expected or required that this guy comment on the rock, he CHOSE to do that in the most dismissive way possible. This guy knew that he had little background knowledge on his coworkers (totally fine) but chose to make a negative assumption anyway. That’s the problem.

          5. PH*

            For what it’s worth, I think that a certain level of situational awareness and the ability to glean information that you have not been directly told is an implicit expectation of many roles that involve working in collaboration with others, as well as those that don’t – not all “indirect learning” is social rather than essential. “Toxic atmosphere of forced interaction” is an unduly negative lens imo.

        2. Despachito*

          I think it does not matter in this case whether he did or did not know about the degree.

          What DOES matter is the dismissive tone. He was basically mocking both Nancy (because how could she know something about stones) AND Susan (because how could she think Nancy knows something about stones)?

          A non-jerk limited just to work conversations could be genuinely surprised that Nancy knows something so far from her usual area of expertise. Nothing wrong with that, per se. It is not his obligation to know.

          It is the TONE how he conveyed it that matters. He was rude, and apparently is even not aware WHY this came across as rude. IDK whether it was sexist (he could or could not do the same to a man), and I also think the boss’s reaction telling OP accused Nancy of lying in her resume was not correct. To do that he would have to know what is in her resume, and I believe him that he didn’t.

          However, he was just plain old RUDE. There were many options how to express surprise that Nancy is well versed in stones, but he did not opt for any of them and chose “How can she possibly know anything about X” instead. I hope he is now able to realize what is wrong with that.

    6. nnn*

      Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. It’s not uncommon for people to think fossils are neat, or to have been really into dinosaurs for a period of time and therefore to have learned about fossils, or any number of reasons people would know a bit about something unrelated to their work.

      It would be good for OP to reflect on why they went straight to “It’s absurd to assume that Nancy has any knowledge or interest in this random non-work-related topic” rather than “Oh, does Nancy know about fossils?” or even “Yes! The rock-that-might-be-a-fossil is cool and everyone should get to see it!”

      1. N C Kiddle*

        Even if you specifically wanted to convey “fossils aren’t Nancy’s area of expertise”, the scoffing tone was completely unnecessary. Could have said “why Nancy in particular?” and given them the opportunity to say “oh didn’t you know, she has a paleontology degree.” Then the whole interaction could have gone much smoother.

        1. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

          This, exactly. OP’s assumption that there was no way someone could have an interest outside of their work and conveying it in a way that was almost mocking is why he got the reaction he got. It’s one thing to say you didn’t know someone had an interest in something; it’s quite another to say there’s no way they could. Don’t say something isn’t in someone’s background if you don’t actually know their background.

          If anything, it’s better for people to have interests that are different from their day-to-day work, to keep from burning out, a la the post Alison made a couple weeks ago about her volunteer work.

      2. But what to call me?*

        Yes, this is the difference. Surprise that Nancy knows about fossils is perfectly reasonable when that’s a thing you didn’t previously know about Nancy. Disbelief that Nancy could possibly know about fossils in response to a coworker implying that she does (because why else would Susan have mentioned Nancy in particular unless she knew something about Nancy that you don’t?) is where it gets weird.

        Though jumping immediately from that to accusing OP of accusing Nancy of lying about her resume is also weird, unless there’s more to this that we aren’t hearing, like maybe that OP doubled down on insisting paleontology wasn’t Nancy’s background even after the boss said it was.

        1. Paint N Drip*

          Fully agree with your first paragraph! The disbelief PLUS outwardly saying it rudely, within the context of OP being a person who doesn’t engage with their coworkers… yikes.

          I found the boss’ accusation a bit strange as well, but I too wonder how much pushback OP was giving or if the boss felt that was the most management-focused issue with that interaction they could address. I personally feel that the discussion of soft skills, respect, and knowing when your feedback is necessary/helpful/kind are ALSO options for management to hit on.

          1. Diane Chambers*

            I thought the resume bit was weird too. OP mentions that the boss gave him “advice” about how his words come across. (Scare quotes his, not mine.) I wonder if part of the advice was “you need to think about the possible implications of your words.” Like, OP stated an assumption as a fact, and think about where that could lead? The intent wasn’t to accuse her of lying on her resume, but it could have looked that way based on what he said? I don’t know.

        2. Jessica*

          Given how often women’s expertise in fields that they have both degrees and jobs in is questioned, I’m reading the “okay, so are you saying she lied on her resume?” as kind of a last straw from an exasperated boss who’s been dealing with this as a pattern. Like, Nancy probably put her educational background on her resume. So the boss is basically saying “the implications of you scoffing at the idea that she has expertise are that she lied on her resume. So that’s the seriousness with which I’m going to treat what you’re doing. We’re not going keep acting like it’s harmless. Put up or shut up.”

          1. New Jack Karyn*

            Yeah, that’s where I land, too. If we agree that OP is not a 100% reliable narrator, it *might* be that he’s done similar things before. This could be the proverbial straw breaking the camel’s back with his manager.

      3. Sneaky Squirrel*

        This right here. It’s not that OP didn’t know that Nancy has a background in paleontology, but that OP dismissed Nancy as an option immediately and acted as if they knew better about Nancy’s background when it seems they didn’t know anything.

    7. Boof*

      Yeah – the correct response to “so and so thinks such and such” when you aren’t sure why so and so is talking about such and such is “Interesting! Why do they say that?” not “what business does so and so have being an authority on such and such!”
      Open ended question that invite more information about the situation rather than just blasting away with assumptions!

    8. Space bar*

      But also: it’s an office of 15 people! I’d argue that it would be pretty strange not to know the general broad strokes of your colleagues’ backgrounds in a small office.

      Also – I don’t doubt sexism (whether the OP is introspective enough to understand it as such) plays a part here, but I’d be interested to understand his thoughts on education and class. I’ve worked with a shocking number of people who see certain work as low level and judge the people in those roles to be inferior in some way.

      1. metadata minion*

        I don’t think it’s that odd — I have a coworker who I’m pretty friendly with, but it took me a couple years to learn that her previous field was something I’m very interested in, because I didn’t have any particular reason to ask what her education was in and her previous job is just not something that comes up all that often in casual conversation.

      2. Antilles*

        I don’t think that’s weird at all if the current field has nothing to do with their background, it’s likely that it just doesn’t really have any reason to come up in work-related conversations. And since OP mentions he tries to stay “office friendly” and does not discuss personal matters, I suspect he’s also not doing much of the casual office chit-chat where it might naturally come up aren’t occurring.

      3. Sneaky Squirrel*

        I honestly don’t think it’s that odd to not know your colleagues’ backgrounds. With maybe the exception of one or two coworkers who I’ve been working with for 10+ years, I couldn’t tell you anything about any of my colleagues’ educational history or what type of work they might have had before they popped into our company. Most chat at work with colleagues is small talk – what are you doing this week, brief comments about weather, children.

        1. Michelle Smith*

          Every place where I’ve worked, it has been common for a new employee to introduce themselves and share their background. Is this not common in most workplaces?

          2. Sneaky Squirrel*

            Fair, and this would be true to my company as well to some extent. I suppose in this case it’s one of those things that I just wouldn’t file away in my brain as important knowledge to retain, especially if I’m not directly working with the person. I assume most of my colleagues went to at least a bachelor’s degree program because it’s a basic requirement of the work we do but I don’t particularly pay attention to the field of study. I suppose if someone told me they had a paleontology background that might stick out a little bit as an interesting fun fact.

            Regardless, I think OP erred more in acting like they knew Nancy’s background when they clearly didn’t than by not knowing.

          3. Antilles*

            That’s common, yes, but it’s possible that it didn’t really stick in OP’s mind. Especially if OP isn’t really interested in anything more than “work friendly”, he very well might be just skimming (or entirely skipping) the office-wide intro emails since he doesn’t really care about the fact Nancy is married with two kids, loves to go on hikes, fun fact she’s a diehard fan of college baseball, so on and so forth.

          4. JustaTech*

            It’s not uncommon, certainly. But it doesn’t mean that the new person is going to learn about the background of the people who were already there.
            For example, I work in biotech. I worked with someone in another department for years before I learned that her undergrad degree was in music. She’d been in the industry decades, so even in her introduction it likely wouldn’t have come up, and the only reason I learned was it came up somehow in chit-chat in the lab.

            So I understand making the assumption that most people in your field have a degree in the field, but I *wouldn’t* make the assumption that people don’t have a degree in another field. Like, if I don’t know I’ll assume you have a BS, but if someone mentions you have a MFA I’ll be surprised, but I wouldn’t argue about it.

          5. OldHat*

            Some introduction is usually common place, but the details vary. For the last employee, it had info on what she did at her previous job and a bit about her hobbies connect to our mission. Nothing about her schooling. She was kind of changing fields, so that makes sense not to include it.

            I’m in a niche field. Sometimes my education is included (usually when working with others in my niche field), but often it is not. I bet only five people know I have a specific degree at the place I’ve been for five years. And its because they have similar roles/degrees.

          6. Orv*

            It’s common but usually “share your background” means “talk about the stuff you’ve done that led you to this job,” not “talk about random hobbies you have.” At least that’s how I’ve always interpreted it.

      4. Paint N Drip*

        Gosh I could not agree more! I admit that coworkers in a small office can absolutely still surprise you, but they surprise you a lot more when you don’t freaking talk to them! LOL

        And I fully agree that there is a perspective of seeing certain work certain ways – it is so hurtful and small-minded but it also reminds me so much of object permanence that it kinda tickles me (these uppity jerks are BABIES, their brains can’t even process that Brenda at reception was an Olympic athlete or grandpa Joe programmed rockets at NASA)

      5. Mango Freak*

        It’s a situation where it’s hard to separate gender and snobbery, since Nancy’s area of work (non-profit admin) is overwhelmingly performed by women.

    9. RIP Pillowfort*

      I’m a geologist and absolutely you don’t need a degree to identify fossils or rocks. For many people it’s a hobby. I know a lot of hobbyists that are excellent at ID’ing fossils. It’s just a skillset that takes time to learn.

      1. Selina Luna*

        That is undoubtedly true. In fact, many working digs involve people who are effectively tourists and hobbyists working alongside the experts to unearth the fossils. I went on one of those as a kid, with my grandparents. Because it was a working scientific dig, no one was allowed to keep anything, but it was still really cool.

    10. Roland*

      OP! Apologize to those who heard you, and stay out of conversations that don’t directly involve you. And, person up – immediately rewire your brain and voice to not make any more uch sexist and related remarks.

      2. ecnaseener*

        I doubt OP is reading these since the letter is from several years ago :) But it doesn’t sound to me like he butted into a conversation that didn’t involve him — he said Susan came up and showed him the rock.

    11. Distracted Procrastinator*

      To me the part that gets me is that he’s not just dismissive of Nancy. He’s also dismissive with Sally. Nancy can’t possibly know anything about fossils and Sally is so wrong about the idea that she was scoffed at for even suggesting it. He insulted two people here. That’s why he got pulled in to speak with the boss.

      1. BeachyBum*

        Yes, exactly. AND he’s being dismissive of the boss, too. Who also happens to be a woman.

      2. Happy*

        Yes. OP thinks he’s so much smarter than the women around him that if he doesn’t know something (Nancy is knowledgeable about fossils) then it must not be true…the idea that he didn’t even consider the possibility that maybe Sally knows more about Nancy’s background that he does (when he acknowledges he doesn’t know much about his coworkers!) is wild.

    12. Productivity Pigeon*

      Definitely! People have so many interests and like you said, this isn’t uncommon interest.

      I LOVE hearing about people’s cool hobbies!

      I once went to a dinner at an Oxford college and sat next to a guy who was writing his PhD about safety pins!

      It’s apparently one of the absolutely oldest human inventions, up there with knives and arrows, and he had catalogued 3000 of the world’s known 4000 examples. (Or something similar to that!)

      —
      So LW’s reaction is foreign to me. But even if I wasn’t someone who appreciated weird hobbies, it’s still a strange reaction that’s pretty darn condescending . It sorta implies that LW doesn’t think his coworkers have any… depths, for lack of a better word, and that LW is a bit of a superior being compared to his coworkers.

      I don’t think you’re required to know the background of every single person you work with but I like connecting with my coworkers. I share a large part of every day with them and it’s nice when someone asks if I liked the play I went to last Friday.

      I know that is a personal preference and no one is required to share any personal details at work. I respect that.

      However, I don’t think the issue is that LW wants a strict barrier between his coworkers and himself.
      It’s that impulsive response “how would I possibly know she liked paleontology, it’s a bizarre thought! What a joke!”.

      LW has purposefully chosen to NOT know their coworkers but then I don’t think it’s fair to make rude and judgmental comments when LW is keeping himself in deliberate ignorance.

      —-

      A coworker really surprised me once when she said she was an award-winning amateur magician.

      My reaction was “OMG! So cool!”, not “why would YOU be able to do that?”

      1. Admin Lackey*

        Thank you so much for the safety pin fact, I had no idea it was such an ancient creation and I went down a very fun wikipedia rabbit hole :)

    13. Rock Prof*

      This is what I was thinking, too. Lots of people are into fossils and know how to identify them! I know only the absolute basics about fossils, can’t identify really anything, and have a PhD in geology, so I’m absolutely useless when people come to me with fossils. I am always really impressed by how many people with totally different backgrounds know a lot about them.

    14. Slow Gin Lizz*

      This question hits very close to home for me, because I work in IT but my previous career was as a professional classical musician (one I still do part-time). My resume has this information in it and because I still am a performing musician, my new workplaces always know that as well as being the database admin I am also a violist. However, most (if not all) of my coworkers don’t know that I minored in geology in college, and therefore it doesn’t come up very often in conversation at work that I LOVE rocks and fossils.* If I worked with this OP and he said “why would SGL know anything about fossils? that’s not her background” it’d be an appropriate use of “well, actually…” Would I be insulted? Maybe? But if I were insulted it’d be nice that I could actually put OP in his place, which can be one of the silver linings of these kinds of situations.

      Now, did this place blow it out of proportion? Yes, indeed! Ok, he did say something pretty insulting, but it seems like it was more out of ignorance than malice. He certainly wasn’t accusing Nancy of lying on her resume, given that he’d never seen her resume. So, yeah, this is one of those ESH situations on AITA. (Except for Nancy, who seems like an innocent party.)

      *My Facebook memories today are of the fossil museum I went to when visiting family last year in Germany. Fossils are SO COOL.

    15. learnedthehardway*

      Whether sexist or not (and I agree that the there’s a valid perception that the comment was sexist, even if it wasn’t intended that way), the comment was very rude and dismissive, and the OP’s manager and colleagues are quite right to think that he was a jerk to say it.

      Knowing nothing of Nancy’s background, he decided that she couldn’t possibly have any qualifications in the field being discussed. Even if she turned out to have no qualifications or experience whatsoever, it was still a rude and dismissive thing to say.

      A better response would have been to say, “Why Nancy?” and wait for Sally to tell him that Nancy has qualifications/experience/general knowledge/whatever. In this situation, the OP would have learned that Nancy has these degrees in a relevant discipline, and could have said “Oh, I didn’t know that. How interesting!!” and NOT come off looking like a sexist jerk.

    16. Dawn*

      Right! I don’t have any sort of an academic background in paleontology, and I still loved fossils as a kid, grew up in an area where they were common, and learned to identify them! I’ve still got a really nice piece of fossilized coral somewhere!

      Just wild to assume that because someone is working as a volunteer coordinator they couldn’t possibly have, you know, hobbies.

    17. Some Words*

      Right?

      “Ooh, I didn’t know Nancy knew about fossils.”

      Sorry OP, your chosen wording was very dismissive when it shouldn’t have been.

    18. Tea Time*

      OP is insulting Susan as well. Susan indicated she knows something about Nancy’s expertise. It didn’t even occur to OP that Susan might be right.

      Somebody in this thread suggested the outcome would be different if Nancy were Ned. If Nancy were Ned *and* Susan were Stuart, I would bet money that OP would have accepted it without question.

      1. carrot cake*

        Eh, the LW’s response was short-sighted and block-headed, and he’s being pompous in acting as though an apology isn’t in order, but people say dumb stuff all the time and it has nothing to do with sexism.

        1. Bitte Meddler*

          And a shockingly large number of people say dumb stuff that is rooted in the sexism they live and breathe everyday. They are so immersed in sexism that even when someone points it out with a clue-by-four, they still deny that it’s sexism.

        2. Elle*

          Yeah, based on his original behavior and attitude, this guy seems like a great candidate for the benefit of the doubt.

