job candidate’s name is a slur, exec is marketing a job as a “roommate opportunity,” and more

by Alison Green on January 21, 2025

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

1. Job candidate’s name is a slur

I recently reviewed a job application from a candidate whose given name is a slur. It’s not unheard of for people to be named this and there are still plenty of folks who don’t realize it is a slur. It’s not obscure knowledge by any means, but it’s definitely not as commonly understood to be harmful as more well-known slurs.

The thing is, I know that it’s a slur and I don’t think I can address someone by a word that I know is harmful even though it’s their name and what they prefer to be called. The position is still open so I may get so many better qualified candidates that it doesn’t matter, but if I do end up needing to interview them … what am I supposed to do?

Ours is a very informal work environment and everyone around me knows that I make a point of addressing everyone without titles or honorifics, including elected officials we work with. I don’t know their gender but if I find it out and end up using Mr. or Ms. Last Name, that would really stand out. Most people don’t choose their own names and I know what a pain it is to have your name legally changed, having done that myself, so I don’t want to exclude a good candidate because of this thing they probably didn’t choose. And yet, I don’t think I have it in me to say “Hey Racial Slur, can you finish up that TPS report for Bobby by end of day?” What is the right thing to do here?

People should be called by their names, even if you’re uncomfortable with it. There are names in other languages that sound identical to obscene words in English, and those people should be called by their names too; this is no different. The important distinction is that in this usage, it’s their name, not a slur.

In fairness, I do think there are some limits to this. If someone legally changed their name to King Of Turd Mountain and wanted to be called that, I think it would be reasonable to decline to play along (particularly when it comes to listing that name on your company website and so forth) … but someone going out of their way to try to be provocative/make people uncomfortable is a very different situation than someone just going by their given name.

2. Exec is marketing a job as a “roommate opportunity”

I work for a nonprofit that serves people with disabilities. This week, a senior vice president sent an all-staff email advertising a roommate opportunity. He said his daughter, who lives with disabilities, is looking for a roommate and it’s a great deal — free rent! You get a stipend! You just have to split utilities! Oh, and be available every night on call if she needs help using the bathroom or with any other emergencies. A home health aide works with her during the day.

Once again, he’s sharing this as a “roommate opportunity.” It’s … an overnight home health aide opportunity. And for the stipend, it is well below minimum wage (plus, a home health aide wouldn’t be expected to pay utilities!). It sounds like there’s no contract so there’s also no agreement upon things like time off, coverage, etc. You’d be on call every single night.

In addition to serving people with disabilities, our organization also tries to hire people with disabilities. In addition, given the nature of the field, many of the people in the entry-level tier, doing things like helping people use the toilet, tend to be low socioeconomic status themselves and are often from immigrant communities that are more vulnerable to exploitation and/or less savvy about American workplace expectations.

This “generous offer” feels really exploitative and inappropriate. It seems unethical in general for an SVP to try to recruit an under-the-table home aide for his daughter from his own staff. The nature of our work makes it even weirder; I would expect someone in our field to understand why this is unethical.

What are your thoughts? Is this completely insane?

You are correct: it’s exploitative, and it would be inappropriate anywhere but is particularly misplaced at your organization. I’m sure he’s thinking “here’s an audience that’s particularly sensitized to the needs of the disabled and who might appreciate this ‘great deal’” … but, as you point out, it’s very much not a great deal to work every night for less than minimum wage, and he’s misusing his position by marketing it to people he has power over. Someone high-up in your organization should have flagged it. (Well, really, he himself should have realized before sending it that it wasn’t okay, but since that didn’t happen, someone else should have flagged it.)

3. Can I book an earlier flight to a conference than everyone else?

In a few weeks, I am being sent on a big work trip to a four-day convention, my first one, although I have been with the company for many years in various roles. For a variety of reasons, such as plantar fasciitis, difficulty flying, autism/ADHD, and already being in a state of burnout, this is going to be an extremely hard trip for me. I’ve been told to expect 12+ hours on my feet and an additional 3-4 hours of dinner meetings each night. I cannot get out of it.

I have a good reputation and am in a mid-level role with a lot of responsibility, but not compared to the other attendees from my company who are all 5+ levels above me on the org chart. Their assistants have booked them all on a flight that leaves at 6 pm after work the night before the conference starts, meaning we would not even be getting to our hotel rooms until 1 am the night before the convention.

How bad would the optics be if I booked a flight earlier in the afternoon so I could be in bed at a reasonable hour? I am in charge of my own flight arrangements. I will also need some additional accommodation on the airplane that will be embarrassing to ask for openly in front of everybody.

Knowing the company culture, I actually think flying out a day early to ostensibly see a friend or relative before the convention would go over way better than implying I can’t run on four hours of sleep like they all can, but I don’t want to lie.

You know your company culture better than I do, but for the record: in most companies, it would be absolutely fine to say, “I don’t want to be exhausted for the first day of the conference, so I booked an earlier flight.” And that’s if you even needed to say anything at all; in a lot of cases you could just quietly book a reasonable flight and then, if asked if you were driving to the airport with the others, could just matter-of-factly say, “Oh, my flight leaves a couple of hours earlier.”

But if you don’t think that will go over well, it’s perfectly fine to use a cover story. “I’m flying out a little earlier to meet a family member who lives there” may be a lie but it’s a lie that doesn’t harm anyone, doesn’t affect anyone but you, and is reasonable if it’s in service of avoiding company dysfunction (and preserving your privacy around on-flight accommodations).

4. What does a career coach do?

I am unhappy in my current job and have been trying unsuccessfully to find something new for years now. I have multiple arts degrees and a job history that should translate into a good fill for most generic office jobs. However, I am totally overwhelmed about how to find these sorts of jobs and what they might be called in various industries so that I can apply.

So I found a career coach, hoping that she could take a look at my skill set and help me track down jobs I would qualify for or translate my skill set for a particular industry. I honestly don’t care where I work or what I do — I just want to be paid fairly and not work with total jerks.

However, that wasn’t what she seemed capable of doing. She was more like a high school guidance counsellor, making me take a number of personality and aptitude tests and asking a lot of questions about my “dream job.” One, I do not dream of labor, and two, I had my “dream job” and was chased out due to rampant sexual harassment and other bad behavior. I stayed way too long and developed anxiety issues because it was my “dream.” “Dream jobs” are a trap.

I could not get her to move on to actually applying for jobs because she was so hung up on me finding passion for a career, and that’s just never going to happen. I’ve reached out to a few other “career coaches” and they all seemed to be in the same zone: helping me find my passion. I have passion, it’s just not for work.

Did I just find a bunch of really bad coaches? Or is this what coaches do, and what I really need is another “assistance in finding work” person that’s called something else?

This is indeed what a lot of career coaches, maybe even the majority, do. They’re often the live version of that old What Color is Your Parachute? book. You could try screening them by being very, very explicit before hiring someone that what you need is help figuring out what you’d be qualified for, not what you would be motivated by, but even then, unless you find someone unusually good, I’d worry that they’ll fall back on the “passion” framework. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to find, but it does mean you’re going to have to do a lot of pre-screening before engaging someone.

Part of the problem is that there aren’t any particular qualifications required to be a career coach, so just because someone is calling themselves that doesn’t mean they’ll have any expertise at understanding the range of jobs out there and what would make someone a good match for an employer hiring for that job (versus the “let’s explore your inner world” bent that you’ve been encountering). You’d probably have an easier time if you can identify a handful of industries you’re interested in and then seek out recruiters who work in those fields; they’re better equipped to help you position yourself as a candidate than many coaches are. (To be clear, recruiters work for employers, not candidates — but if you have skills they’re looking for, good ones can help match you to those jobs.) But that’s a little different than what you’re looking for.

5. Should I pay $600 for a certification I need for a job I’d like?

I’m trying to decide if I should study for and spend the money to take a board certification test. I’ve been working at my company for five years and have been a working, licensed professional for 14. I have an interest in moving more into a corporate role, and have a big interest into moving into a computer-based role. However those jobs are very rare to open up and are highly competitive when they do.

There is a different, more regulatory role in the health system that has opened up recently. It requires a specific, niche board certification. I emailed the hiring manager asking if they would consider hiring someone with a “certification within 6 months of hire” clause and was told no.

The cost of signing up for the test is $600. I think I could do well in the role and would enjoy it, and it also works closely with the department I want to move into. But it’s hard to fathom spending that much money for the sake of a job I may not even get an interview for.

Would the certification also make you a stronger candidate for other jobs that you’d want to apply for — and would you be a compelling candidate for those jobs once you had the certification? If so, it could be a worthwhile investment. But if not, I don’t recommend spending $600 just for a chance to be considered for a single job.

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  1. Ask a Manager* Post author

    A reminder: We’ve had a recent increase in trolling here, and you can help me by NOT RESPONDING to it. Instead, please flag the comment for me (to do that, reply with a link, which will send your comment to moderation so I’ll see it) and I’ll take care of it. If you want, you can respond “reported” so people know it’s been dealt with and isn’t just being allowed to stand. But please do not engage. Thank you.

    3. A.K. Climpson*

      There are so many names that are also slang terms for inappropriate work topics (e.g. Dick, Roger, even to some extent John). It would be absurd and offensive to refuse to use one of those or to insist on calling someone who uses Dick “Richard.”

      That conclusion does not change depending on the alternative meaning of the name. It’s not being used as a slur when it’s just being used as a name (unless someone has self-selected a slur as a name for that reason, in which case it’s fine to offend them by not using it).

      1. AnotherSarah*

        I agree about the OP needing to use the given name, but I don’t think Dick or Roger is similar at all. The name I think the OP means is a slur (except, I’d say, if it’s used by members of that group, but outsiders should tread very carefully), and the meaning of the name is exactly the group it’s slurring. So while Dick is both a nickname for Richard and a penis, this word is only this group, which I do think makes it feel different to OP.

        1. SemiAnon*

          I’d guess something like Gipsy, which to some people is a totally normal girl’s name, and to others is a racial slur.

          I work in a very international environment, and we get all sorts of names that don’t cross language barriers well, and you simply learn to say names respectfully and with a straight face, and after using a few times, it’s just their name. It’s not just rude words – my name sounds like “Mommy” in the native language of many of my collaborators, my husband’s is a common noun in mine.

          1. Jillian with a J dammit*

            That’s the name I was thinking. Depending on the age of the applicant’s mother, it may not have always been considered a slur and was just a name she liked. I’m over 60 and I know two people named that (with a y).

            1. Jackalope*

              It’s also possible that the person doesn’t know that it’s a slur, or their parents didn’t know when they named their child. (The second seeming more probable to me.) Slurs change all the time, and if you aren’t a member of the group who’s getting insulted it’s possible that you’ve never heard it used in that way.

              1. Falling Diphthong*

                Slurs change all the time.
                I think this is the key thing to understand about this topic: The meaning of words shifts over time. And shifts back, sometimes because people in the group described got annoyed at the dancing around of the new term.

                When the word means “You’re a lesser group of people,” then it is almost always the case that coming up with a new word just assigns all the layers of meaning onto the new word–changing the word didn’t change all the underlying beliefs the word carried.