          /s

    19. Observer*

      Even if Nancy didn’t have an educational background in paleontology, I feel like there are plenty enough “amateur” paleontologists where it may be interesting but not shocking if Susan indicated that Nancy could identify a fossil

      Yes. This is actually relevant, because it makes the original reaction and later push back by the LW even more bizarre and offensive. It’s one thing to be surprised that someone has an advanced degree in an unrelated field. It’s another to be so shocked at the mere idea that they might be really knowledgeable that you laugh dismissively when the subject comes up.

      1. tangerineRose*

        He wasn’t just shocked; he scoffed at the idea she might know this and acted like he knew what her background was when he didn’t.

    20. Dust Bunny*

      People can acquire a pretty astonishing amount of expertise on things outside of formal settings. I’m in a hobby that involves . . . basically toy horses. But a side part of the hobby is keeping up with all the latest on equine genetics. I can and have talked circles around real-horse people about coat colors and how different genetic combinations affect them. All of this has absolutely nothing to do with my day job and vanishingly little to do with my educational background (I did not complete a Bachelor’s in biology, so I know the basics about genes, but that’s about it). I haven’t even worked with real horses since middle school. I have never worked with real horses in a capacity such as breeding or showing that would require me to consider their color genetics. So, no, in a work setting it’s not my background.

      Robert Hardy was an acknowledged expert on Medieval weaponry despite being formally an actor. I find it super weird to assume that people might not have significant and developed interests outside of work/the setting in which you know them.

      So I think the boss’ overstatement was weird but I also think that the OP was rude and oddly dismissive, and made it a lot worse by doubling down and not wanting to apologize.

  2. Daria grace*

    #5, what an awkward situation. There’s no easy way to work out if this is a well meaning guy who is trying so very hard to be respectful of their girlfriend that they really misunderstood advice from somewhere or if it’s the outworking of some very troubling ideas about women. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to say it’s not the place of men in her life to give permission lest the boyfriend go searching for some other man in his girlfriend’s life to provide approval

    1. PotteryYarn*

      I think I’d opt for a super noncommittal answer like, “It’s [Employee]’s decision to make, not mine, but I wish you both all the best!”

      1. Bilateralrope*

        I’d try for something like that.

        Then I’d tell [Employee] that this happened. Behaviour like this is too strange for me to keep it a secret from her.

        1. TechWorker*

          Even though there’s already texts where she is the one suggesting asking him? Doesn’t sound like it would be a ‘secret’

            1. hiraeth*

              I think they’re pretty interchangeable *in this specific context*. Asking the father’s permission is a tradition, a ritual, and you don’t really expect to be told no. I don’t think the distinction here is enough to imply anything alarming.

              (And to be clear – I hate the whole idea of asking for a father figure’s permission OR blessing, and if my now-husband had asked my actual dad this, I wouldn’t have married him. But it’s a thing people still do and find meaningful, and a lot of people won’t have questioned it particularly, any more than they do the traditions of changing names or being walked up the aisle. So I really don’t think this is anything to panic about.)

              1. Snow Globe*

                This is particularly frustrating in that it is doubly-sexist. Asking for permission/blessing is bad enough, but that the mother who raised her alone isn’t important enough to ask, but the male boss is???

                1. Bill and Heather's Excellent Adventure*

                  Agreed, if he HAD to ask someone, why not the mother? Why was he so desperate to ask MAN? ://

                4. Arrietty*

                  The “tradition” comes from when women were literally property of whichever man they belonged to, so that adds an extra layer of ick to the already icky scenario of asking another adult for permission to ask an adult if they want to do something.

            2. Emily of New Moon*

              People often use them interchangeably, but they do actually have different definitions.

              Permission is, “You’re allowed to marry her, but only because I say so.”

              Blessing is, “I wish both of you all the happiness!”

              1. wendelenn*

                I believe this is used in Fiddler on the Roof with Hodel and Perchik. “We are not asking for your permission. . . only your blessing.” After Tevye finally makes up his mind, he says, “You have my permission. . . AND my blessing.”

    2. Dark Macadamia*

      Yeah, since the employee specifically told the guy she sees her boss as a father figure and wants his blessing, it seems like he was just trying to be thoughtful. Either he didn’t realize it was a weird request or he knew it was kind of awkward but trusted that LW and employee really did have a close relationship. I feel sad for the employee that it seems like she really wants someone to be a father to her and doesn’t realize her boss isn’t.

      1. hiraeth*

        Yeah, this is so awkward and weird, but also a bit sad.

        Personally I suspect fiance has really misjudged the relationship that employee has with LW, based on something employee once said in a fit of warm fuzzies about having a nice boss (or a fit of sadness that she has no good men in her life closer than her boss!). And fiance is probably young, and nervous about proposing, and wants to do everything right, and somehow reasoned himself into an act of lunacy.

        I think LW can kindly set appropriate boundaries here with a ‘That’s up to Employee, but very best wishes to you both’ and then just let it go. Since employee hasn’t actually tried to treat him like a father in any way, I wouldn’t be too worried going forward. I think fiance is trying to tick off the items on the traditional proposal list, got the wrong end of the stick about this, and did something that sounded sweet in his head but came out weird.

        1. hiraeth*

          (Actually I missed the bit where she said she’d like Boss’s blessing – so maybe fiance didn’t misinterpret, and they’re both misjudging here. Still sounds to me like a slightly sad and very young misstep, rather than anything too alarming.)

        2. EvilQueenRegina*

          I remember it was suggested at the time of the original letter that it could all be crossed wires, that the employee was talking about Uncle/Cousin/Godfather Cecil and boyfriend wrongly thought she was talking about Boss Cecil.

    3. Ellis Bell*

      It sounds like the idea came from his girlfriend, “it would be great to get his blessing”, which is slightly better on his side than his deciding off his own back to get permission her the nearest male in authority. But if the weirdness came from her, I’d be keeping a watchful eye on the relationship with this report if I were OP. Hopefully she was joking or never actually meant the fiance to literally do this.

      1. Miette*

        This is my takeaway too. OP may have had a more awkward conversation ahead of him with his employee–I hope he addressed that as well.

      2. learnedthehardway*

        The girlfriend probably sees the OP as a mentor and – in the absence of a father figure – felt that he would be the right person to ask, without realizing that her mother would be a better person for that role and that the role is rather outdated.

      3. carrot cake*

        “But if the weirdness came from her, I’d be keeping a watchful eye on the relationship with this report if I were OP.”
        —

        Why? How is “weird” worthy of watching over? Because if that’s the standard, then we all need a “watchful eye” over us.

        Good lord…

        1. Ellis Bell*

          Okay that isn’t what I said, but if you want to believe I think anyone a tad weird, needs surveillance, you go for it. If you’re interested, I simply meant the report might misunderstand some norms of what a boss is.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          I would absolutely keep an eye on any relationship with a report who might interpret it as an *intimate familial* relationship such as a father figure role. I can’t even imagine having to have a regular performance conversation, much less lay off or fire someone who thinks of me as their father figure.

          1. Ellis Bell*

            Absolutely! There’s loads of doubt when it comes to reading the tone of a text. The text could have been a joke, and she never meant for her fiance to take it seriously to ask her boss’ permission. I would put it down as something that definitely could be nothing, but would just keep an awareness of the idea on the back burner in case I see additional signs of misunderstanding professional relationships. If she was in any way serious, there would be other signs.

    4. Literally a Cat*

      I feel like, without knowing how she feels about the situation, almost all speculations are likely to be off. If this is her idea, would really be a good idea to alert the OP first. I do have doubts if this is her idea though.

    5. MK*

      Re: troubling ideas about women, I think that is in play in any case, but since the employee herself is apparently on board with the “asking a male authority figure for blessing/permission to marry a woman” concept, I don’t see how OP could address this with either of them without getting even more involved with the situation. The main issue is that the employee is herself crossing a professional boundary, but it’s pretty hard to say to someone “we aren’t as close as you think we are”.

      1. Sacred Ground*

        OP can address this with the employee by having a serious conversation about personal vs. business relationships, the necessity of professional boundaries especially between managers and subordinates, and maybe (since she does see OP as a mentor) a word about the incompatibility of patriarchal traditions with contemporary business and the importance of making one’s own life choices.

    6. Emmy Noether*

      Whet I find interesting about this (ignoring the inappropriateness for a moment) is that it shows the transition of this gesture into the purely symbolic:

      The point of asking the patriarch, traditionally, was so he could determine if this was a good alliance for the family (and, maybe, if it would afford the daughter a good life). But this boss doesn’t know this fiancé from Adam! He cannot judge if it’s a good match at all! Should he request a CV? A family tree? Certificate of good health?

      So this is really 100% symbolic. I cannot decide if that makes it less troubling or just more ridiculous.

      1. Not That Kind of Doctor*

        One of my father’s aunts turned up what I can only describe as a marriage prospect reference letter from my grandfather’s boss to my grandmother’s father, which is weird by modern standards and maybe even contemporary standards (would have been early 1940s) but seems like the correct direction of information flow, at least.

      2. Curious*

        I can only think of one context where this makes sense — if OP5 was the employer who demanded an oath of loyalty from their employees, then they would be the employee’s liege lord, in which case their permission might be required.

        Otherwise, this is banana crackers.

      3. Sacred Ground*

        Now I want OP to send the boyfriend a letter demanding a dowry. Perhaps livestock. Bonus points if it’s on company stationary.

        1. Emmy Noether*

          Pedantry incoming: a dowry is what the bride’s family gives the new husband to help the couple get established (sometimes instead of the bride inheriting anything from her parents later, traditions vary). Sometimes the money then goes with the woman if the marriage is severed for some reason – it’s to support her.

          You’re thinking of a bride price.

      1. Silver Robin*

        To be fair here, Bridgerton is a lovely show but is historically inspired, not historically accurate. I would not assume anything done there is a faithful representation of society without another reliable source confirming. They had folks wearing corsets under dresses with no waists, I mean really.

        1. Another Kristin*

          They did wear corset-like things in the Regency era, but they weren’t always full-on corsets – they also had “short stays” which were more like a bra. But some people would definitely have been wearing waist or hip-length corsets, if for no other reason than that was what they were used to. However they didn’t really do tight-lacing, partly because there was no reason to in loose diaphanous gowns, and partly because Gone With the Wind-style tightlacing requires a steel busk in the front of your corset and other industrial materials that wouldn’t have been common (or even existed) in the early 19th century.

          Sorry for the infodump, I don’t watch Bridgerton but I do think fashion history is really interesting!

          1. Dust Bunny*

            They also didn’t have metal eyelets yet in the Regency era, and those do a lot to reinforce a tight corset.

        2. Flor*

          And wore those corsets WITH NO CHEMISES *sob*

          Another Kristin is also correct that longer waist/hip-length stays were sometimes worn (and the ones in the show look broadly accurate) but they didn’t tight-lace them and they always, ALWAYS wore a shift or chemise underneath.

          1. Another Kristin*

            Oh yeah, corsets without stays is just asinine. Fastest way to ruin your corset is to get it all sweaty!

      2. Clisby*

        One of my uncles-in-law once told me he asked my (widowed) grandmother’s permission to marry my aunt. After all those years, he sounded mildly indignant when he said, “She laughed at me!”

      3. Polly Hedron*

        In a second fictional example, Gone with the Wind, after Scarlett’s father lost his mind and Scarlett became “head of the house,” Frank Kennedy asked Scarlett for permission to marry Scarlett’s sister (Frank married Scarlett instead, but that’s another story).

    9. Isabel Archer*

      Oh man, now I’m imagining him working his way through a list of other men his girlfriend interacts with regularly, like the Starbucks barista or her veterinarian.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        “Do you have the income to keep her in the lifestyle she’s become accustomed to? By which I mean a grande caramel mocha latte with an extra shot and a spinach quiche every morning, with the exception of PSL season?”

        “Well, I don’t know about marriage, but I can assure you she’s up to date on all her shots. I’m sorry, we are talking about Schmooples III, right?”

  3. Oaktree*

    I’m guessing Sansa is young. Typing and keyboarding aren’t always taught in school now. A 30-second lesson on how to use the shift key might help her a lot.

      1. NurseThis*

        WHAT? Just kidding. I’m old, no one on my sphere types in all caps. Maybe my 90 year old uncle.

        1. I Super Believe In You, Tad Cooper*

          Yeah, I don’t see this as much as I used to but 90 year olds are about the right age range. For example, my grandfather (who would have been 99 this year) was an early technology adopter and quite good with computers…except he always typed everything IN CAPS. For him I think the rationale was that his handwriting was in all-caps, so he wanted to make his typed notes look like his longhand letters.

          1. Bast*

            I have noticed the all caps thing with some older people who are more tech resistant. I’ve worked with a couple of people like this in their late 50s & 60s, and my own mother is like this (she’s in her mid-60s). My mother will very blatantly tell you that she isn’t into “all that computer stuff.” Please note I am not saying ALL older people are like this — in great contrast, my father in law (mid 60s) is probably more tech literate than I am — but these people DO exist.

            That being said, the commenter who mentioned that it could just as easily be a younger person is also right.

            Or Sansa could be 40 years old and just have a weird quirk, who knows.

            1. Vanamonde von Mekkhan*

              Personally I like to reframe it from “(some) old people are tech resistant” to “Tech devs are old people resistant (when developing)”. Modern tech aimed at the general public are very seldom accommodating to people who are not fully abled (physically or mentally).

              1. Drowning in Spreadsheets*

                I find myself wondering if some people are typing in caps because it’s easier for them to read. I’ve never been in this situation, so I have no frame of reference.

                I worked tech support for a computer manufacturer. I can’t tell you how many seniors I helped get set up and online, even when, “My kid bought me a computer and I have no idea what to do with it.”

                I’m not saying nobody has trouble, is actively resistant, or unable to learn, but that’s a minority and the stereotype should die now.

                1. Gumby*

                  My last landlord definitely did it because it was easier for him to read. I know because I asked him at one point. It was a little harder for me to read, and I didn’t type in all caps to him (he never asked me to) but I did change my font to the largest size. I have no idea if his email client even paid attention to Gmail’s large size font but if it did, I hope it helped him.

              2. MigraineMonth*

                I’m not sure it’s helpful to frame “old people” as disabled, but I absolutely agree that tech projects for general audiences do not prioritize usability by distinct user groups such as those who use screen readers, those with impaired vision or users who have hand tremors. Usability is often tacked on as something to improve when all the features have been implemented and it is the first thing to get cut when the project inevitably runs past the deadline.

                Also, if anyone knows of an automated way to check a website for usability issues that isn’t terrible, please let me know! I always get buried in a deluge of irrelevant warnings.

                1. Vanamonde von Mekkhan*

                  I didn’t mean “not full abled” as “disabled” necessarily. Just not being 100% in all areas. For example having slightly worse motor skills making it harder to use touch screens, especially when compared to using a regular keyboard. And with slightly degraded eye sight, it becomes hard to read the text on mobile phones. And so on.

            2. Mockingjay*

              I think this occurs in ALL generations (caps intended). Some can type, some care deeply about correct cases, some never learned or weren’t taught, some don’t care, a few are just – inexplicable.

              But to add to Alison’s advice, provide a style sheet or a checklist so Sansa knows exactly how corporate materials are to be presented. It will provide a benchmark to check her work and evaluate her performance.

            3. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

              I’m in my late 50s and we had a computer lab in my high school and I have used computers since the first day of my first professional job.

            4. Jeanine*

              I have to admit when it was the early 90s and I was fresh out of community college where I had learned news writing and psa writing and such I came out with the habit of typing in all caps until I got online and someone told me I was “yelling” when I typed that way. I stopped and never did it again. It’s not difficult.

              1. Great Frogs of Literature*

                Yeah, “All caps is yelling” is a learned convention, and if you haven’t been taught it, it doesn’t come across as nearly the same social faux pas. My assumption when interacting with great-uncles etc. who did it was that they hadn’t spent enough time on social media to know how it came across to the more tech-savvy.

            5. Dahlia*

              My mom is in her late 50s and she doesn’t type in all caps!

              Because she does not know how to turn the capitals on. She has, however, learned how to use the space bar now, instead ofallhercommentslookinglikethis. Progress!

        2. It’s A Butternut Squash*

          I’m a millennial and no one I know does either. Because 99% of people know not to do this in a professional setting. Trying to make to an age thing is dumb.

        3. Elizabeth West*

          One of my coworkers at OldExjob did that. I tried to explain to him that it was hard to read and came off as yelling, to no avail. This guy was in his mid-to-late 30s.