                1. Mentally Spicy*

                  Quite. My grandmother was a full Romany Gypsy and that’s how she would describe herself. To her it was a neutral, descriptive word. She would find it unbelievably patronising to be told she can’t use a word that she used her whole life to describe herself.

                2. Worldwalker*

                  …changing the word didn’t change all the underlying beliefs the word carried.

                  It’s called the “euphemism treadmill.” If the word “meep” is offensive, people think that it will all go away if everyone is required to say “murp” instead. What actually happens is, after a while, “murp” picks up the exact same meaning — and taboo status — as “meep” … and people now think it should be changed to “maap” and that will fix it.

                  Consider, for three examples, words for “not as smart as average,” “having dark skin,” and “physical mobility problem,”

                  What’s the correct “nice” word for each of those? It depends on when you’re asking. I’ve seen a minimum of 3 words for each in my lifetime. And over time, each word became just as offensive as the word it replaced — or more so, as the former word faded into obscurity but the euphemism was still fresh and new.

                  But we keep doing it. Calling furniture legs “limbs” didn’t make all the Victorian tables fall on the floor. The legs were still there. Saying “mentally challenged” or “POC” or whatever the currently correct term for my bum knee is, doesn’t change attitudes. (or how much my knee is hurting right now, as it anticipates the bad weather to come) Saying people are “unhoused” instead of “homeless” doesn’t give them a place to live. Euphemisms don’t change anything except the level of discomfort of the people using them, and make them feel like they’ve done something. And it doesn’t even do that for very long, as the word marches along the euphemism treadmill only to be replaced by another euphemism after it has picked up the same connotations as the one it, in turn, replaced.

                  Changing conditions helps. Changing attitudes helps. Changing words does nothing.

                3. MigraineMonth*

                  @Worldwalker – It is true that this is how the euphemism treadmill works: beliefs shape language. Over time, stereotypes about a group will attach to a new word that describes that group.

                  At the same time, language shapes beliefs. Even if the word was originally neutral (which *isn’t* a given), once a it has enough negative connotations attached to it, using that word evokes stereotypes about the affected group. It takes a large amount of concerted effort to pull it back to a neutral definition, and those most affected get to decide–individually–if that is work they want to do.

                  If I’m not in that group, I don’t get a vote. Compared to what the group is dealing with, occasionally updating my vocabulary and/or individualizing it based on someone’s personal preferences really isn’t hard to do.

                4. Elastic*

                  One thing the euphemism treadmill does accomplish is giving some indication of how much care the speaker is taking to stay up-to-date on how people wish to be named (and who they are listening to for guidance).

                5. Falling Diphthong*

                  @Elastic: You may think that people are excited to hold a conversation where they will be judged for the use and sourcing of the recent euphemism, which they are using to replace a term that was fine 2 years ago, but is now bad. In practice, I think many decide to withdraw and not deal with the judgment, since they will always be wrong.

                6. linger*

                  We may have to distinguish two things:
                  (a) Words that originate as slurs. (Clearly we need to avoid these.)
                  Gypsy wasn’t originally a slur, though it was founded in a false assumption about Egyptian origins. Even today, the New Oxford American Dictionary doesn’t warn of any possible negative meaning; the definition given is scrupulously neutral. Nevertheless, some Romani are not entirely pleased with the term, which is reason enough for some caution in its use.
                  (b) Words that (come to be) perceived as slurs (sometimes by erroneous folk etymology based on accidental formal resemblance).
                  Gyp (v) “swindle” and (n) “trouble, pain” (as in “my knee is giving me gyp” are in this twilight zone. NOAD lists both as late 19th-century forms, possibly related to each other, but the former is of “unclear origin” and the latter is tentatively suggested to derive from “gee up”. Maybe the dictionary editors are wrong, but they do not derive either from “gypsy”; that association may have been imposed later by the formal resemblance.
                  It is less clear whether we should avoid using terms that are (accidentally) formally similar to slurs. Yes, people may be genuinely offended by their use, and that needs to be taken into consideration; but it’s an open question whether they should be offended. At the OP’s extreme case, where the alternative would be to stop using an individual’s actual name, clearly others don’t have a right to be offended.
                  Nevertheless, the history of English is littered with the corpses of words discarded for that reason: the sail once known as a fuk; the current avoidance of niggardly.

              2. Lellow*

                Also, in the UK at least, I know several Gypsy people in my wider circle who *want* to be referred to as gypsies and find it really irritating to be told by well meaning people outside their community that it’s a slur. (I am not of that community, but I have been explicitly asked by them to make this point whenever this discourse arises.)

                1. Lenora Rose*

                  I’ve run into this before, and it seems to be partly a North America vs UK divide and partly a Traveller/Romani divide. (Partly, in that there are individuals from each group and region who disagree with the overall opinion of their region/people, both whether the word is fine and whether it’s bad.)

                  One of the points made by those defending the term is that the prejudice doesn’t correlate to whether the person uses the term or not (unlike where, say, the use of the n-word from anyone who isn’t Black strongly correlates with supporters of the return of segregation and blatant anti-equity lawmakers, use of G—- by outsiders does not correlate with how likely the person is to try and pass laws against them.)

                2. br_612*

                  But if the UK people you know are Irish or Scottish Travellers and not Roma, they don’t get to speak for Roma. They are distinct ethnic groups, and the European Roma Rights Centre does consider it a slur, as do many (but of course not all because no group is a monolith) Roma individuals.

                  The term originated as a slur for Roma, not Travellers, and it is still used derogatorily for Roma.

                  So since Traveller is an acceptable term, it’s more straightforward and less likely to cause problems (including harm to Roma people) for most people who are not themselves Travellers to just use that than the g-slur.