          1. MigraineMonth*

            Yeah, I think there are some people who are just incredibly resistant to being told to do something another way.

      2. Emmy Noether*

        I think it may be more common in older people because it’s easier to read if eyesight is not so great anymore? (as the letter alludes to). And not everyone is aware that font size setting can be changed.

        My MIL often writes in all caps. She also really should be wearing glasses but refuses to do so for vanity, so refusing the built-in accomodation of larger font setting and finding her own “workaround” seems right on brand for her.

        1. Orv*

          Interesting. I find all caps harder to read because all the letters are the same height, so there’s fewer shape cues to identify words.

      3. WillowSunstar*

        In some workplaces, there are internal databases that require the use of all caps. Not justifying sending such an email out to the public/clients, but I can see how a mistake might be made in communication with a coworker, if one had just spent an hour or two typing in said database and forgot the caps was still on.

      4. Clisby*

        That doesn’t seem likely to me. I’m 70, and learned how to type on a typewriter. It would have been very strange to type everything in caps, and that carried over to typing on a computer keyboard. (I often make everything lower case in texting but that’s because I hate the tiny keyboard on a phone and want to put in the least possible effort doing it. It would never occur to me to send an all-caps email.)

      5. Panhandlerann*

        What? I’m 68. I was meticulously taught typing in high school–I think a lot of folks in my generation took such a class–and my typing teacher would have NEVER allowed all caps in a document of any kind (apart from the very rare use for emphasis as I just did above). Indeed, Mrs. Knape is currently, I am sure, rolling over in her grave at the very thought of such a thing.

      6. Bossy*

        LMAO the number of things ppl love to effing generalize (I hate generalizing with a passion) – no, older people do not always use all caps. FFS were the ones who know how to actually white (ooh cursive) so what even are you talking about? Thanks for the legit LOL though.

    2. hiraeth*

      I dunno, doesn’t sound super likely to me. The kids I know make a point of using all lower case when writing to each other, and any one of their teachers would pull them up on an essay written in all caps. I think this is a personal quirk, not a generational thing.

      1. M*

        Yeah, the kids are pretty fine-tuned to the “all-caps is weird” thing, to the point of just… not using capitals at all a lot of the time (and generally know how to use sentence case when it’s required). Gen Z and Alpha do seem to be less comfortable on a physical keyboard than the immediately previous generations, for some fairly obvious reasons, but I wouldn’t expect it to manifest like that. And this letter’s from 2019, so there’s a pretty small slice of Gen Z that a professional office would have had in their hiring pool.

        It’s totally possible Sansa is young – this sounds like a fairly junior role, for one – but yeah, not a generational thing, at least not in that way.

        1. N C Kiddle*

          I just tested this by texting my 18 year old in all caps to ask what she thinks. Her response: “I was terrified. Don’t do that again.”

          2. iglwif*

            That’s exactly how my 22yo would respond! All caps texting is reserved for
            * yelling
            * extremely strong emotion
            * reporting that you unexpectedly met and interacted with a dog

        2. Emmy Noether*

          Interesting. I thought writing all-lowercase was a Millenial thing due to t9 texting and the like during our formative years making capitalization more time consuming to write. And then it sort of… stuck around?

          1. Florence Reece*

            I think it became a stylistic thing from the t9 era.

            writing like this, especially in long flowy paragraphs about your favorite fandom, is something i personally strongly associate with 2010s tumblr. it’s perceived as softer and more ~aesthetic~. i think this passed to the next generation at some point and can’t tell you their cultural interpretation or tweaks of it, but it’s definitely something i see more frequently from younger people, especially in political discourse spaces.

            And yeah, like M said, they know how to use proper case when needed.

          2. Chirpy*

            There’s also capitalization nuance from forums and other text platforms –

            this is a thing
            this is A Thing
            THIS IS A THING

            – all have very different meanings. Not all text speak comes from phone use.

        3. Plant person*

          When and how “the kids” (I’m a millennial at almost 40, so) use capital letters in electronic communication is honestly pretty cool and sophisticated. Case has become one of many tools that we use in to convey tone in text. All caps is yelling, yes; but also: standard capitalization is formal, and thus can be read as aloofness or putting on airs (which is why you’d use it in a formal or business context, but maybe not with close friends); Capitalizing Words Mid-Sentence can indicate emphasis or irony; rAnDOm cApItaLIzaTioN signals sarcasm or aggrieved bafflement; writing in all lower-case can be casual, (as above) or can signal embarrassment or chagrin (as in literally making oneself small); and punctuation can be hostile (as in a period at the end of a sentence indicating irritation or chastisement); but a *lack* of punctuation can also be deadpan, self-deprecating, or passive-aggressive, depending on context. Emoticons can come across as heavy-handed or old-fashioned, but are also useful in cases where you *really* don’t want to be misconstrued. But then again, they can also be used sarcastically, so knowing one’s audience is key (as always!).

          There’s so much more, but I’m not a linguist or anthropologist – just somebody who learned how to communicate in text the same way we all did, by making it up as we go, and happens to be fascinated by the conventions that have developed to stand in for tone of voice, etc. (And *then* there’s the entire language of emojis, which I’m not fluent in except to know a few of the sexual ones to avoid…)

          1. hiraeth*

            100% yes. It’s sophisticated with a ton of nuance. (And a lot of the examples people have given above are pure millennial, rather than anything my actual children would do. My gen X husband still uses full punctuation and standard case on everything. I adapt depending on who I’m talking to but almost certainly still have a lot of elder millennial tells that I’m not aware of.) We need to abandon any perception that “the kids” are just doing it wrong because they don’t know any better.

        4. Humble Schoolmarm*

          Agreed, I taught the tail end of the Gen Z and am teaching Gen Alpha grade 7, so prime time for punctuation. Getting them to use capitals on proper nouns is sometimes an uphill battle, but I’ve never had a kid use all caps unless it was a stylistic choice, like they thought an all caps font looked cool for their class presentation until I made them change it (so I could check those dang capitals).

      1. Aww, coffee, no*

        But how will Sansa learn the error of her ways otherwise? I’m sure this OP wouldn’t get fired for it… ;-)

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I wouldn’t suggest it, but the situation where a senior employee disables a junior employee’s caps-lock key after they continuously used it inappropriately in public communications is very different than an intern disabling an employee’s caps-lock key that they use whenever they want to type a capital letter. This OP probably *wouldn’t* get fired from it, but it wouldn’t fix the fundamental problem (that Sansa needs to be willing to follow instructions and do her job correctly).

    4. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      Doesn’t matter, young, old, in-between, it needs to stop now.

      OP you very much can simply tell her that you do not type in all caps for business correspondence. You don’t need to soft pedal it, you don’t need to beat around the bush or try to be understanding. You are actually doing her a favor by clearly spelling out business norms. If she is as great as you say she is, inability to communicate professionally, not just words but stylistically will hold her back. Correcting her now will help her in the long run

      1. Jackalope*

        Yes, the giggling and saying that that’s just her style was a clear sign that she wasn’t taking it seriously. A more direct conversation, followed by consequences if she refuses to follow directions, is important here to get this fixed.

      2. Ama*

        Yeah this isn’t an age thing as much as it is “inexperienced with business communication norms.” I had a string of enty level admins at my last job who were various ages but who had never worked a clerical office job previously and formatting was one of the hardest things to get them used to checking for when we were putting together external documents. Spelling and grammar they understood they should proof for, but “all the dates need to be bold” or “everything should be in the same font” was for some reason much harder. Sansa is an extreme case but it doesn’t sound that odd to me that she just isn’t grasping that the business style overrides her personal “preferences.”

    6. Beany*

      Tell me you don’t know any FORTRAN 70 programmers without telling me you don’t know any FORTRAN 70 programmers …

    7. Flibbergibbit*

      Yeah, this is an ageist comment, especially unrelated to the letter about a younger person.

    8. Person from the Resume*

      No. I don’t think that you have to teach an office worker that you use standard capitalization in work communications.

      The person attended elementary and high school. Even if they did not graduate, there was an English teacher that corrected them if they tried a submit papers, essays, reports that way.

      You can remind them that they must use standard capitalization (sentence case). They must use it in all emails. They need to fill in the spots in the templates so the document looks smooth and seamless and does not have random capitalization in it.

      Remind them, tell them, threaten them with PIP if necessary. You don’t need to TEACH them. If they do not know this, then they don’t have basic written communication skill which someone whose tasks is to “draft the letters and memos that go out to clients and the public” needs to have to do their job.

  4. Dahlia*

    You not only dismissed Nancy, you mocked Susan. She clearly had a reason to want to ask Nancy about the fossil. Why would you not believe that Susan would have a valid reason for asking? Why would you not assume Susan knew something you didn’t, since you didn’t know anything about Nancy’s education, interests, or background?

    1. Jennifer @unchartedworlds*

      That’s what I was thinking! He insulted both of them! It’s like “why would you do that, you idiot”.

    2. Irish Teacher.*

      Yeah, “I don’t engage in small talk with my coworkers and don’t know anything about their interest but I assumed I knew better than Susan about what interests and expertise Nancy has” is…not a good look in a lot of ways.

      Now, it is possible he just thought “what? Nancy doesn’t work in science” or that perhaps there was somebody with a similar name who did more relevant work and he thought Susan had confused them, but…I think it is unsurprising that people would think he was either suggesting Nancy had lied about her qualifications or that he was being sexist or that he was being deliberately rude to Susan.

      1. Quinalla*

        This! The fact that he assumed he was an expert on Nancy’s background when he admits that he doesn’t know anything about his coworkers is such classic overconfidence and then him doubling down when confronted by his manager, ouch. She isn’t doing work in that area so he assumes she can’t have expertise, what? Lots of folks have different backgrounds than their job/career, this is not that unusual and seems to be his only reasoning for assuming and confidently proclaiming it.

        And it may not have been sexist at all, but it certainly was perceived that way for very understandable reasons. And it’s one thing for him to be mad that it isn’t his intention to be sexist or question her integrity, but to not even think he should apologize or that he was in the wrong when he CLEARLY was wrong, again what? Regardless of your intention you were rude and insulting and you were also wrong – yes you must apologize and stop trying to double down.

        Ugh, this letter pisses me off yet again haha.

    3. londonedit*

      Completely agree with this as a summary! Would it really have been so difficult for OP1 to say ‘Oh! Does Nancy have an interest in fossils? I didn’t know that’ instead of ‘Whatever would Nancy know about fossils? That’s not her background’. Frankly the OP had no idea what Nancy’s background was – but based on nothing more than the fact that she works as a volunteer coordinator the idea that she could possibly have any interest in or knowledge about palaeontology was completely dismissed. Why was that? Because she’s a woman? Maybe because she’s older? Or because she’s ‘just’ a volunteer coordinator? OP1 needs to seriously look at the assumptions he’s making about people, especially about women. Scoffing at the very idea that Nancy could possibly know anything about fossils is incredibly rude.

      OK, so it was possibly a bit OTT for the boss to go off on one about making accusations that Nancy had lied on her CV, because that’s not exactly what the OP did. But I’m not surprised that the OP received a warning and a telling-off about the way they speak to their colleagues. Belittling people and acting superior and smug is never acceptable.

      1. MsM*

        The only way I can make sense of the boss escalating like that is if they thought OP would dismiss the warning not to make assumptions otherwise.

        1. Meep*

          Yeah… Calling him sexist makes me feel like he was either was continuing to be dismissive of the situation or he had a history of it. And the fact he seems more offended at being called sexist instead of being mortified that he insulted two women, kind of gives the impression that he has a habit of dismissing women’s concerns. (Not to mention Susan went to escalate instead of walking away thinking “Wow. OP1 is such a jerk.”)

      2. ecnaseener*

        Re the boss’s reaction, I can see how the details would get fuzzy in the retelling — Susan comes away from that conversation and says “Nancy, you have a paleontology background, right? LW is saying you don’t” (or fill in a more indirect game of telephone if you prefer) and Nancy says “I can’t understand why he would say that, does he think I lied about my degree?”

      3. TeaCoziesRUs*

        Methinks there’s a pattern here that boss is alluding to, and this latest act of jerk-ery was enough to finally let her put her foot down. If this is a pattern he has – being dismissive, blowing off education or experiences of others, making accusations out of whole cloth – then this is an excellent opportunity for her to let him know the repercussions of his actions.

    4. KateM*

      Yeah, so if his office does think that he insulted *a* coworker, they are wrong – he insulted *two* coworkers. :P

    5. WeirdChemist*

      Agreed! “I’ve only put thought into this issue for 3 seconds, but I’ve decided that you couldn’t POSSIBLY be correct about it so I shall be snide”

      Plus the lame half apology…

      I wouldn’t necessarily find it rude that the LW didn’t know their coworkers educational background when it’s not relevant to their day-to -day work, but immediately dismissing that someone else might have more information than you about a coworker (especially when you make it a point to not get to know them) is weird!

    6. RIP Pillowfort*

      This is why I don’t feel like OP’s boss overreacted in this case. He was openly rude to both Susan and Nancy. After priding himself on being ignorant of anything in their “personal lives” for that matter.

      The problem is his absolute certainty that Susan was wrong, and Nancy couldn’t know anything relevant. I have a hard time not seeing that being a recurring issue with how he treats people in the workplace. Especially since he’s not seeing it.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        Also being so reluctant to apologize and thinking that apology = acknowledging guilt. I feel like that would make any workplace dynamic pretty fraught.

        “Did you apologize to the client for being late to the meeting?”

        “No, because that was caused by an accident in midtown and I refuse to take responsibility for it!”

        “…”

    7. Silverbrumby*

      I completely agree – very presumptuous. People have all sorts of experience, knowledge, interests and skills that may not be obvious if you don’t know them. Assume at your peril.

    8. NotYourMom*

      Dismissed Nancy, mocked Susan, and is here assuming that his intention matters more than anything else.

      There were so many ways he could have responded, and he chose the most dismissive and rude. Does the blow back feel like too much? Yes, it probably got broken telephoned into something bigger than it was. But the original statement and attitude are still such a problem.

    9. oof*

      Yeah, I remember when this letter first ran and it still baffles me. It’s just SUCH an unnatural/awkward response.

    10. Dek*

      It’s such a bonkers response. Like, I legit can’t fathom the mind of someone who responds like that. Why say that at all?

    11. ThatOtherClare*

      I can’t get around the fact that the letter writer specifically said “That’s not her background”, when they didn’t know what her background was!

      By declaring that as fact, they’re essentially saying ‘Nancy cannot possibly have a background in fossils and Susan cannot possibly know what Nancy’s background is’. Not possible.

      Because, if those things were within the bounds of logical, conceivable possibility for the letter writer, then they wouldn’t have made a definite statement. It’s highly insulting language.

  5. A_Jessica*

    Just as a general note if anyone finds they’ve accidentally written in all caps, it’s easy to convert caps to sentence case via Microsoft Word:
    1. Select the text for which you want to change the case.
    2. Go to Home > Change case
    Or there are websites that do this.

    1. T.N.H*

      Yes! It struck me as odd that they had to redo this work though it could be using a different program with limited functionality.

      1. Anax*

        I wonder if also, the specifics of the text make this difficult. If it’s something like, “At Slate Rocks & Gravel, we provide the best rocks and gravel” – where common words are used both as proper (capitalized) nouns and as non-proper nouns – I suspect most programs would struggle to be 100% accurate. Checking for the small percent of text which is capitalized incorrectly would mean going over every field carefully, which … well, for me, that would be more annoying and time-consuming than just doing the typing myself.

        1. AcademiaNut*

          It’s one of those things that can be automated to about 95%, depending on the type of text, but that remaining 5% requires careful proofreading. Automatically handling acronyms and proper nouns is particularly tricky.

          And this is random sections of text in a larger document, due to the templates they use, so they need to find the sections to be fixed in the first place.

        2. Antilles*

          Another similar possibility is that there’s a lot of abbreviations used. In my experience, Word’s automated features are *really bad* at dealing with abbreviations. If the abbreviation isn’t a word, it’ll think it’s a typo. If the abbreviation is a word, it’ll uncapitalize it assuming that “ace” is the normal word rather than shorthand for “Association of Chemical Engineers”. If an abbreviation is written with a period, it’ll often assume that’s the end of a sentence and incorrectly capitalize the word afterwards (six in. Steel rebar was used for this project).

          1. Former Admin Turned PM*

            This line of conversation reminded me of when I had a reference in a document to providing some sort of information “to WHO” [World Health Organization] and the grammar check wanted to correct it to “to WHOM.” I was neither being shouty nor using improper grammar, so I ignored that correction.

        3. amoeba*

          Or you’re typing in German, where all nouns have to be capitalised – so no way to change it back easily, alas. (OK, AI can probably figure it out nowadays?)

          1. metadata minion*

            Yeah, I’m guessing since we have enough machine translation to reliably recognize German nouns, you could make a program like this for German that would have the same issues with abbreviations and other weird words but that would be mostly ok.

            1. Emmy Noether*

              Spellcheck in Word has been able to propose mostly correct capitalization for German for a while now. I guess one could make it all lowercase and then run spellcheck over it, just clicking ok a bunch of times, and it should be possible to fully automate in theory.

        4. CTT*

          Yes, I run into this all the time with business names – using that feature to convert “ATLANTA GA REALCO LLC” to “Atlanta GA RealCo LLC” takes more time than just retyping.

          1. Strive to Excel*

            FWIW, if you’ve got a phrase like that you use commonly, it’s possible to set up an autocorrect rule that makes it automatically spell correctly!

            But yes, otherwise, names like that just have to be done right the first time.

        5. NotAnotherManager!*

          Yes. I use the Word change case function all the time as some of the documents I work with include titles and headers stylized in caps that we need to change to title case when citing in reference documents – the challenge is that you get all upper or lower and capitalize every word, all of which require some cleanup with proper nouns or articles that should be in lower case. It’s a helpful tool, but it still requires a secondary proofread – and really the issue is that Sansa’s preference don’t override the stylistic requirements of the job and she needs to perform the task correctly.

      2. Snow Globe*

        I would consider using MS Word to fix the error is needing to “re-do” the work, in that the LW really shouldn’t have to do anything at all. The letters should be ready to go, and even a simple fix is going to be annoying when they have to do it every time.

        1. MassMatt*

          This. I can’t imagine doing this more than once, it would drive me batty. And then I get a giggle and “that’s just the way I am” response? No, YOU re-do this and capitalize like a normal person who knows how to type.

      1. I take tea*

        I hit the Caps Lock accidentally all the time and it’s so annoying. I wish it would require Shift + Caps Lock to work.

        1. Orv*

          Depending on your operating system you may be able to assign the Caps Lock key to do something else. For example, in macOS this is under System Settings, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, Modifier Keys. You can make it take on the role of any of the other modifier keys or no action at all.

        2. Ex-Teacher*

          I’ve solved that problem on my end, if you’re inclined to tinker with stuff. I like using mechanical keyboards, and so on my board I disassembled the switch for the caps lock key and added an additional spring to the switch. Now if I want caps lock I really have to press it hard, and if I fat-finger the key it basically can’t activate.

          If you don’t want the extra fiddlyness of mechanical keyboard this won’t be an option, but it can absolutely be a great solution without having to muck around in settings.

    3. Goody*

      TIL that Word has a built in function for this. I’ve seen it change when I’ve had caps lock on and the first letter is not capitalized because I hit the shift key, and I’ve used the small caps function before, but I didn’t know about this one. Thanks!

      1. Elsa*

        Yes, I just learned this today as well, thank you!

        But I still think that Sansa should be doing the correcting and should be giving LW the document when it is ready to go. If she really loves typing in all caps then she can type in all caps and then “change case” before handing it in.

    4. Always Science-ing*

      For those who prefer keyboard shortcuts: in MS Word you can also highlight the text then use SHIFT + F3 to cycle between uppercase, lowercase, and title case (first letter of every word capitalized).

      1. Peggy L*

        The only thing worse, and it is by a smidge, is the ever annoying title case used for anything other than an actual title.

    5. EvilQueenRegina*

      That definitely came in handy for me when my old work laptop developed some weird problem where it kept randomly capitalising my typing while telling me Caps Lock wasn’t on. (That was one of a long line of problems I had with that thing before it was replaced. I do not miss it.)

    6. Elizabeth West*

      Hint — it’s the button that looks like Aa with a dropdown arrow.

      I agree that having to change the case is rework. Send it back to Sansa. She’s the one who needs to do that.

  6. BadAssumptions*

    OP1, while I agree that saying you accused Nancy of falsifying her resume is a leap, your attitude is atrocious and likely to cause you lots of problems. There are many, many, many people with science degrees who don’t work in the sciences. There are a teeny tiny number of available jobs compared to the people qualified to fill them. Some people end up in somewhat adjacent jobs and some end up in completely unrelated fields.

    I am a physicist by education and training. I’ve spent a lot of my life working as a writer, rarely with any connection to science and never in positions that required science degrees of any sort. I know scientists working as all sorts of things.

    If you don’t want to get to know your coworkers that’s your choice. Along with that choice comes a responsibility not to assume you know things about them you don’t. Your choice.

    1. allathian*

      Absolutely. Maybe the boss overreacted a bit, but I can see a manager not wanting to give an aloof employee who assumed he knew something about a coworker that proved to be false any benefit of the doubt at all.

      1. Pi314*

        It seems like everyone involved in this overreacted to some extent. OP’s original scoffing response was problematic and the situation wasn’t really any of his business, Susan’s decision to take this non-work issue to their manager, the manager’s interpretation of the problem as “accusing someone of falsifying their resume”, OP’s resistance to apologizing…

    2. Artemesia*

      And you don’t have to have. degree in science to have an interest and knowledge of something scientific. There are lots of people with hobbies related to plants or animals or fossils or rocks and minerals who would be the go to person for questions about those things. This was a knee jerk sexist response. It is hard to imagine the OP reacting that way if someone said ‘I’m going to ask Bill about this rock I found.’

    3. Deejay*

      I used to know someone with a degree in marine biology who ended up working in a high-powered finance job in the City of London.

      Insert obvious joke about sharks here.

      1. Lady Lessa*

        My current financial advisor started out as a chemist, so it is a reasonable jump for some folks.

        1. Clisby*

          Our financial advisor started out as a chemical engineer, and worked for years in that field before switching.

      2. The Prettiest Curse*

        My current plumber has a sideline as a magician. You just never know what interests people will have outside their main job!

        1. londonedit*

          One of my university friends did a degree in psychology, and got a First, no less, but ended up becoming a plumber because he realised he wanted to learn a trade and he realised he could start his own business and be his own boss. Twenty years later he’s been really successful and loves his job – and I bet most of his clients would never even consider the idea of a plumber having a first-class degree in psychology. You just never know where people’s paths will take them.

          1. Panda (she/her)*

            People make so many assumptions about people in trades! One of them being that they are in trades because they can’t do anything else…

          2. MsM*

            I bet the psychology degree does come in handy when dealing with particularly anxious or difficult clients…

          3. Emmy Noether*

            I think studying something one finds interesting and then realizing one isn’t suited to or doesn’t enjoy working in that field is not uncommon. Working can be quite different from studying! Switching fields is the better outcome compared to 40+ years of frustration, but there’s some stigma associated with it if it’s perceived to be a “step down” (wrongly).

            I sometimes daydream of learning a trade instead of what I do, but I’m sort of torn at the idea of having my own business.

            1. TeaCoziesRUs*

              +2. I got a bachelor in Education, basically because I wanted to study history but my parents encouraged me to figure out a path where I could use that love of history at the bachelor’s level, rather than committing to masters or doctoral work right out of the gate. I figured out during my student teaching that education was NOT for me. Loved the kids, loved the actual teaching, hated the planning, politics, and parents. >..<

              Also, I earned an MBA from The School of Hard Knocks in how NOT to run a business. If I ever go into business again, I'll either pay other folks up front for the crap I'm awful at (bookkeeping, follow-through) or figure out a way to be part of a shop where I'm mostly independent, but have a support structure around me. :D

          1. The Prettiest Curse*

            I was super excited when he told me about it and asked him a whole load of questions. He told me that he tried to get a qualification from the Magic Circle in London and they made him do an exam – which involved doing his best magic tricks in front of a panel of other magicians. This sounds incredibly nerve-wracking and unsurprisingly he failed, though he said that most people apparently do fail on their first attempt!

      3. Daughter of Ada and Grace*

        And to bring it back around to the original letter, I once went on a fossil hunting trip led by my sewing teacher. (She was a geology professor in her day job, and sewing was her hobby.)

      4. Chirpy*

        I’m a retail worker with a science degree and a former job in the arts. I am BY FAR not the only retail worker with a degree.

    4. ceiswyn*

      I have a Master’s degree in Palaeobiology. I work as a technical writer.

      Op1 reacted as though Susan was being ridiculous, based on… obviously knowing less about his coworker than she did. OP1 needs to ask himself a lot of questions about why he thinks his assumptions trump other people’s knowledge. Especially when he’s a man and they’re women.

    5. N C Kiddle*

      Hi from another physics graduate who has never had a job in physics. My entire working life, such as it is, was warehouse and food service, and now I’m volunteering in a warehouse job. I never mention my degree because the idea that STEM graduates all get high powered jobs is so pervasive that I feel ashamed of the path I’ve taken. Which is my slightly off-topic way of saying absolutely. Don’t assume anything about your coworkers’ backgrounds just from their current job.

      1. Zee*

        I try to avoid mentioning my degree is in astrophysics because people get weird about it. I work in communications.

    6. annony*

      That final sentence is really what it comes down to. It is ok to not know your coworkers. It is not ok to assume there is nothing to know.

    7. Zee*

      Almost everyone I know who majored in a STEM field does something totally unrelated (including me).

      Actually, almost everyone I know who majored in the humanities also does something totally unrelated.

      Turns out most jobs don’t have directly relevant degrees and people change their careers often!

  7. Mark*

    #1. I may be extrapolating but I get the feeling that your boss has been waiting to speak to you on the topic of being dismissive of your female colleagues for a while. However all the complaints she has received have been vague and this is at last a one she can be concrete on. Being dismissive of a female colleague just because she runs a volunteer programme and could not possibly have advanced degrees in a STEM subject is problematic. Your decision to never engage in non work conversations with your peers probably means you have fixed views of acceptable or typical behaviours of others within society, my work is a lot more diverse than my social life and I have learned much from chatting to my work colleagues over the years.

    I would take your managers seriousness about the topic as a real wake up call about how you need to change your behaviour and attitude. It can be as simple as asking a colleague if they have plans for the weekend or listening to others as they chat while waiting for a meeting to start. You can be friendly as you want to be while still gathering little nuggets about your colleagues. If you had been listening or participating to your colleagues you could have just replied, “how cool, I didn’t know Nancy was a fossil expert, where were you hiking when you found it?” Not a lot of effort for you to say that, but it acknowledges Nancys skills and shows interest in the rock finder in a few short words.

    1. Pam Adams*

      Yes, you were rude and sexist. You cited Nancy’s background without knowing it, were entirely wrong, and still think you were right.

    2. IT Relationship Manager*

      Yeah it seems like his problem is that he wants to participate in the group without putting in any of the effort. I don’t know how you work with such a small group of people and choose not to know any personal facts about them. 40 hours a week with the same people, you end up knowing a lot about them!

      I’m not saying you need to get into people’s business but I’d hate to work in a group that didn’t care about me as a whole human being and not just what I do at work.

      1. Dog momma*

        Agree. For the boss to say LW accused the volunteer of lying on the resume is odd..I bet there’s more to the story and it isn’t the first time LW has done something/ said something like this. Hence the warning.

        1. Clisby*

          In a somewhat related vein, I think it’s *very* odd that Susan didn’t just speak up and say, “Didn’t you know Nancy has a degree in paleontology?” instead of going straight to the manager. It does make me wonder whether this was just the latest of several similar instances.

          1. Flibbergibbit*

            There are many personalities, relationships, and dynamics in the office I can think of that wouldn’t make this odd at all.

          2. Happy*

            It can be difficult to respond to people who are both very confident and very wrong. I can see how Susan might have thought that LW knew something she didn’t, until she double checked.

          3. Pizza Rat*

            whether this was just the latest of several similar instances.

            I think the odds of that are pretty good. I can totally understand feeling something like, “Oh not this **** again” in this situation and simply not wanting to deal in the moment. Walking away may have prevented a worse incident if Susan had lost her temper.

            1. Elle*

              This was my thought as well. The leap from “weird, this guy doesn’t know that Susan is the fossil queen” to “accusing colleagues of falsifying their resume” would seem like an escalation bordering on a non sequitur… unless this is strike six or something.

    3. allathian*

      Absolutely. That said, building relationships with your coworkers is an essential part of most jobs these days. Being willing to acknowledge your coworkers as humans with lives outside of work by engaging in casual non-work chat will mean that they’ll undoubtedly be willing to give you a bit more slack if you say something stupid. At the very least, they’ll ask you what you mean rather than simply jumping to the worst possible conclusion.

      1. Elizabeth*

        But I don’t come to work to socialize or build relationships with co-workers. I come to do my job. Your statement sounds like I should be judged by how well I socialize or for reasons other than how well I do my job. It’s also really insensitive to people who are neurodivergent and don’t like socializing.

        LW’s problem is his sexism, which has nothing to do with getting to know the co-worker.

        1. VintageLydia*

          Soft skills are part of almost every job. It’s ok to not want to socialize but don’t make assumptions like this OP did. Acknowledging coworkers have a life outside the workplace you know nothing about goes a long way and that’s something this OP messed up by not doing.

        2. allathian*

          I guess you wouldn’t assume things about your coworkers like the LW did, though?

          I generally don’t socialize with my coworkers outside of working hours and I’d hate to work in an environment where that would be necessary, but I quite enjoy small talk about non-work things during my breaks.

          1. Elle*

            That’s why it’s not the amount of socializing that’s the problem. It’s his behavior and nothing else.

        3. Mango Freak*

          Co-worker is a relationship. It is generally part of doing your job to have a good working relationship with your colleagues.

          That doesn’t inherently mean socializing.

        4. MigraineMonth*

          I don’t “socialize” a lot with my coworkers, and I would hate to have my job performance judged on that. I do have coworker relationships with them, though, and they’re critical to how well I do my job, even though my role is fairly technical.

          Relationship-building can be always communicating about expected timelines and when they get pushed back. It can be connecting two people who are having a similar problem to brainstorm a solution that works for both. It can be offering to take someone else’s tasks when they’re particularly overloaded with work. It doesn’t require knowing someone’s undergraduate degree, but it may mean keeping enough tabs on your coworkers and the workload to notice when Sue’s out and can’t get to Jody’s request within the timeframe Jody needs. It always means communicating in a respectful way and acknowledging others’ areas of expertise.

          From the reaction to OP’s comment, it seems that OP doesn’t have a solid enough relationship with Susan, Nancy or his own manager that they would give him the benefit of the doubt that he just said something silly and thoughtless in the moment. It indicates that he hasn’t created respectful and trusting relationships with his coworkers of many years, and quite frankly that is a performance problem.

        5. Tea Monk*

          Nod. I try to do some small talk and be polite, but I have a poor memory and may not remember that coworker A is actually an award winning runner or something.

          I think we really are lumping things together- there’s a large gap between not intentionally insulting your coworkers and being super chummy with them. The former is basic, the latter is too much to ask.

    4. Ellis Bell*

      To me, the word he didn’t say out loud… “silly” …. is the most problematic word! Assuming that someone professing to knowledge without obvious bona fides is “being silly” is a really patronising internal stance. That’s a dismissiveness that goes way beyond choosing only to have professional relationships. Even if you take the gender element out of it, it’s still not great because you’re still judging people’s entire knowledge by their job roles which is problematic in a completely different way. Try “How does Nancy know about fossils?” with genuine curiosity next time!

    5. Gamer Girl*

      Yes, right on the money, imo. I have worked with so many versions of this dude over the years.

      This immediately dismissive, too-cool-to-care attitude that additionally rejects apologizing? A routine lack of curiosity in conversations coupled with direct feedback about a dismissive attitude is a red flag for even bigger problems

      I wrote a bunch of examples that I deleted and am replacing it with advice I give my interns that I think equally applies to folks who perhaps get this same feedback:

      Be like Mr Rodgers and use actual conversational etiquette: assume that the person you’re speaking to knows about their topic and ask them genuine questions with a spirit of openness. Be willing to learn you didn’t have the full picture. Expect to always learn something. Be curious. Always err on the side of assuming that the other person actually knows more about what they’re talking about than you. Be polite, even when you have to disagree with someone, and don’t make people feel bad for talking to you!

  8. Luna*

    Flippant “why would she know that” comment was rude. Hopefully now OP knows that he, indeed, does not know everything. Boss did overreact.