                3. Worldwalker*

                  br_612, “Gypsy” didn’t originate as a slur — it was just a descriptive term for the people they thought were “Egyptians.” But, as I described in my big rant on the euphemism treadmill, the word was eventually attached to the negative attitudes people had, and thereby became pejorative. Give it a while, and “Roma” will go the same way, requiring some new word to replace it.

                  It’s attitudes, not words, that need to be changed. Otherwise, every new word picks up the meaning of the old one.

                4. br_612*

                  No offense Worldwalker, but I don’t care about the euphemism treadmill, I care about what the real people who are affected by the word tell me about how it marginalizes them.

                  Like you can say it’s the attitudes that need to change all day, and you’re not wrong, but the words are still actively harming people and it’s worth stopping that harm. It’s not an either or, fix the attitudes or fix the words. It’s both. It’s always been both. Acting like it doesn’t matter that much if people use slurs because the next word will just become the new slur, especially if you do not belong to the marginalized group, is not . . . quite icky. And not actually helping anyone. It’s trying to apply an academic theory to a real world problem without actually centering the real people affected by the problem.

                5. Sharpie*

                  Can confirm. I have also been told that actual Romany Gypsies don’t consider it a slur. By an actual Romany Gypsy.

                  Again, I’m in the UK.

              3. Dust Bunny*

                I just had to stop my mom, who is in her mid-70s, from naming a dog that. It was very much a cool-girl name for that generation. I still don’t think she believes me but at least she named the dog something else.

                1. Let it be*

                  Why is it your concern what your mother names her dog, and why do you get a veto right over it?

                  You sound very patronizing

              4. some dude*

                @elastic

                I often experience this as a sort of judgmental gatekeeping. Like you aren’t up on the latest ever-changing lingo, so you are clearly ablist/racist/sexist/etc. It really seems more about signaling who is in the in group than in making life better for marginalized communities. Not to mention many of the new terms are either cringy, don’t catch on, or are actively hated by the communities they claim to represent (like latinx).

          2. coffee*

            Yeah, I would also mentally categorise that person’s name in a different mental space than the slur. Much like a homophone, it sounds the same but has a different meaning. I do think it’s similar to a man named Dick, or a woman called Rose, you’re not actually referring to an object when you refer to the person with that name.

            1. Worldwalker*

              Good point.

              I used to work with someone named “Dolly.” That wasn’t a nickname; it was what was on her birth certificate. To me, “Dolly” meant that specific person. I never thought of it as anything but my co-worker. In a different context, the same sequence of sounds might have meant a toy, or a mover’s rolling platform, or the support for the wheel-less end of a semitrailer, but when I was at work, talking to her or about her (i.e., “please give this to Dolly”), that sound-sequence meant that person.

              We don’t actually think in words. We think in … ideas, I guess is the best way to put it, and then we attach words to them to communicate. A baby who hasn’t learned words yet can still think. A deaf person without supportive services who hasn’t learned words can think. We don’t think in words — “Dolly” was just the word I attached to my mental concept of who that person was.

              That’s why, incidentally, the best way to learn a language is to consider words to be synonyms of words you already know in your primary language, not translations of them. “Mesa” isn’t a translation of “table” — it’s a flat surface with (usually) four legs, used to put stuff on; one word for it is “table” and another word for it is “mesa.” \

              So that’s likewise true of a name. “Phuket” is a city in Thailand, just like “London” is a city in England. The fact that it’s a homophone for a rude phrase in English is no more meaningful than the fact that “Dolly” could be a whole assortment of other items, but you’re talking about a person. Or, for that matter, that “Joe” is a slang term for coffee, “Mark” is a bruise (“that’ll leave a mark”), “Matt” and “mat” are audibly interchangeable but you don’t expect the guy at the next desk to be lying in front of the door, and so on. Humans are capable of distinguishing a wheeled platform and Ms. Parton, or a toilet and a disciple, even though they make the same noise when referring to them.

              2. Despachito*

                exactly this.

                If we do not clutch our pearls when we talk about our cousin Dick or John because we are able to compartmentalize and it is clear that we do NOT mean male reproductive organs or a toilet, we can perfectly do this in other occurrences too.

                Everyone can do this, and I find it incredibly rude to be so self centered and focused just on my own language that I might want to do anything else than suck it up. If someone makes fun of that name it is rude, and if they preemptively clutch their pearls about that name it is performative.

          3. John*

            My guess would be Jagger’s first name, as that’s the only thing I can think of that’s a slur in some contexts and just like a normal name in others.

            1. Resentful Oreos*

              Jagger’s first name is the more commonly used diminutive for “Michael” in the UK, Ireland, and Australia, as I understand it. “Mike” is the American version. I think the British version is far too tightly tied in with “Mickey Mouse” to ever be used in the US.

              As far as the employee’s first name, I was thinking it was the one beginning with G and made famous by being added to Rose Lee.

              2. Joana*

                I actually went to school with a guy named Michael who preferred going by Mick. I can’t recall ever associating that name with Mickey, and I knew him from second grade to graduation.

            2. londonedit*

              Eh? ‘Mick’ is a slur? I’ve never heard that one before. In Britain we say ‘taking the mick’ or ‘taking the mickey’ to mean making fun of or being cheeky, but I’ve never encountered it as a slur or a rude word.

              I’d say Mick and Mike are probably equally common shortenings for Michael in the UK.

              1. MJ (Aotearoa/New Zealand)*

                It’s anti-Irish, yeah (though my grandad also used it to refer to Catholics generally). That said, while that was the context I heard it in growing up, I’ve met a few guys called Mick as an adult and the two different connotations don’t really clash in my head at all.