    1. Myrin*

      I don’t even think that’s the thing that did him in, honestly. I mean, it’s very rude and dismissive, but if he’d left it at that – as a question – Susan presumably would’ve taken the opportunity to answer. It’s the decisive “That’s not her background!” which probably made the whole thing not only land badly but also OP to appear like a know-it-all (who doesn’t even know it all, to boot!).

      1. duinath*

        Plus, the laughing. When someone tells you they’re going to do something, responding by laughing and essentially telling them it’s a dumb thing to do is … almost always a mistake. The fact OP was not only wrong, but had no real reason to think they were right in the first place, really compounds the problem.

        “I’m going to ben&jerry’s to get some icecream”
        “HA! Why would you do that? They don’t sell icecream!”

        Later:
        “No, I’ve never been to ben&jerry’s. Why do you ask?”

      2. londonedit*

        Yeah, I have a couple of family members who are a bit like this. They have to be right, and they have to know more than everyone else. So nothing is a discussion with them – if you make a statement, they immediately snap back with ‘That’s not right! Why would you say that? It’s not X, it’s Y!’ Even if they don’t know what they’re talking about. And it can be really insignificant stuff – one of them once insisted on arguing with me about whether the animal in the field over the road was a horse or a pony. Just because I’d made an offhand comment about it being a pony – ‘That’s not a pony! It’s a horse! It’s far too big to be a pony! Ponies are smaller than that!’. If they’d presented it as ‘Ooh, is it a pony or a horse? I never know the difference – do you have any idea? Is it just size?’ then fine. But no, they have to immediately shout you down and tell you you’re wrong. I get the feeling OP1 is very much like this, too.

        1. Lawn Guyland Anonymous*

          My brother has never been allowed to forget a childhood argument with our sister over a road-trip “scavenger hunt” identification: “Well a horse is a cow!”

      3. Sean*

        And what makes it even worse still is that during his time in the office OP has gone out of his way to intentionally maintain a state of ignorance about his co-workers’ outside lives. That surely takes some effort, since OP would ordinarily pick up some details just from general osmosis alone.

        Then, having carefully crafted and maintained a Nancy-shaped hole in his awareness, that’s when he declares with absolute authority what is/is not Nancy’s areas of outside knowledge.

        That he can see nothing wrong in this shows that his lack of self-awareness matches his ignorance of anyone else in the office.

        Sheesh!

      4. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

        I’ve been waiting for someone to point out the phrasing! Boldly asserting what someone’s background is, when you don’t actually know their background, is especially egregious.

    1. Love me, love my cat*

      Haha. For readers who might have missed it, this is a reference to a letter from 09/21/21. Employee was fired for disabling a coworker’s caps lock.

  10. Kella*

    OP 1, you made three mistakes with that comment that were disrespectful to your coworkers.

    1. To reiterate something Alison touched on, despite recognizing that your level of knowledge about Nancy was low, you still assumed that you knew all relevant information on this topic. Approaching new information with curiosity instead of refuting reflexively it, is a habit and it sounds like one you don’t have. I highly recommend working on this, especially in contexts where there’s a lot you don’t know.

    2. When Susan told you her plan to ask Nancy about it, you assumed she didn’t have a good reason for doing so. This is honestly disrespectful to Nancy, too.

    3. You assumed that the skills Nancy had demonstrated while in your presence were the only ones that she had. I have a guess that this was not due to specific disrespect for Nancy but a wider issue of not recognizing the complexity of other people.

    None of these are deadly sins and in fact, they are extremely fixable! There is a pattern, however, of not having an awareness of the experience of people other than yourself, and not seeking it out either. Whether that pattern is impacted by sexism is hard to say but I wouldn’t discount that as a possibility.

    1. Anna*

      In your 2md point, I think you may have meant, “This is honestly disrespectful to Susan, too.”

    2. tangerineRose*

      “Approaching new information with curiosity instead of refuting reflexively it, is a habit and it sounds like one you don’t have. I highly recommend working on this, especially in contexts where there’s a lot you don’t know.”

      This! So much this!

  11. hiraeth*

    OP1, do you not see how consistently you assumed the women in this scenario didn’t know what they were talking about? You couldn’t have known that Nancy had a background in paleontology but you did immediately jump to the conclusion that she did not, and that Susan was wrong about her knowledge to boot. You didn’t say ‘Oh, does Nancy know about fossils?’ You asserted very confidently that she did not, to someone who knew that, in fact, she did.

    Just…try to bear in mind that there’s plenty you don’t know. And that other people may know more than you. Even, believe it or not, women.

    1. Green great dragon*

      Yeh. It takes a special kind of thinking to hear ‘I am going to ask Nancy about fossils’ and jump to ‘Clearly Nancy knows nothing about fossils and you are being laughably foolish in asking her’.

      I suspect Boss was aware of LW’s habitual dismissiveness to others (or perhaps only to women) and making the most of having a concrete example of the inappropriate behaviour. LW doesn’t come across as someone who would act on more general feedback on their in behaviour, since even with the very concrete example they are finding excuses from themselves.

  12. Nocturna*

    For LW1, I wonder if the manager talked to him about accusing a coworker of falsifying resume information because that’s how Susan reported it to the manager. I can definitely see it coming across that way to Susan, especially if Nancy is pretty open about her past experience such that it could be assumed to be common knowledge–because if Nancy’s background was actually known by LW1, that LW1 was accusing Nancy of lying would be pretty much the only logical conclusion to draw from him saying “that’s not her background”.

    1. bamcheeks*

      Yes, I was thinking that. OP sounded pretty confident that he DID know Nancy’s background– if “Nancy has an advanced degree in palaeontology and used to work in that field” is pretty widely known then “that’s not her background” does sound like less like, “I don’t know what Nancy did before this job but that seems unlikely” and more like, “I know she tells everyone she used to work in palaeontology but I know better”.

    2. MicroManagered*

      I read OP1’s description of the boss’s reaction the same way as I read the assumptions about Nancy —

      I’m sure the boss didn’t pull OP into her office and say “You accused Nancy of falsifying her resume and now you’re in trouble for it” — that seems like an absurd oversimplification.

      I CAN see a reasonable person saying something like “well you are basically saying Nancy falsified her resume because she has advanced degrees in paleontology” to make a point, which isn’t the same thing.

  13. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP1 (fossils) – as a woman in a STEM field I encounter secism often, but I don’t feel like OP was sexist or that it’s part of a pattern. OP was rude and dismissive, but actually the boss seems to be as bad. OP assumed that Nancy wouldn’t know about fossils, because she works in a completely unrelated field (but expressed it badly). Boss assumed that OP was accusing Nancy of falsifying her qualifications, and even gave a verbal warning (which, despite being “verbal” still goes on your record I assume) about this, without bothering to find out the facts. I wonder what other capricious decisions the boss makes.

    1. Emmy Noether*

      I agree there’s not enough evidence for a pattern in the letter itself, but in my experience with people who say this kind of thing, it’s a general attitude, not an isolated incident.

      It’s not a case of mistakenly confusing Nancy with someone else and thinking she had a degree in, say, English lit and also said she hates rocks. It’s making sweeping, confident statements (contradicting a person with more info, no less!) on no basis whatsoever, and people who do that always make a habit of it in my experience. So it’s very probably a pattern, though whether it’s sexism or general rudeness is not clear from this one incident.

      Their boss is better placed to know which it is.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        Agree with all of this. This is the first time there was so much pushback to OP’s pattern that it really registered for OP that people believed he was wrong, about something he was wrong about.

    2. Irish Teacher.*

      My guess is that Nancy talks a lot abut paleontology and her interest in it is well known in the office, but not to the LW since he doesn’t talk about personal topics much. So the boss assumed everybody knew this and therefore took “Nancy doesn’t have that background” to mean “Nancy doesn’t have the background she regularly talks about having.”

      Yeah, the boss still approached it in a very adversarial way, but my impression is that he was genuinely concerned the LW MIGHT have found out that Nancy was lying about her background since his phraseology implies concrete knowledge that she does not have any qualifications in the area. It would still probably be better to address it as “I’ve been told that you raised doubts about Nancy’s qualifications in palaeontology. Have you any reason to believe she does not hold these qualifications?” rather than “why did you say she lied?” but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that if somebody says, “Nancy does not have a background in palaeontology,” they have actually some reason to believe this beyond the person not working in that area.

    3. tangerineRose*

      Whether OP was being sexist or not, I wouldn’t want to work with him. People who act like assumptions are the absolute truth are a pain to deal with!

  14. Irish Teacher.*

    The first one is bizarre. “Why did my boss criticise me for making definitive claims about her background? How was I supposed to know her background?”

    It’s also weird that he was reluctant to apologise. If I had made assumptions about somebody’s background that dismissed their expertise, I’d be anxious to apologise. Heck, even if she didn’t have a background in fossils, the phraseology is dismissive enough that an apology would be warranted.

    And the last…yikes! I don’t like the idea of asking for permission to marry somebody anyway, but choosing their boss rather than their mother seems to highlight the sexism of the concept, like he had to find a man with authority over her to ask.

    1. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

      > It’s also weird that he was reluctant to apologise

      Is it? If I made a (admittedly rude) remark that was based on lack of knowledge, and had to apologise for “accusing Nancy of falsifying her qualifications” – which I hadn’t done – I’d be reluctant too.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. But you’d still think he’d want to say, “gosh, I’m really sorry I made assumptions about your qualifications. I didn’t mean to suggest you weren’t knowledgeable.”

        If the boss said, “apologise to her for lying about her falsifying her qualifications,” then yeah, I can see why he’d have a problem, but if it was more “do you have evidence Nancy falsified her qualifications? That is a really serious accusation,” “what? What qualifications?” “Nancy has a qualification in paleontology,” “well, I didn’t know that. I assumed her qualifications were in the area she works in,” “you sounded dismissive and sexist. Apologise to her,” then it makes less sense.

      2. Fíriel*

        Yes, this seems like the root of the problem to me too. LW did something wrong (was rude to a coworker (possibly two)), but instead of being told to apologize for the rudeness, he was (according to him) told to apologize for a more serious offence that didn’t happen, which is allowing LW to deflect from and not address the wrong thing he actually did.

        1. Florence Reece*

          I’m not sure he was told to apologize for that, though! He was told that accusing someone is serious, confessed that he had no idea that he was accusing her because he didn’t know about her background at all and was assuming, his boss said he needed to be more aware of how his words came across. I lean towards what others have said about the boss using the ‘accusation’ angle as a way to make it really, really clear how serious it is to make unfounded claims about your [female] colleagues’ expertise as if you know anything, when you obviously do not know anything.

          Then, *after* the “‘advice’ about being more aware of how my words came across”: “I was also asked to apologize to Nancy – which I reluctantly did.” That sounds more like “hey, you made an assumption and sounded like a jerk, you need to apologize for being a jerk.”

          1. Florence Reece*

            Ah, I meant to say, I’m not sure he even claimed to be told to apologize for that. There’s a full paragraph between “accusation” and “go apologize.” He may have walked away thinking that because he doesn’t seem to grasp why this is a problem, but I don’t see where he said that was the direction from his boss.

            1. Irish Teacher.*

              And I’d be more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt here if he said something like “obviously I’m really embarrassed about the assumptions I made and would have immediately apologised if anybody had told me about my mistake but the boss wants me to apologise for accusing her of lying, which I did not do” as opposed to “I don’t see that I did anything wrong,” when he did clearly do something wrong – making assumptions about Nancy’s background and mocking Susan when she was totally correct here.

              I don’t know if he was being sexist but he was definitely being arrogant and dismissive and jumping to conclusions.

      3. Mango Freak*

        If you’re admitting that the remark was rude, you should apologize for the rudeness.

        Technically, I suppose it’s not “weird” to not like apologizing, in that it’s a common trait. But it’s not rational or defensible to not apologize when you know you were rude.

  15. Janne*

    “Talk to her today, and enjoy the soothing feel of standard case on your eyes tomorrow.”
    Beautiful sentence.

  16. Ellis Bell*

    I don’t know if this came up in the original comments, but the reaction to Nancy seems like we haven’t come that far since Mary Anning pioneered fossil discovery. She had no schooling or fancy job whatsoever.

    2. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

      Oh, we definitely haven’t come far since then. There are a lot of people who have no schooling/fancy education who get dismissed despite having years of actual experience in certain fields. Or people who have schooling/education in one area that get dismissed in others despite years of experience because their education isn’t in that particular field.

  17. Varthema*

    I feel like multiple advanced degrees in a frankly-kinda-cool field is way more likely to have come up in small talk around the office, especially when she was first hired, because that’s the kind of thing people talk about. I’m all for keeping work and life separate but generally we tend to know at least one or two major things about the people we work with in a small office, especially when it’s been literally years and you’ve been around during each person’s new hire phase, which is when this kind of thing comes up.

    1. Not That Kind of Doctor*

      Right? This is prime “Two Truths and a Lie” material, like my one coworker who was on Jeopardy.

      1. Chirpy*

        I’ve worked with some of my coworkers for years, and I’d bet most of them don’t know my interesting former job or degree.

    2. NotAnotherManager!*

      I used to work with an attorney who started his career as a zoologist, and it was definitely one of the office’s well-known fun facts. He worked for some time for a well-known zoo as well, though I cannot recall which animals he cared for. It was one of his go-to Two Truths & a Lie icebreaker facts.

    3. Zee*

      A lot of people don’t want to have to deal with the “omg if you have a PhD in paleontology why are you here???” questions. Sometimes field changes are traumatic, and they’re always personal.

      People can also start to act strangely around you once they know you have a certain degree, like you’re somehow rubbing it in their faces that you’re smarter than them when you never said anything of the sort.

      1. Kay*

        True, but there is no evidence of that in this case. Rather the opposite- a coworker brought in a fossil for her to see, and Boss treats it as common knowledge

  18. Melissa*

    #1–
    I agree with Alison that this is likely a sign of an ongoing problem. I’m picturing myself in your shoes, and if I giggled and said “Nancy? Why?!” it would not lead to the sort of intervention you’re talking about. But if I already had a reputation for scoffing, minimizing people’s accomplishments, etc, this could be the final straw.

  19. Someone*

    For number 3, I don’t really have anything more to say than Alison has said. Personally, I would not touch other people’s property.
    On a slightly related note. The head office of my organisation has a mysterious pair of shoes on a shelf. The closest department is IT, but the shoes don’t belong to them and they say that it’s not their problem. Nobody has touched them for months, maybe years. That’s the correct approach since they belong to someone and aren’t causing a hazard.

    1. Ali + Nino*

      Sorry…those shoes have been there for YEARS? There must be some kind of statute of limitations. I think they would be well within their right to get rid of the shoes by this point. Clearly the owner hasn’t missed them, or can’t remember where they misplaced the shoes, and it’s time for everyone to move on.

  20. bamcheeks*

    I’m kind of sorry for LW1 for not knowing that people in what look like Very Ordinary Jobs can have sll sorts of hinterlands that are nothing to do with what they are doing now. One thing I find quite delightful about being in my forties is knowing that when I meet someone my age with 2.4 kids and a very ordinary job like “youth worker” or “retail manager” or “network administrator”, there is no way of knowing whether they initially trained as a palaeontologist or a classical musician, or spent the best part of ten years dancing in a field on the illegal party scene, or have a whole set of grown-up children and grandchildren who are older than their youngest, or were temporarily a multimillionaire in the dotcom bubble, or were in a band that had three top 40 hits in the late-90s and almost made it. People make all sorts of huge shifts in their lives and have all sorts of backgrounds, and it’s truly marvellous. Embrace it!

    2. Polar Bear*

      Yes! I recently learned that an acquaintance was a backcountry tour guide in her youth and her group survived a polar bear attack! I learn so much by just being curious about others’ lived experiences.

          1. Curious*

            As the saying goes, “You don’t need to run faster than the bear. You just need to run faster than the guy next to you” (or, here, the slowest in your group).

    3. Angstrom*

      I live in an area known for outdoor sports. It’s a running joke here that if someone says in casual conversation something like “I like to ski” you’ll later find out that they were a national team member or Olympian. Plus, being a university town, there are a lot of people with degrees not related to their current employment. Quiet waters run deep…

    4. i am a human*

      This is my favorite comment. I default to assuming everyone has a story to tell from their background and I delight in finding out what those things are.

    5. NotAnotherManager!*

      I work in a very staid, kind of boring industry (including law firms), and have, to date, worked with a former zoologist, someone who was a finalist on a well-known reality show, two Olympians, a published poet, a best-selling author, two ambassadors, more musicians of all genres than I can count, and a retired opera singer. Their careers are related to none of those, and those are just the ones I know about.

      People are fascinating and have a whole life outside the office.

  21. Michigander*

    I think LW1’s response is telling of his attitude in general. Not necessarily towards women (but maybe), but just a generally dismissive attitude. If someone said they’d check a fossil out with a coworker my natural response would be along the lines of, “Oh, does she know a lot about fossils?” and not “How absurd, obviously she won’t know the answer to that”.

  22. Turingtested*

    LW 1 is baffling. OP was rude, but his boss seemed to really come down hard. And it could be part of a bigger pattern, but the manager should’ve been addressing OP’s inappropriate behavior all along not waiting to blow something out of proportion.

    1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      It’s the specifics of the phrasing – “Why would Nancy know anything about fossils” is sexist and rude but probably wouldn’t have resulted in the conversation. “That’s not her background” is a statement of fact. And multiple people at the office (like anyone involved in the hiring process) would know Nancy listed paleontology degrees.

      1. Somehow I Manage*

        “That’s not her background” is a statement of fact, but it is one that stems from LW’s ignorance. I don’t read the statement as an accusation of lying.

        I think if this was the first instance of this kind of situation, which may or may not be the case, boss might have been better saying “Why would you suggest that it isn’t Nancy’s background. She has a degree in paleontology” to educate versus suggest that LW is accusing Nancy of something.

        1. ecnaseener*

          We don’t read it as an accusation of lying because we know it wasn’t. If you were the boss and Susan said “LW is claiming Nancy doesn’t have a paleontology background” would you really stop and say “oh, but do you think he meant it as an authoritative claim, or is it possible he never knew what Nancy’s background is and just confidently asserted it wasn’t paleontology anyway?” I probably wouldn’t — even if I asked Susan for more details, she’d relay LW’s comment verbatim and it would very much sound like he was purporting to know the truth.

        2. Irish Teacher.*

          My guess is that Nancy talks a lot about paleontology so it didn’t even occur to the boss that the LW might not have known she claimed to have a background in it. It’s just a guess but it would make the boss’s reaction make more sense and given that the LW says he avoids too much small talk but Susan seemed to know Nancy’s background, it fits that everybody else might know and he might have missed it.

      1. Butterfly Counter*

        I suppose it depends.

        “That’s not her background,” said with scoffing confidence to someone who absolutely knows that it is her background might make them question if OP is outwardly making an accusation. Yes, Susan could have asked him, but the laughing, scoffing attitude probably made her want to end the conversation as soon as possible. And Susan might have even questioned her own knowledge on Nancy’s background.

        So, she checks with her boss, “Hey, Boss! OP1 says Nancy doesn’t have a background in paleontology, but I was pretty sure she did. She does, right?”

        Because with the confidence with which it was said, OP1 really did accuse Nancy of falsifying her background by saying that he knew for sure that it wasn’t her background. As the kid say, don’t start none, won’t be none. OP1 started something.

    3. Ann O'Nemity*

      I’m also a bit baffled about #1.

      LW made an incorrect and dismissive assumption about Nancy’s background to Susan. Next, the LW gets a verbal warning for accusing a coworker of falsifying her resume. What? And then Nancy is strangely hurt about the whole thing, even though she wasn’t in the original conversation with LW and Susan.

      Is Susan stirring up trouble and exaggerating? Is the boss jumping to conclusions? Is the LW an unreliable narrator?

      Ultimately I agree with Alison’s comment – there is a problem with the way the LW is perceived in the workplace and in their relationships with coworkers. If LW was generally liked but made a one-time flippant comment, I can’t imagine it would have gone down this way.

  23. Benihana scene stealer*

    LW1 may have been a bit rude, but it also sounds like the boss was severely overreacting. It seems pretty clear it was an offhand comment and not intended to be an accusation of resume falsfiication. And a verbal warning? Come on..

    1. londonedit*

      I think I know what the boss was doing. If OP1 has a reputation for being abrasive or dismissive of their work colleagues, I think the ‘I’m aware of an allegation that Nancy has falsified qualifications on her CV, is that what you’re saying? That would be extremely serious and we’d need to conduct a full investigation’ is intended to make the OP think about what they’re actually saying and how it’s coming across, and it’s intended to make them say ‘No, no – that’s not what I meant. I just didn’t know she had a science background. I apologise – I shouldn’t have assumed’. I don’t think the boss genuinely had any intention of investigating. The warning also says to me that this isn’t the first time the OP has ruffled feathers – as does their lack of willingness to apologise or see that they’ve done anything wrong.

      1. Not That Kind of Doctor*

        I can absolutely imagine trying, “Do you realize you blundered into a serious accusation?” as a wake-up call if “you need to work on your tone and stop assuming nobody could know anything you don’t ” wasn’t registering.

        1. Falling Diphthong*

          And in fact I would guess that the OP has been told in the past “you need to work on your tone and stop assuming nobody could know anything you don’t” and confidently dismissed this feedback as everyone else being unreasonable.

      2. Vanamonde von Mekkhan*

        That is how I read it as well. Boss has in the past tried more usual methods to get LW1 to be less rude and sexist but always failed. Now they have tired of that and take things farther to get the message across.

        And LW1 comes across as being indifferent to how they come across. Chances are they have forgotten about all previous conversations because to them there never was an issue so not worth remembering and thus are not included in the letter.

      3. Parakeet*

        I will say, in places I’ve worked that use that phrase, a “verbal warning” is a pretty big deal. Despite the benign-sounding name, it’s a formal disciplinary step that you have to sign, that affects your next evaluation and goes in your “file,” and is the first step of documentation toward being fired for cause for repeat bad or negligent behavior (it goes verbal warning, written warning, final warning, fired). I got one once at a previous because I was sleep-deprived, new, and doing a particular task for the first time, and broke a major org policy by accident. Because of the mitigating circumstances (only a couple months into job, first time at task, sleep-deprived, org was new to remote work and thus I hadn’t gotten the level of training that people usually get), everyone was comparatively understanding about it, but org policy was that if you broke this particular policy you got a strike against you, period. And despite people’s understanding it was still a Big Deal. So my eyebrows went up big time at the mention of the verbal warning. Either the boss is reacting a little weirdly, or something else is going on (like an ongoing pattern of behavior) that the LW didn’t say.

        Being told to apologize, though, that doesn’t raise my eyebrows at all. The LW acted like an arrogant, dismissive snob.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      I think the accusation of lying is strange, especially when you hear OP tell it, but the misunderstanding is probably born out of his being way too outspoken and out of step with the culture. Remember he didn’t just say “why would she know about that?”, which was closer to what he meant (and would still have been rude), he said definitively: “that’s not her background” as though he knew her background better than Susan. I also got the impression that everyone except him knows Nancy’s background and until he was asked about it, people frankly didn’t believe that he was that tuned out because it is such a small office and they have all talked about it. It’s unfortunate for OP that two such critical missteps collided – the fact that other people knew better than him, and the fact he has a habit of sounding like he knows better than others – he probably would have gotten away with one or the other, but not both.

    3. DramaQ*

      I wonder if either we’re getting an unreliable narrator or maybe the boss was trying to get the LW to understand how what he says and how he says it can come across. Right now it was just Nancy which was rude and inappropriate but it’s a coworker. What happens if LW scoffs at a grand boss or a client? Those people make take it the wrong way and run with it a lot further than Susan did. Not wanting to be friends with your coworkers is one thing, knowing so little and then acting like you DO know to the point where you scoff can backfire bigly. From the tone of the letter I doubt this is the first time something like this happened it is just now it’s finally one where the boss can actually point out this has nothing to do with “being friends” or “socializing” this is you being a pompous rude jerk and that can come back to haunt you. You got lucky this time. Considering the LW still doesn’t see that they said anything rude and “reluctantly” apologized to Nancy for assuming that she didn’t know anything outside her job scope I don’t think the boss’s message got through this time either.

  24. FashionablyEvil*

    Ugh, #4. I have a colleague who writes her emails just fine but her templated signature is:

    THANKS,

    Beth

    And every time I read it, it’s like she’s shouting at me. (I have not mentioned it since we interact via email only a handful of times a year.)

  25. Morning Reader*

    These days when people often have more than one career, or degree, or professional level interest different from their primary job, it’s strange to assume they don’t have expert knowledge outside the job they have now. It might be sexism to assume a woman doesn’t have expertise, but it’s just bizarre, especially when you say you don’t have much knowledge about your coworkers’ lives outside of the job, to be so dismissive. I would think NP work often attracts people from diverse professional backgrounds.
    I’m used to libraries. We had shelvers with PhDs. (Their degrees were not in shelving.) A retired biologist working on the bookmobile. Chemists in circulation. None of those jobs related to their degrees or previous professional work. (Although a chemistry background can be useful in circulation.) So many staffers with interesting unrelated backgrounds that it became a regular feature in the staff newsletter, “what you may not know about Nancy.” Professional musicians and artists, collectors of intriguing artifacts, veterans.

  26. Lab Rabbit*

    I’m kind of wondering why Susan didn’t say “Nancy has a degree in paleontology. Didn’t you know that?”

    What is going on in this office?

    1. Socks*

      Off the top of my head, a few possibilities:
      1. Susan heard about Nancy’s paleontology creds second-hand and OP’s response made her doubt herself
      2. She didn’t feel like continuing a conversation with a guy who just laughed at her
      3. Past experience has shown her correcting OP just leads to him doubling down
      4. She just has trouble contradicting people even when she knows she’s right
      5. She was caught so off guard that by the time she figured out what to say the moment was past

      Or a combination of any of those or a million other reasons

    2. metadata minion*

      Given how emphatic the LW was, I could easily see myself in that situation assuming that if I tried to correct him, he would continue to insist he was right, and just wanting to end the weird and unpleasant conversation as soon as possible.

    3. Florence Reece*

      It sounds like Susan showed the LW the fossil like…pretty casually. She came to work, said hello to her coworker, acknowledged the weirdness of holding a rock by saying, “I think this is a fossil, I gotta ask Nancy about it!” And then her coworker laughed in her face and told her she was wrong.

      It feels more similar to “good morning, sure is rainy outside, I hope Nancy can lend me an umbrella!” A friendly greeting, a low-key interaction with a coworker to be sociable. The kind of thing you might say as you’re walking past someone on the way to your own workspace. And then her coworker is like, “Ha! What! It’s cloudy outside, and Nancy doesn’t own an umbrella!” It’s a weird, intense reaction. I wouldn’t want to engage either if I was just trying to say hello.

    4. DramaQ*

      Cause Susan didn’t feel like hitting the LW in the head with a rock that day?

      I doubt this the first time the LW has come off like a jerk since it appears to be a point of pride for them about being the longest term employee yet still knows absolutely nothing about his/her coworkers.

      Even just the tone of the letter made me bristle. How belittling to think you know someone’s entire educational/knowledge background just because you know their job title.

      And it also makes you wonder what they think about you professionally since the LW doubled down with the manager about Nancy being “just a volunteer coordinator!”

      Maybe it became a weird game of telephone. Maybe Susan is just finally tired of the LW and found something to go to the manager over and push for a discussion to happen.

      Maybe it is not as clean cut as the LW presents it as since they clearly do not feel they did anything wrong.

  27. SicilianBlood*

    #1 Why Susan gave the strange look and said nothing? They could have say “Nancy has a degree in palentology, don’t you know?”. The fact they didn’t is so strange: why not stand for Nancy? If sexism is what was perceived, you do not walk away! You try to correct others so they can see things differently.

    1. I didn't say banana*

      The guy just scoffed at her idea and dismissed another woman’s expertise. Susan is under no obligation to go back for a third helping of sexism.

        1. mel*

          LOL, where are you pulling this out of? If a woman laughed at a man (which, women already know this is often unsafe to do, so suspend disbelief for the sake of your genderflip “arguement”) and utterly dismissed the expertise of another man in the next breath, it’d be unsurprising that either man would not want to further engage with the woman, who has shown herself to be closed-minded. Why would you think I didn’t say banana would think otherwise?

          1. anon4ny*

            True that- I really didn’t think about the power imbalance or that the fact a man is statistically more likely to kill a women for laughing at him than vice-versa, by a wide margin.

            Wish I could withdraw my initial comment…

    2. Antilles*

      Given that OP laughed in Susan’s face AND insulted Nancy in the same breath, what exactly makes you think an attempt “you try to correct others” would have achieved anything? I suspect the reason Susan just walked away is that she knew that OP wouldn’t listen to her anyways.
      It’s also not Susan’s job to teach “How to be a reasonable person 101” to a professional adult man.

    3. Mango Freak*

      Wait, you think it’s strange to not correct people every time they do something sexist? That happens all the time.

  28. Not That Kind of Doctor*

    The part of OP1 that I keep coming back to is that he’s writing to AAM to say, “Was it really bad that I said this when I didn’t know?”, having completely missed that his feeling free to authoritatively dismiss the possibility of a coworker’s expertise just because he didn’t know about it is the entire problem.

    1. Benihana scene stealer*

      I guess to me those are pretty much the same thing – as far as we can tell it’s not like OP said “What? That’s absurd – Nancy doesn’t have the brains to know anything about fossils!?” Just that she wasn’t aware that was an area of expertise for Nancy.

      It still sounds like it came off rudely but unless there’s a history with OP it sounds like Susan and the boss are escalating unnecessarily

      1. I guess my entire company was the real work wife the whole time.*

        Do you really not see a difference between hearing a fact that surprises you and saying, “Wow, that fact surprises me, why is something that I don’t understand happening?” versus saying, “That fact surprises me and therefore it must be wrong and I’m going to immediately dismiss it”?

        1. Benihana scene stealer*

          I do see the difference, and as I mentioned it does sound rude, but if that’s really all that happened a verbal warning seems an overreaction imo. Also, the boss said OP had accused N of falsifying their resume – I don’t think that happened at all.

          1. Falling Diphthong*

            The boss’s reaction suggests this was the 137th straw, which triggered a direct talking to. OP is unaware of the previous 136 straws, but his coworkers are not.

            (And it’s possible he was talked to about straws 41, 47, 62, 99, and 110, but felt that everyone else was wrong and so those don’t count.)

            1. Benihana scene stealer*

              If that’s the case, then I’d agree… That wasn’t mentioned in the letter though and i’ve had my hand slapped for speculating so didn’t want to go there

    3. Ellis Bell*

      I was thinking of that guy’s message to Astrokatie on Twitter when she expressed sadness about climate change and how her scathing comeback went viral about how she had “learned some science” actually. It wasn’t rude to not know her background, it was rude to assume her background.

    2. Sean*

      I would imagine: “Even if the fossil turns out to be a simple rock, there is a genuine caveman in this office.”

  30. Delta Delta*

    I remember Letter 1 from before and I still have the same reaction to it: why does OP react the way he does? If someone wants to show me a fossil they found on a hike, my response is never going to be “how could you possibly know about fossils?” and is always going to be “hey! Cool rock!” Why? Because rocks are cool. Also, from where I sit, the topic initially isn’t the rock but that Nancy is interested in the rock so I want to know why Nancy is interested. If it then comes out that Nancy is also a paleontologist or an amateur rockhound or was taking a walk and just really liked the rock, then I learn that through conversation. Then the topic might genuinely become focused on the rock and less on Nancy’s interest.

    I wonder if OP would have reacted the same way if Nancy brought in a tray of petits fours? Would he have blurted out, “but Nancy’s not a pastry chef! what does she know about baking?”

    1. pally*

      I’m with you-interested in the rock/fossil. If someone says “let’s show Nancy!”- way cool! I’m headed over to her as I bet there’s good reason to show Nancy. I will get to learn about it.

      I had a co-worker/friend who always had the OP kind of response. I recall mentioning a hobby of mine and her comment was, “what could you possibly know about that?”.
      It didn’t bother me much at the time. It was just the way she was.

      After she left for another job, a few co-workers and I had the opportunity to meet her at a professional organization meeting held at her company (it was a very nice facility). After, she showed us the open jobs board. As I perused the jobs, she saw me reading a position with “level 8 pay” (this was a salary term specific to the company). She laughed. She was a level 7 herself- how could I possibly think I could get a job that paid more than what she got?

      So I stopped reading the jobs.

      Later, a co-worker mentioned to me, “I thought you said she was your friend. She sure didn’t sound like one to you.” Lightbulb moment for me.

    2. Pita Chips*

      That’s exactly where I went. “Someone knows about fossils? Cool!” I had a co-worker who was a rock hound and I remember her coming in with a fire opal she found once. It was gorgeous!

    3. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

      OP would not have said, “but Nancy’s not a pastry chef! what does she know about baking?” Because Nancy is a woman, and women know all about baking. Because they are women.