                2. used to be a tester*

                  I wonder if some of the old slurs ‘lived’ longer outside the UK? I’m in Canada and grew up hearing it as an anti-Irish slur too. I seem to remember a linguistics professor saying that colonies/diasporas tend to hold onto older uses of the language.

              2. AMM*

                It can be if you’re relating it to The Troubles… or have recently been reading/have seen a performance of Brian Friel’s Translations.

                That said, none of my Irish cousins are named ‘Michael’, though one from England is, and the Irish side of the family have never mentioned any of the connotations about Catholics… so I don’t know how ‘current’ the terminology actually is.

              3. linger*

                “Mick” (and “Paddy”) are indeed used, as indefinite generic nouns, as slurs for “an Irishman”, both in American and British English (and elsewhere). The New Oxford American Dictionary lists both as “informal, offensive”. But even so, that use is grammatically distinct from use as a literal name of an individual, and should not stop anyone from using an individual’s actual name.

                1. Caller 2*

                  Yep. It can be a slur, but a lot of Irish men (older generation in my experience, but still) go by Mick. And Paddy.

                2. Grith*

                  My former job had an older (maybe mid 50’s?) Irish guy who happily introduced himself as Mick and went by that name in all emails etc.

                  I think I might have found it a little strange if he wasn’t very obviously Irish – it makes sense in my head that “Mick” is the Irish shortened form of Michael, while I would have expected an English person to generally prefer “Mike”.

              4. CheerilyTerrified*

                As an Irish person I’ve definitely heard mick used as a slur in the UK. You hear people saying micks as a replacement for Irish, usually linked to the common Irish are stupid/violent/dumb/drunk/stroppy/sly/workshy racist stereotypes. It was more common in 80s and 90s, disappeared a bit and it definitely feels like there was a resurgence with Brexit.

                But it is also a nickname, and obviously they are used differently. You can tell when someone is referring to someone versus using it as a slur.

                1. I&I*

                  I’d say that’s a slightly different case than if the name is, say, G- as in ‘Rose Lee’. That was always a term of disparagement, whereas ‘Mick’ and ‘Paddy’ were adopted as slurs because at the time they were popular names for Irish men. (It occurs to me that if they’d wanted to slag off Irish women, ‘Mary’ and ‘Bernadette’ would probably be slurs now!) But being actual names came first; they weren’t offensive in themselves.

                  Regardless, I wouldn’t let it shape your opinion of a job applicant. It’s unlikely they chose it themselves, after all, so if it reflects on anyone’s judgement it’ll be their parents – who aren’t the ones applying for the job.

                2. nonl*

                  My family is mostly Irish Catholic. I have three Uncles called Mick (two by marriage) and a cousin called Paddy – we’re Catholics after all, so it’s a large sample to draw from. While I’m aware that these can be slurs, to me that’s completely different from their names – and since the slur is derived from the prevalence of those names, I’m certainly not going to stop using them.

                3. I&I*

                  See also ‘Taig/Teague’, which is a Loyalist slur for an Irish Catholic, based on the traditionally common Irish name Tadgh.

                  There’s kind of a tradition of using Irish names as abuse, I guess.

              5. Johnny Slick*

                It’s for sure a slur and refers to the way a lot of names start with Mc as in McMahon. It’s also fairly archaic and anti-Irish sentiment is not nearly as prevalent as it once was which leads me to believe it’s something like the g slur that was tossed around elsewhere.

                2. Airy*

                  It’s based on Mick as a diminutive for Michael, historically a very common name for Irishmen, not the Scottish or Irish prefix.

            4. Koala*

              There’s a nickname for Enrique that is pretty common in Spanish speaking countries and unspeakable in English speaking countries. It’s pronounced quite differently but coming across it on signs (or a character in a popular telenovela) is pretty jarring.

              1. anon here today*

                googled this and I found it, and HOO BOY did my eyes pop out of my head! (Jewish US-American here)

            5. Ellie*

              I can think of quite a few. I used to know a woman named Gay, for example, which is ok now, but was pretty hard in the 1980s. I know a white guy who’s name was Snowy, because that was how people talked in rural Australia in the 1950s. But its his name and he goes by it for his entire life. I know a few men with a name that basically means ‘black person’ for the same reason. And I know a man who goes by a misspelling of the c-word – he accepts people basically saying ‘Kent’ instead, because he kind of has to. He’s an artist, and has never had to seek regular employment. I imagine his name would hold him back significantly if he did.

              It’s pretty cringe, but at the end of the day, if its their name, its their name, and you probably have to use it. If there’s any doubt though, I at least ask how they pronounce their name, to make sure I haven’t misunderstood anything. I’ve had people shoot straight back with, ‘Nah it’s pronounced Cock love, how can I help?’ and then it’s at least out in the open.

              2. Despachito*

                “I imagine his name would hold him back significantly if he did.”

                If someone was holding it against him, THAT would be much, much worse than using a name that sounds the same as a slur. Because it would be ill will against a completely innocent person.

          4. Richard Hershberger*

            Fun fact: “Jihad” is a standard Arabic given name. It comes up as a source of awkwardness, or worse, from time to time in the American context.

            1. amoeba*

              Yeah, my boyfriend’s uncle was called Jihad – he did choose to change his name when he came to Germany, that was also one of the cases where that was easily passed.

            1. Dust Bunny*

              I know a family of Coons. Some of them have changed their last names to get away from it. I assume it was Kuhn at some point.

              1. Richard Hershberger*

                This is, in areas with historical German immigration, a common surname in various spellings. I have never seen it be an issue.

              2. Rainy*

                I grew up in an area with a lot of families whose forebears had immigrated to the US from Germany and I know about a dozen spellings for that last name. The worst was a woman who was in my training cohort for a call center job about 30 years ago and it was spelled exactly the way you really don’t want your name spelled if it’s pronounced Koontz.