      I hope you know that I’m being sarcastic.

  31. I should really pick a name*

    Ultimately, this means either my counterpart or I have to re-do all the work she’s just completed (defeating the point of bringing her on the team) or the letter is sent to the client looking sloppy or poorly generated by a computer.

    I don’t get this. If all-caps is enough of a problem that it had to be re-done, then it’s enough of a problem to address it with the new employee AND have her redo it.

    To me it seems like we’re trying to push our stylistic preferences on her even though our way is the conventional format

    Most companies want consistent formatting when they send out communications. Pushing stylistic preferences in a situation like this is perfectly fine.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      Yes! One of the first things I ask in a new job is whether they have a style guide. Format is such a normal thing to insist on.

      1. Pita Chips*

        That’s a smart move. Several places I’ve worked have had specific communications guidelines, down to the font size.

    2. Falling Diphthong*

      When AAM tried out a new blog format, people weighed in (when asked) and the number of fonts went down. It’s really normal to do things in a conventional way, because that is easy for people familiar with the convention to use.

      See a zillion rants about websites that believe the business address and hours of operation should be an exciting quest for the user.

  32. Bill and Heather's Excellent Adventure*

    I find the situation in #5 utterly bizarre. I have issues with a man asking someone else’s permission to marry a woman at all, but if you simply MUST ask someone, why not her mother? She’s the person who brought her up, after all, the only parent this person has. Asking the boss just because he’s a man is all kinds of weird.

    1. Flax Dancer*

      And no matter how traditional it is, my own personal antanae would go up at the idea of a man assuming that he must ask anyone else at all for permission to marry a woman – if SHE gives her assent, that’s all he needs! This sounds way too much like the woman-as-property mindset that, unfortunately, is still with us far too often. It also makes me wonder how he’ll treat his fiancee after they’re married…will he really see her as his equal or will he assume that she’s a piece of property that’s been transferred from one male owner to another (him)?

    2. pally*

      Agree- with you and Flax Dancer.

      I kinda wonder how the man would react if the boss had given an emphatic “no” to the request. Would that “no” really hold any weight? If so, why?

  33. dulcinea47*

    I guess it’s because I work in a field where almost everyone knows about a lot of things that aren’t related to their job (librarianship- we’re a naturally curious group) that my reaction would always be “Oh, does Nancy know about fossils?”

    Maybe just don’t assume what people do and don’t know based on their current role. Certainly don’t scoff at them. I’m wondering what LW’s role was b/c it really sounds like they think they’re better than anyone who’s “just” a volunteer coordinator. (I have coordinated volunteers. IT’s hard.)

  34. Agent Diane*

    For LW4, capitalisation is not just a style thing but is exclusionary. There is a reason all UK government style guides insist on standard case.

    All caps is much harder for people with visual or cognitive impairments to read, since a lot of reading is really about recognising the shape of words in standard case. Throwing an ALL caps word into a sentence, as the new hire is doing, is disrupting the ability to quickly read and understand the sentence. It’s the opposite of clearly communicating.

    On top of that, online culture has codified all caps as shouting. So new hire is being both rude and exclusionary.

    I would love an update on this one (and on letters 1 and 5 today).

    1. Good Enough For Government Work*

      Also, many screenreaders interpret all-caps text as acronyms, and therefore read them out O N E L E T T E R A T A A T I M E…

  35. Somehow I Manage*

    Regarding the first letter, I find the boss’s reaction to be far more serious than what was warranted. The LW was ignorant (more on that in a second) about Nancy’s background. They didn’t know that Nancy had a background in paleontology. There’s nothing in the comment that accuses Nancy of falsifying qualifications. It was an ignorant statement that, while completely wrong, didn’t suggest Nancy had done something wrong. Being told that they’d accused Nancy of something seems like quite the overstep.

    Now, the ignorance part… Even if you’re not super close with coworkers and don’t want to socialize and chit chat, I find it very hard to understand how you’d not know at least some very basic information about them. Not being friends with coworkers is fine. Not discussing weekend plans is fine. Not talking about personal stuff is fine. But I do think having a basic sense of who you’re in a building with, especially on a smaller team, will help. You’re not going to walk into a situation like this unknowingly. And you’re also going to have a better understanding of interpersonal dynamics if you know some basic information about the people you work with. I say this as someone who has worked my entire career in situations where the teams are this size or smaller. I don’t “hang out” with my coworkers regularly. I don’t have super personal conversations with all of my coworkers. But I do have a basic understanding of who my teammates are. And that helps me work better with them.

    1. Nocturna*

      If it’s general knowledge in the office that Nancy has a paleontology background, then laughing and confidently, dismissively stating “that’s not her background”, as LW did, would sound like the LW was saying that Nancy’s background wasn’t actually what she said it was. We know LW didn’t mean it as an accusation because we know his thought process, but Susan and the manager didn’t have that information.

  36. Czech Mate*

    #2 – I think this also depends partly on whether the person who was fired/laid off has been posting about the old employer on social media or publicly bashing them in some way. If that’s the case, then yes, I definitely think (good) employers would think long and hard about hiring that person.

  37. Emily of New Moon*

    Honestly, I think the boyfriend in #5 was even more sexist than the LW of #1. Why can’t the boyfriend ask the mother of his girlfriend? The idea that he has to ask a man/father figure for permission is gross. Actually, the idea that he has to ask anyone other than his girlfriend is gross. She’s not anyone’s property.

    1. bamcheeks*

      Yeah, I know many people enjoy the traditional pagentry and symbolism of weddings without ascribing deeper meaning to them, it’s not that deep etc — but still, giving a long list of important women in his fiancee’s life only to dismiss them as insufficiently authoritative to be asked for permission is just … well, wow. It kind of makes me feel sad for her mom and grandma and all her aunts!

    3. Falling Diphthong*

      It seems like there’s a good case that this arose out of talking with the girlfriend.

      I think the young people are wrong, and OP is right. But given the absolute pervasiveness of the storytelling trope “I want to ask Sarah to marry me, and than means tracking down the father she hasn’t seen in 12 years to get his blessing” I can see where they got the idea.

      Weddings can do weird things to people as they try to figure out how to fit into the norms of something they have never done. My daughter asked if we wanted to be asked for her hand in marriage, and our starting position was “Of course not” but that quickly went to “… Wait, is this really important to one of you? If it’s important to one of you we could do it.”

      I’d put this one more in the lines of explaining to the young people in the office that they should remove the tacking on their suit vent, use standard grammar in business communication, and keep wedding stuff between the family members.

    4. Unsure about that*

      Storytime, for a story I’ve never had place to share this…

      I work in area where we conduct research, do analysis and present findings that may or may not be accepted. Other parties are also free to present their findings using the same process.

      One day a particular co-worker offered that they thought one participants not our team was a good employee because when he presented his views he talked like a “daddy” which made him sound convincing to them. I use this this story as a data point whenever I engage with this particular co-worker and have to consider their judgement.

      1. Dawn*

        You know, personally, there’s only one way I can read that word after the last decade or so, and it’s not a way I’d ever consider using in a work context.

    5. Dawn*

      I strongly suspect that there’s a piece of this story that we’re missing, like that they follow a religion or philosophy that’s rooted in the norms of the past (see: “tradwife”) and this seemed like a reasonable thing to both of them, within their paradigm.

    6. Polly Hedron*

      the idea that he has to ask anyone other than his girlfriend is gross. She’s not anyone’s property.

      That’s why I hated the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

    7. Beany*

      From the letter: “He even showed me texts where they discussed getting married in the future and she mentions me being like a father to her and saying my blessing would be great.”

      If the girlfriend mentioned having LW’s blessing, the boyfriend didn’t dream this up out of nowhere.

  38. Poppy of Dimwood Forest*

    For LW2, it’s good to remember that there may be things going on behind the scenes of which you are not aware.

    My partner is a mandatory reporter. He had to report a co-worker for an inappropriate relationship with a vulnerable person (not a child or teen). The co-worker resigned and the vulnerable person didn’t want to pursue it legally. Fortunately she has a good support system.

    The co-worker gave everyone the impression that he left for health reasons. People have been asking my partner when the co-worker is coming back. He obviously cannot give all the details.

    Not all well liked people are wrongfully terminated.

    1. MsM*

      Looks like the LW posted in the comments of the original post as “Brianna,” and wow – lots going on behind the scenes for sure.

      2. Hlao-roo*

        Thank you for this tip–so much more drama than in the letter! I’m glad “Brianna” shared the details.

    2. Lady Danbury*

      As someone who’s been in involved in more than my fair share of firings (yay legal!), it’s highly unlikely that I would protest on anyone’s behalf unless I had documented proof of wrongful termination. Just because I know someone in a personal context does not mean that I know them in a professional context. Just because I know someone in a professional context does not mean that I know the ins and outs of their job performance, problematic actions, etc. I’ve been involved in some firings where the firing offense was completely in line with what I already knew about the person and others where it was a complete shock.

  39. Alan*

    #1 seems to find apologizing hard. It’s really not. “Hey Susan/Nancy, I don’t know what I was thinking. That was a stupid thing for me to say and I’m sorry.” There. Done. Apologizing is a tremendously useful skill. You’ll need it as a future parent/spouse/partner unless (A) you’re perfect or (B) you want your family to resent you. The inability to apologize is nothing more than weakness. Suck it up. Work those apology muscles.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        But without hitting the aspects “Acknowledge what harm you caused and determine how you will do better in future.” OP said “I’m sorry” when ordered to do so, but doesn’t see any possible harm nor any need to change their approach.

        1. Sunflower*

          Yeah, it’s like school children ordered to apologize to each other after a fight. They don’t mean it. They were just ordered to do it by an authority figure.

    2. Silver Robin*

      why are you assuming OP1 wants to be a future parent/spouse/partner?

      Apologizing is a useful skill for being in society and community with other people. Does not matter what your relationship to them is.

      1. Dawn*

        I don’t think they’re assuming it but, suggesting that if – as many people do – the OP does decide to become a parent one day, this skill will prove useful to them at that time.

        I’m child-free and I think this was a weird leap to make regarding Alan’s comment.

        1. Alan*

          Thanks. These were just examples off the top of my head. I think that the opportunity and need for apologizing is most common in close relationship with family, so that’s what I thought of first I guess. Although for parenting in particular, the hardest workout my apology muscles have had is when I need to go to my kids and admit that I was wrong and admit that I had hurt them and say that I was sorry. I think if you can apologize to your kids you can probably apologize to anyone.

        2. Silver Robin*

          And Alan’s comments seem weird to me as someone who plans on having children; especially since this whole story is an example of how apologizing is important with coworkers, an (usually) entirely different category of relationship.

          “you need to learn to apologize unless you want your family specifically to resent you” on a work blog struck me as tonally weird so I said something.

          1. Dawn*

            Ok. I thought it was unnecessarily and weirdly adversarial on a work blog – so I said something.

    3. Space Needlepoint*

      Can I throw in, “look at the situation and realize where you went wrong?” Without that acknowledgement and a commitment to do better, the apology is worthless.

      1. Alan*

        Good point, as long as you can do it without self-justification or excuse. It doesn’t help for the guy to say “I didn’t realize that she has this expertise because she’s not in a science field.” It comes too close to blaming the victim. Maybe “I spoke without considering that I didn’t know her background”?

        1. Space Needlepoint*

          Oh most definitely! I should have added that. Any kind of self-justification makes it about the LW and not how what he said insulted Nancy.

  40. bamcheeks*

    There is no love for LW3 and I just want to say if I were in your situation I would be GUTTED. I guess it’s a hard way to learn that work really, really means it about not leaving stuff at work, but unless your colleague left them in a really stupid place I can certainly see why you’d think a pair of shoes would be OK for a day or so. I am so sorry!

    1. Abigail*

      I think it’s an expensive lesson learned that work, especially a restaurant, is not equipped to keep track of person items.

      Disappointed, yes. Gutted seems strong.

    2. Peter the Bubblehead*

      I worked part time at a well-known fast food restaurant – strictly to earn gas money to reach my primary job when gas prices went through the roof 2011-2014 – and that restaurant had a sign near both entrances to the parking lot saying, “Parking for customers of (restaurant) only. Violators will be towed.”
      One evening it was noticed that a car had been parked off by itself on one side of the lot for hours. No customers were inside at the time. Inquiries were made among the employees and no one knew to whom the car belonged. After a couple more hours – and with the shift manager’s approval – the local towing company was called and shortly after the restaurant closed for the night (11pm) the car was towed away.
      Came to find out the car belonged to one of the day-shift cooks. It had broken down in the lot when he went to leave, but he hadn’t bothered to inform anyone he had car issues and left it there with the intent to retrieve it the next day, and none of the night crew knew to whom it belonged.
      Turned out to be an expensive lesson in making sure co-workers are informed and management knows what is going on and can pass on updates to later shifts for that line cook.

      1. WellRed*

        It would also have been nice for the manager to just let the car remain overnight for one night. It wasn’t in anyone’s way, the restaurant was closed. But yeah, I wish the owner had notified someone or stuck a big note on it.

        1. Peter the Bubblehead*

          The trouble with that was most often when vehicles were parked in the lot after closing, it was for illegal drug use. And the owner (it was a franchise, not corporate) was already wary of people leaving their cars in the lot (the location was a convenient spot along a route between two popular cities each within 30 minutes drive) and he did not want to be held responsible for anything happening to cars left by people who went off somewhere else with the plan to come back at 2am.

    3. doreen*

      I had multiple fast food jobs – I could see why someone would think a pair of shoes would be safe at the donut shop where there were about 10 total employees , but not why someone would have though that at the burger place with at least 50 employees. That place had lockers for us to use when we were working. No telling how many people work at the restaurant in the letter.

  41. Hell in a Handbasket*

    The oddness of the boss’s response (about accusing Nancy of falsifying her resume) makes me wonder if, in their conversation, LW initially doubled down on his insistence that Nancy couldn’t possibly know anything about fossils. In that context the boss’s response (“OK, so you’re accusing her of falsifying her resume then? “) would make sense.

  42. Carol*

    I’m intrigued by the fired director one. Did the protestors etc have the directors support? I think this could be a negative if there was no unfair dismissal etc

    1. Space Needlepoint*

      I would leave it alone because nobody is releasing the exact reason for the firing and the director has a lawyer speaking for them.

    2. bamcheeks*

      Go and check the link and search for Brianna’s comments! It’s so much wilder than this letter suggests!

  43. Falling Diphthong*

    I now think letter 1 embodies a trend in modern life to emphasize the sincerity of one’s feeling, rather than whether that feeling was based on facts. So you have people completely making something up–and they are aware of this–but arguing that it felt correct in their head and so was sincere and that ought to be what people consider, whether they sincerely believed the untrue thing they said.

    Perhaps also ties to letter 4, on the flip side, which seems to have meandered down “She seems to sincerely feel that typing in all caps is normal” rather than just say “For external things you need to use standard form with lowercase.”

  44. Salty Caramel*

    LW1, you are not “office friendly.” Rather it seems you hold co-workers, at least Susan and Nancy in something close to contempt.

    “The idea seemed ridiculous.” Why? If you don’t socialize with your co-workers, you don’t know their interests and hobbies.

    Check you ego at the door, accept responsibility for what you did. Not meaning to insult doesn’t absolve you from the insulting impact. Try to learn from the situation and treat your co-workers with more respect.

  45. MistOrMister*

    I remember that first letter!! I remain confused as to why OP’s knee jerk response was to scoff and state that someone they admit to not talking to other than about work matters could not possibly know anything about fossils. I think a reasonable response from just about anyone would be to ask what background Nancy had in fossils. I really cannot imagine responding the way OP did. I have to wonder if OP has a tendency of making comments that belittle or disparage others because this is such an odd response to the situation. It certainly cannot have helped matters any that OP was so insistent that his response made sense and that he shouldn’t have to apologize – I am sure that attitude came across to his coworkers.

  46. Cranky Old Bat*

    Ah, the classic, “Who is right and why is it me?” in LW1

    Allison is right. While the supervisor handled it strangely, the comment was rude and insulting. It’s telling that the LW thought it was ridiculous that Nancy didn’t have the knowledge to answer Susan’s question. Even if she didn’t have the background, people have hobbies, which LW might have known if they were truly “Office friendly.”

    1. Dawn*

      I suspect that if we had the full picture and not just the OP’s view of this one interaction, the manager’s handling of it probably wasn’t strange at all.

  47. Crencestre*

    OP4: It sounds as if people have gently questioned Sansa about why she types in all caps but nobody has actually told her to stop doing it! One sentence leaped out at me:

    “However, I’d hate to go into the conversation where my only defense for asking her to change is “because it’s not how you should do it” or “it looks more professional to type normally.” ”
    But it DOES look more professional to type using both lower- and upper-case letters and Sansa needs to know that ASAP!

    How can she correct what she’s doing if nobody comes right out and tells her what she SHOULD be doing instead? Right now, she probably thinks that others in your office think of this practice as just mildly unusual because you’ve all given her that impression. Letting Sansa know how her all-caps messages come across and why she needs to change this would actually be a professional kindness to her!

    1. Sneaky Squirrel*

      Yesss! This isn’t an area where Sansa gets to be individualistic and quirky. She’s creating memos on behalf of the company. Sansa needs to know that she’s expected to put out a level of professionalism with her work, especially when that work may be seen by the public.

  48. Sunflower*

    #1 If Nancy didn’t know the answer, she can tell Susan herself. It’s not anyone else’s place to assume she doesn’t know the answer whether she has the education or as a hobby for a topic. So yes, the OP was rude. The wording is also off-putting. It’s one thing to say “Oh I didn’t know Nancy knows about fossils” but quite another to come off as scoffing “What does *Nancy* know about fossils.”

    I also find it interesting that the OP is the longest employee but even an intern knows Nancey’s background and interest. I’m not saying all coworkers should be friends (I’m certainly not), but I’m wondering the vibe the OP puts out.

    1. Sunflower*

      Regarding the vibe comment. I forgot to add that I was wondering if that’s why she got reported. Coworkers typically know when you’re making a teasing joke or if you don’t mean to come off harsh due to a rare bad day. If you don’t know anything about others, others don’t know anything about you so they took the comment accordingly.

    2. ferrina*

      I missed that OP was the longest employee. That’s an interesting point, especially since OP spends the first paragraph saying that they are “office friendly” and don’t know much about people’s personal lives.

      1) OP genuinely has never heard about Nancy’s paleontology background and doesn’t know anything about Nancy’s background/personal life. OP knows that he knows nothing about Nancy. If that’s the case, it’s presumptive of OP to think that Nancy knows nothing about something, when OP knows nothing about Nancy.

      2) OP has heard about Nancy’s paleontology background, but forgot. This seems pretty likely to me- if a decent portion of the office knows about it (i.e., Susan and the boss, 2 out of 3 people in this scenario), then it’s reasonably likely that OP has heard of it. And it’s reasonable that we don’t’ remember everything about coworkers, so OP could have forgotten. But then- why is OP doubling down so hard? Why does he assume that Nancy knows nothing about fossils, then insists that there is no way he could have known that Nancy would know something? Why not just apologize and admit that “it slipped my mind”?

      or even 3) OP heard about Nancy’s paleontology background and forgot when he made the comment, but then remembered when boss took him aside. Rather than admitting he made a mistake, he doubled down to avoid admitting fault and/or looking bad. He insists that no mistake could have possibly been made, it wasn’t his fault because he couldn’t possibly have known, etc. He makes clear that he will only apologize under duress because he doesn’t think that he did anything wrong. He thinks that “I never knew” is a foolproof get-out-of-jail-free card, because you can’t blame someone who doesn’t know something.

  49. RagingADHD*

    LW5, I think “letting them down easy” or refusing to give any kind of relevant answer will just embroil you in an emotional tangle of disappointment, rejection, etc, that you already said you don’t want to be involved in. The smoothest way to slide past this is probably to give a gracious reply that is generic enough to be appropriate.

    As a matter of fact, my now-husband went through the ritual asking of my father’s blessing because he assumed (correctly) that it would be a meaningful gesture to my parents. However, since I was well over 30, my dad didn’t really feel that he had a say (also correctly). His response would probably serve you just fine here. He said something to the effect of:

    “Raging knows her own mind and what will make her happy. As long as she’s happy, I’m happy for her.”

    1. Sneaky Squirrel*

      Agreed that “letting them down easy” seems like it’s only going to add extra drama for LW in the moment. What you’ve provided is a perfect message because it says that you don’t need my permission but since you’re asking, here you go.

      I would however, consider having a conversation with the employee at a later date after the engagement has been announced. This would be an opportunity to clarify the line between a working relationship and personal relationship since it came up that the employee may have supplied the idea.

  50. Ginger Cat Lady*

    I’d love to hear OP1 explain why he thinks that it’s just fine to scoff and mock people at work. I’d be he can’t.
    Whether or not he knew her background doesn’t really matter, that kind of scoffing at people is just plain rude.
    The manager’s response does seem over the top for just this incident, but the severity of her response makes me think this is not an isolated incident, and that OP has done this sort of thing before and everyone is over it.
    Remember that OP is going to portray himself in the best possible light, and isn’t going to tell on himself about other incidents.

  52. Zestfully sober*

    We can debate whether Sansa’s need to type in all caps (to clients no less!) is an age thing (ugh, really, people?) or a tech-skill thing, or even just a personal preference thing until the cows come home.

    The bottom line is that the LW needed to just tell Sansa directly, no BS, to stop using all caps when writing business-related communications—especially to clients, FFS. And ideally when writing internal communications too. And if the LW couldn’t do that, they how did they even get to adulthood, let alone that job???

    1. Bossy*

      I am still laughing that people want to attribute that to age! Listen, the older people of today know how to do pretty much everything. If someone typed on a type writer they would still know about cases. Oy vey.

  53. Gachnar the Fear Demon*

    “Whatever would Nancy know about fossils? That’s not her background.” Susan gave me a strange look and walked away.

    And:

    How was I to know her background?

    If LW doesn’t know Nancy’s background, LW has zero qualifications to comment on what Nancy’s background is or isn’t. It’s weird that LW decided otherwise. Like, I cannot understand the thought process here.

    1. Dawn*

      It seems to somewhat be, “If she has a degree, why would she be working outside of that field?” which shows a depressing naïveté on the part of the OP.

      The number of paleontology grads and the number of paleontology jobs are not the same.

      2. Sunflower*

        I agree. Even if she never had formal education about fossils, why would he assume it’s not a hobby or self-taught? I said in my other post if Nancy doesn’t know the answer, she can tell Susan. There’s no need to say what he said and then double down.

      3. Ann O'Nemity*

        In my area, a volunteer coordinator at a nonprofit has terribly low pay, just $18-20/hr. That’s the bare minimum living wage for a single adult here. It’s only slightly above food service ($16-18/hr). If Nancy doesn’t have other sources of income or support then she’s living life in survival mode, and I’d hope that someone who had spent the effort, time, and money on graduate degrees would have more financial security.

        This issue of underemployment among individuals with advanced degrees is not always widely understood in detail by the general public. A lot of us were sold a bill of goods about college – that if we pursued higher education we would get stable, well-paying jobs and economic security. It’s disillusioning to realize the mismatch between the cost of education and economic realities.

        The LW was rude, no question, but a lot of us have assumed that advanced degrees would have provided a better ROI.

        1. Gachnar the Fear Demon*

          That’s fair. But LW had no place arbitrarily announcing something they were completely ignorant about. That is what baffles me.

        2. Dawn*

          That’s not the actual reality of grad degrees, however; you can find that out about a lot of fields with a very basic web search, or just try typing “Masters in Fine Arts Pizza Delivery” into Google.

          It might be disillusioning but most people know by now that an awful lot of degrees do not translate to an advanced position for most people who hold them, and my own assumption would be that this so-clever OP would know better.

    2. sheworkshardforthemoney*

      I work in food and hospitality but I have a degree in English Literature. One day I was listening to an audiobook of War and Peace and our maintenance person came in. They listened for 30 seconds and correctly guessed the book because they used to be a teacher. You never know peoples’ backgrounds.

  54. sheworkshardforthemoney*

    #2 Reminds of the husband who bought a billboard to protest his wife being fired. It gained a lot of attention and I wonder if it hurt or helped her job search.

  55. Apple maker*

    I wonder if the way LW #1 said his statement is what made it come off so rudely? I personally would’ve made the same remark out of genuine confusion. Susan could have simply said “Are you aware she’s a paleontologist?” and cleared the air right there, but she chose to make drama instead.

    The situation would obviously be different if Susan asked about something most people would know about (like taxes or how to change a tyre) instead of an obscure and totally unrelated area of study.

    1. Sunflower*

      I have a feeling this is a pattern with the OP since he wrote “I received a verbal warning as well as “advice” about being more aware of how my words came across.”
      Note the “advice” in quotes and the boss knows how his words come across. I bet this is not the first time the boss heard such complaints but she finally had enough to do something about it.
      If this is a pattern, I don’t blame Susan for walking away after being scoffed. Once bitten, twice shy.

    2. Hroethvitnir*

      You would definitively state that Nancy couldn’t know anything about fossils when you don’t know her background? Literally scoff at the idea? That is wildly different to just being surprised.

      Assuming, somehow, that you managed to state confidently to someone who is friends with this person that they don’t know their subject of expertise without sounding like you think they are both idiots, maybe Susan would have said “oh, didn’t you know Nancy has [degree].”

      Someone whose reaction to hearing someone they actively avoid knowing anything about has a (pretty common, fyi) interest you didn’t know about is to *scoff* is not someone most people will bother to continue to engage with. It’s the definition of bad faith and a waste of energy, as demonstrated by the fact he isn’t the slightest bit regretful about being incredibly rude.

      1. Apple maker*

        Nowhere in LW #1’s letter does he say he “scoffed”. Scoffing is very different than laughing. You are choosing to read the letter in the worst possible light and that’s a shame.

        1. Kestrel*

          Later in the email, he states “The idea seemed ridiculous: Nancy coordinates volunteers at a nonprofit that has nothing to do with science. How was I to know her background?” Laughing because someone’s idea seemed ridiculous is practically the definition of scoffing.

        2. mel*

          LW1 described scoffing so well that Alison read the letter that way and used the word “scoffed” in her answer.

  56. adfpa*

    #1 It sounds like to me that you were trying to make a joke or a lighthearted comment and it fell flat. You could have corrected it by saying: “I stand corrected!” or “That’s cool” and showing interest and then maybe ask her about it some time. I do think that you should apologize as it did sound dismissive instead of a joke about the fact that the office does not have a paleontology department. I don’t view it as a “sexist” comment at all, just a joke that fell flat. But it is HR’s job to guard against anything that can be interpreted as discriminatory and if someone viewed it that way: it’s not great. So, let’s think before quipping next time.

    2. mel*

      I disagree with your interpretation that LW1 was trying to joke; everything in his narration indicates to me that he said (and believed) this earnestly. That aside, unless he’s ruminated on Alison’s answer, reflected on his behavior, and worked towards personal change, I don’t think he’s even capable of uttering the words “I stand corrected!” He couldn’t even stand to be corrected. I mean, look at that last line: “I don’t want to admit unwarranted guilt.”

    3. Sunflower*

      I thought perhaps he said it in a joking way too until I kept reading on. No it wasn’t a joke.

    4. hiraeth*

      No, he meant it. He really thought the idea of Nancy having any expertise in paleontology was ridiculous.

  57. Some Words*

    I had a co-worker who typed in all caps all the time. It irked me for reasons others have mentioned.

    Then I found out she has pretty advanced arthritis (to the point where some of her finger knuckle joints have been fused into position). It no longer irked me. It was a good reminder to not make assumptions about why people do things, or why they do them differently than most others.

    1. I should really pick a name*

      It’s good not to make assumptions, but that doesn’t mean the behaviour doesn’t have to change.

      Content should not be going out to clients in all-caps.

      1. Jackalope*

        Yes, this. Most people are physically capable of typing without keeping the caps lock on. If this isn’t the case for the OP’s coworker then this isn’t a job she should be doing. There are many things you can do in a job that are not related to typing correctly, but sending out memos to the public is not that responsibility.

  58. manon*

    Re: LW1, as far as Nancy seeming “strangely hurt” – I have a scientific background that’s tangential at best to my current work. I definitely don’t expect everyone to know my educational history, but if someone reacted with total incredulity, I definitely would be hurt! While it’s totally fair to not be familiar with Nancy’s background and even be surprised, saying it’s “silly” and “ridiculous” to think that someone in her position has her background definitely has judgement baked it that I would bet came across in your tone.

    1. Emikyu*

      You nailed exactly why I found it so off-putting. There’s a big difference between “I didn’t know Nancy knew about fossils” and “How ridiculous! As if Nancy could possibly know anything about fossils!” The former is fine. The latter is rude and mean-spirited for no reason.

      I also have a degree entirely unrelated to the work I do. I don’t expect random coworkers to know about it (although several do, because it’s come up in conversation). I would still be hurt if someone declared that I had no background in that area and scoffed at the idea that I could possibly know anything about it. It’s rude, dismissive, and entirely unnecessary.

    2. hiraeth*

      Right, exactly. I don’t expect people around me to know all the languages I speak or that I have an advanced degree unrelated to my field. I would still be hurt if they heard that I had those skills and laughed because they found the idea ridiculous. That’s not just ‘I didn’t realise Nancy had that knowledge’. It’s ‘Oh please, as if *someone like Nancy* would have that knowledge’. It’s dismissive, it’s arrogant, it’s belittling, it’s patronising.

    3. Hroethvitnir*

      It’s actually alarming to me that so many people here don’t seem to get the difference between surprise and derision. Some are probably invested in denying case #infinity of probably-sexism, but at least some are good faith, I’m sure.

      If, in a letter you write about yourself, you come across as sneering at your coworkers, it’s unlikely to have been *better* in person. Absolutely zero shame for stating something completely bizarre (if you don’t know someone well, saying they cannot know something is just weird at best) and even less remorse for making someone feel bad really bears out the negative impression.

      Occam’s Razor makes it overwhelmingly likely it’s misogynistic to one degree or another, but it doesn’t really matter for the purposes of answering the letter. If you don’t know something, you may express curiosity or surprise, or you may make “that’s nice” noises if you don’t care, but “they couldn’t POSSIBLY know that” is, obviously, incredibly rude.

      Rules lawyering might work online but it is not actually effective at convincing people around you you’re not a jerk if you consistently act like a jerk.

  59. RagingADHD*

    Typing in all-caps in external business correspondence is not a style choice or a personal preference. There is nothing subjective about it. It is simply incorrect.

    If you have form letters, use a mail merge and whoever is in charge of updating the data table needs to make sure the data is formatted correctly. Otherwise, if blanks need to be filled in manually, they need to be done with correct grammar (which includes correct capitalization).

    Sansa needs to do her work without grammar errors, and to be held accountable to that standard. This is a performance issue, not a personality trait.

  62. Zee*

    I’m sure LW1 isn’t reading these comments 5 years after the fact, but just for fun I wanted to list a few of completely unrelated careers my friends have ended up in:

    College major -> current job:
    Astrophysics -> communications manager
    Environmental studies -> software trainer
    Math -> model
    Art -> financial advisor
    Music history -> medical doctor
    Music -> software engineer
    Psychology -> wine expert
    Mechanical engineering -> marketing manager
    Engineering physics -> kindergarten teacher

  63. Not the class clown*

    What OP said (and the way he said it) sucks, no doubt. But it’s very odd to me that Susan apparently reported this interaction to their boss, and also odd that the boss framed it as “accusing a coworker of falsifying information on her resume.”

    OP needs to do some reflecting on why he was so quick to dismiss that a woman may have scientific expertise he didn’t know about. But I also think Susan should consider what kinds of things rise to the level of her needing to report it to her boss.

  64. coffee*

    “Talk to her today, and enjoy the soothing feel of standard case on your eyes tomorrow.”

    I love this line.

  65. Raida*

    “Whatever would Nancy know about fossils? That’s not her background.”

    And “I don’t know much about anyone I work with”

    Don’t gel.

    Pro Tip: If you don’t know, then don’t have an opinion. Because best case scenario is you look rude. But what if the person is quick to speak too? Could have gotten a “What are you talking about?” or “How would you know?” or even “Well don’t you sound ignorant” or “What do you mean by that?”
    All of which are valid questions, to which your answers would be… “Well uh yeah I *don’t* know and I *assumed* a person not working near me on fossils cannot know anything about them… and uhm yeah I guess I dunno why I assumed that. Sorry?”

    A confident statement about a person or process or section that you know you aren’t well informed on is just… Just don’t speak. You don’t have to have an opinion, and you can always just say “Oh? I’ve never really had much to do with [subject]. That’s interesting.”

  66. Lizzay*

    #4 always reminds me how genius Bill Watterson was when he had the bully Moe speak in all lower case versus everyone else.

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