          6. Anonsortof*

            I work with a Koen, but in its original Flemish pronunciation it sounds like the racial slur that is derived from Raccoon. Over the time he’s been in England it’s evolved into “Cohen” and although I feel a bit bad that he’s had to change how his name’s said, he’s fairly accepting of it.

            1. Tubbs*

              That was my first thought as I had a friend with the same name. We all called him Cohen. Using the correct pronunciation in any context was unlikely to end well if overheard.

            2. Erin*

              Michelle Buteau (who is biracial) had a hilarious bit in one of her routines about her Dutch husband’s cousin named Koen, and how she did NOT want to be yelling it in Walmart or wherever when they went there while he was visiting.

          7. KayZee*

            My husband has a colleague named “Lady” and spelled that way too. She’s not originally from an English speaking country. It’s not a slur but it does sound odd to our ears. And yet…nobody would think of not calling her by her name.

          8. H3llifIknow*

            Also the name I was thinking! I mentally scrolled thru every “offensive slur” I could think of (and now need a good brain scrubbing with bleach!) and that’s the only one I could think of. If someone told me that was their name, I honestly wouldn’t leap to “but….that’s a SLUR!” territory, especially since (at my advanced age) it wasn’t until the last 10 years or so, that I realized it WAS considered offensive. But, if that’s what mom and dad decided on, and if that’s what employee wants to be called, I don’t think it’s up to anyone else to adjudicate whether or not it’s “acceptable” to call that person by his/her name (be it Gypsy, or Dick, or *insert other offensive word here*).

        2. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

          I’m thinking of a colleague I once had whose surname was Hoare – I’d argue that it was not on her to change her name, but on us to think of it as a separate word from the slur for a sex worker (in my country the two words are pronounced identically).

          1. Bob*

            My children’s two teachers were Mrs Hoare and Mrs Dick.

            Luckily the class was too young to cotton on.

            1. stratospherica*

              We had a teacher called Mr. Burke, which only the parents really got. (Berk, pronounced the same way, is a British slang word for an idiot)

                2. Mike*

                  I read once a Reader’s Digest of a German teacher named “Mr. Ball.” For obvious reasons, he did not want to go by the German version of “Mr.” which is “herr.”

              2. Aww, coffee, no*

                And the real problem with berk is its linguistic roots – it was a shortened version of Berkeley Hunt, where the ‘hunt’ was rhyming slang for a very gendered insult.
                Which would still not be a reason to call someone Mr Burke, if that was their name.

              3. Zephy*

                Oh, I always thought “berk” was slang for a *much* more offensive word. The story I got was it’s a truncation of “Berkshire Hunt,” which is rhyming slang for a *very* rude word for feminine genitals.

            2. londonedit*

              We had a teacher whose name was Richard, but once you got to the sixth form (post-16, doing your A levels, in my school you were allowed to wear your own clothes rather than uniform and you were generally treated more like adults) if you were studying his subject he’d start the first lesson by saying ‘Call me Dick!’ – which always resulted in gales of laughter from a load of 16-year-olds.

              1. Zephy*

                There’s strategy in that, though. If you beat the 16-year-olds to the punch, it makes it way less funny/effective for them to call you Dick as a way to be flippant teenagers.

              2. Sharpie*

                I had a new teacher for one of my A-levels who said we could call her by her first name or Miss Pringle. We all looked at eachother with the BSOD before all blurting out wed rather call her Miss Pringle if she didn’t mind.

                Sixth Form was great. If we didn’t have a lesson in the afternoon, we could go home at the beginning of lunch – partly because the sixth form block was a temporary addition, accessed from the main building by a covered walkway. Temporary since the 1960s, I finished my A-levels and left school in 1999!!

              1. Worldwalker*

                Back when I was much younger and much, much less mature a guy called for my boss, who was out. The caller’s last name was pronounced “WID-nur” but it was spelled “Widener.” His first was a nickname for Richard. So I had a certain amount of unholy glee when I wrote a public note for my boss — in all caps, as I usually wrote at that time — “DICK WIDENER CALLED FOR [boss].”

                In retrospect, I don’t regret it. I guess I haven’t grown up as much as I thought.

                In the matter of suitable names, I once knew an ER doctor with the bedside manner of an axe murderer, who was named Dr. Paine. It fit.

              2. Will "scifantasy" Frank*

                I have a family friend named Dr. Richard Dicker.

                He’s a cardiologist.

                Doctor Dick Dicker the Ticker Doctor.

                1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

                  For many years the president of Duke University was Richard Brodhead and in some communications he was referred to as Dick.

            4. Johnny Slick*

              I don’t want to dox myself but my dad’s nickname was Dick and we have, let’s just say, a very unfortunate surname for someone with that nickname (or very fortunate depending on one’s preferences I guess).

            5. Ex-Teacher*

              A long-time teacher (now deceased) in a local high school was named Harry Weiner. He chose to go by Harry (as opposed to Harold, Hank, Hal, or similar).

              That can’t have ever been great.

              1. Maple Librarian*

                My elementary school principal’s name was Jack Offman. As a kid we didn’t think much of it. Now, I giggle.

              2. Arglebarglor*

                I had a Mr. Weiner in high school. He was one of my favorites. But he changed the family name to Warner because his son was getting tortured in grammar school.

              3. RAC*

                In all of these comments… I can’t believe I haven’t seen a Monty Python reference yet!

                CENTURION: Well, no, sir. Umm, I think it’s a joke, sir,… like, uh, ‘Sillius Soddus’ or… ‘Biggus Dickus’, sir.

                GUARD #4: chuckling

                PILATE: What’s so… funny about ‘Biggus Dickus’?

                CENTURION: Well, it’s a joke name, sir.

                PILATE: I have a vewy gweat fwiend in Wome called ‘Biggus Dickus’.

                GUARD #4: chuckling

                PILATE: Silence! What is all this insolence? You will find yourself in gladiator school vewy quickly with wotten behavior like that.

                1. Zephy*

                  He has a wife, you know.

                  (fun fact: the extras playing centuwions in that scene were told that if they laughed they wouldn’t be paid, and Michael Palin improvised most of his lines. that man really is fighting for his life in that close-up.

                  I haven’t verified any of this, but I choose to live in a world wherein this is a true story, because it harms no one and brings me joy to believe.)

              4. Zephy*

                Like with the teacher example above – wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you. I’m sure he was called that in school growing up and eventually just decided to embrace it. Making the joke before the bully can really takes the wind right out of their sails.

              5. Shannon*

                I think we went to the same high school! And he taught Health, which is already a horribly awkward class.

              6. Rainy*

                I dated a guy many years ago whose last name by birth was Weiner and after many futile years of trying to get people to pronounce it differently than it was spelled, he changed it. IIRC, he was living at the time in one of the states where it’s harder to get approval to change your name, but the judge was very sympathetic.

            7. Gumby*

              We had Mrs. Roach which elementary-aged kids thought was hilarious. For the first week of knowing her. After that, even first graders got over it.

            8. vito*

              I worked with a Dottie Hoar and went to high school, in the 80’s, with a girl with the last name of Hoar (no relation) who married a high school teacher.

          2. londonedit*

            I went to school with someone whose surname was Haugh, pronounced in the same way as Hoare. Of course she didn’t have the greatest time at secondary school with a load of teenagers, but people got over themselves and I definitely do still have a separation in my mind between ‘Haugh’ as a name and the other word.

              1. gyrfalcon17*

                Oh! As someone with a rhotic accent, I thought londonedit was saying Haugh was being pronounced Haugh-rrrr. Until I read your comment.

                Ha ha ha.
                Or Har har har, as the case may be ;-) .

          3. History together*

            Haha, that was my very proper grandmother’s maiden name. I have a hard time believing she understood what her surname sounded like because she was my proper grandmother, but she must have!

            One of the cousins from that side of the family is a prominent Christian pastor (in a part of the world where that kind of Christianity is not the norm). He’s a decent enough guy who AFAIK goes out of his way to do actual Christ-like work but I do think it’s kind of funny nonetheless.

        3. duinath*

          Mhm. There was a guy on reddit recently who wanted judgment because his co-worker refused to call him by his name, as it was a slur. The name was Mick. The general consensus was the co-worker needed to get themself in line and call the man by his name, and if he wouldn’t do that Mick should take it up with the boss.

          I imagine an already bad situation for Mick would have been a lot worse if the person censoring his name was the boss.

          There is a difference between calling a group by a term, and calling a person their name. I think if we take off our big picture goggles and look at the individual interpersonal relationship, we can understand that.

          I won’t shop from companies that are named that way, and if someone asks if they should call their kid by a slur I will say no, that is a bad idea.

          But once there is a person in front of me asking me to call them by their name, that is the priority.

          1. Rosey*

            How silly. Mick is one of those words that is a slur BECAUSE so many people from targeted group are called that. You can’t just not call people by a perfectly normal name because in certain contexts it’s a slur.

            Of course it’s Reddit so there’s a pretty good chance the story is fiction

        4. Disappointed Australien*

          In Australia a slur similar to the US use of the N word was used by a cheese company. They only recently got to the point where “but that’s our name” wasn’t enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheer_cheese

          But on the other hand Mitsubishi still make the ‘masturbator’ (pajero) line of vehicles so apparently standards vary.

        5. Despachito*

          But it is the same, just in another language (Dick as Richard vs dick as penis is an equivalent of “Slur” in that person’s language vs “slur” in English).

      2. UKDancer*

        I had to work with an American called Randy in a previous company. In the UK that is hardly ever used as a name because it means aroused. I fell about laughing when I was told the name of my new colleague. Then I composed myself so when I met him I was professional.

        I still think it’s hilarious but it’s his name so I use it and manage to forget the other meaning mostly.

        1. The Prettiest Curse*

          I am so glad I never had to work with any Americans named Randy while I was living there. I think being surrounded by Americans who didn’t know the British meaning would have made me go into full-on giggling mode every time I heard it.

          1. Magpie*

            It means the same thing in America and I’m betting almost everyone here is aware of that meaning. It’s just that Randy is also such a common mens name here that I think everyone separates that in their mind over here and doesn’t automatically think of the slang when talking to a person with the name, just like other people have mentioned with the name Dick.

            1. Seashell*

              I’m an American, and I only know of that meaning as being in British use. I doubt it’s universally known that way in the US.

              1. Jay (no, the other one)*

                I’m born and raised in the US and I definitely know that meaning. I also went to school with a boy named Randy and a girl named Randi. I don’t remember them being teased nearly as much as the kids with the last name of Dick.

              2. Old Woman*

                I am an American, a boomer from the deep South. Randy, to me, is the same as horny. I have known this meaning since the late 1960s. Randy was a popular name for boys my age. I imagine there was some teasjng but mostly, you didn’t associate the two meanings.

              4. Bast*

                I’m an American, and while I know the word “randy” being used in that context, both the name and the meaning of the word itself are not common for people my age (30s). All the people named Randy I know are 50+, and the people using “randy” to mean “in the mood” tend to be older as well.

            2. Great Frogs of Literature*

              In my (US) lexicon, randy is less a physical state and more a… state of mind, I guess? I’d use it as a general description of someone’s overall predilection for sex, rather than arousal specifically. (Honestly, I think I’d be most likely to use it for a billy goat that tries to hump anything that moves, and some things that don’t.)

              And yes, I did have a coworker named Randy, and it was a little awkward, not least because he did have a ever-so-slightly skeezy vibe — I never saw/heard that he did anything inappropriate, but he was the sort of guy where you did find yourself wondering if he went by that nickname because he liked making people think about sex. But it was his name and we used it, and after a while it wasn’t even particularly weird to me anymore.

            3. KatCardigans*

              My dad’s name is Randy and I knew several other men named Randy growing up (I guess it was just popular in the late 60s-early 70s in my area), and this is the take that feels the most accurate to me. People mostly DO know what it means, and will joke about it at times, but it’s a name first and foremost.

          2. kristinyc*

            It’s used in the Austin Powers movies enough that I think a lot of Americans of a certain age would have an idea of its British meaning. I managed a Randy a few jobs ago and it never really came up that way.

          3. J. random person*

            The Houston Astros had a pitcher named Randy Johnson who was very good and very tall. Johnson is another name with a questionable other meaning, and the Astros played it up as much as they could get away with while keeping it family friendly (in other words, there was always some innocuous explanation available to tell your 8 year old). His nickname was The Big Unit. The footlong hot dogs were named after him in some jokey way as well.

            But I work with a guy named Randy now and I don’t think about any of that – it’s just his name.

            1. Rocket Raccoon*

              OMG I was a Randy Johnson fan as a kid and I never cottoned onto “the Big Unit” AT ALL. The entire joke went completely over my head for the last 30 years!

              1. Phony Genius*

                Since he’s 6′-10″, it is entirely plausible that the nickname was entirely about his height, and his name was just coincidence. Especially since sportscasters would say the nickname without snickering or suggesting it was anything else.

            2. Typity*

              The Phillies, back in the ’80s, had a player named Randy Ready. I wonder if he’s ever traveled to the UK.

            3. Annie*

              aahhh! I have to mention Randy Johnson was a Seattle Mariner first, and he was an amazing pitcher. But yeah, the “Big Unit” nickname was mostly just because he was so tall, but I’m sure there was a double entendre there as well (not so much because of his first name, but his last name).

            4. fhqwhgads*

              Wow! You must be an Astros fan. Randy Johnson spent the bulk of his career split between the Seattle Mariners and Arizona. He originally came up with the Expos. He had the nickname very early on. He spent part of one season with the Astros in his 10th year in the big leagues.

          4. Artemesia*

            It means the same thing in the US but most people don’t conflate the name and the condition just as people use the name Dick without giggling or John without thinking of toilets.

          5. AmethystMoon*

            I had a cousin named that. He was adopted. No idea why his parents named him that, but they were definitely of an older generation.

        2. Nina*

          A friend of mine once knew an American [performer of a niche art] named Randy Love. Mr. Love changed his stage name PDQ after moving to New Zealand, where ‘randy’ takes the British meaning.

          2. Modesty poncho*

            I know a pair of brothers named Randy and Richard Pierce. we assume their parents hated them a little

          3. Phony Genius*

            And then there was NASCAR driver Dick Trickle. Never once did I hear an announcer break up trying to say his name. They treated it like a normal name.

        4. Johnny Slick*

          We had a baseball player in our city named Randy Johnson back in the day if it helps. His nickname was The Big Unit.

        5. My favourite "Randy" story*

          I knew a guy in university (in Canada) named “Randy Younghusband”, and I never quite got over his full name. And he was an RA so he sent out a lot of announcements, etc.

        1. J. random person*

          If you mean, “what is Roger slang for?” When in doubt, assume it’s about sex and you’ll probably be right. In this case it’s a verb for the act. Basically the same as “screw” in this context.

          1. anonymoususer*

            I remember watching an early Graham Norton episode with Kenny Rogers, where he asked about his new chicken restaurant franchise, and pointed out that in Britain and Ireland ‘Kenny Rogers Chicken’ means something else. Kenny said, “oh, does it mean to truly love?’, to which Graham responded, if I remember correctly, “to truly love, with some force.”

          2. Worldwalker*

            Any word of more than 3 letters that is not slang for an intoxicant, the use of that intoxicant, or something related to defecation, is a slang for something related to sex.

        1. Lenora Rose*

          Well, it’s one of the many many many terms for having penetrative sex.

          But sometimes I think it’s hard to find a male name of English origin that doesn’t have some such connotation. I mean, the two most common male names through hundreds of years of British history are John and William, and Will Shakespeare made at least one whole sonnet about his own name that played on its alternate meanings as both “strength of mind” and as “penis” (and was addressing another man). I don’t *think* Ed (-ward, -win, -mund) is slang for anything, but I fully expect to be corrected now I’ve said so.

          It could be worse, though. My husband went to school with a student named Ashit. Pronounced exactly like the English word A and the slang term for faeces, not like Ash – it.

          1. 40 Years in the Hole*

            “I don’t care if he’s been ‘rogering’ the Duke of York with a prized leek…”
            Thank you for the Blackadder reminiscence.

            1. Nessun*

              NGL, when I hear people discussing the word, I think of that quote. (And thank you for the laugh!)
              But (to the discussion in full swing now) when someone says their name is Roger my mind does not go to anything questionable…except the manager I had more than 20 years ago who had that name and was A Character.

      5. Elizabeth*

        My maiden name is also an older racial slur (Coon). That name is German – potentially spelling changed from Kuhn – but obviously in the US it has different context. I am a white lady who grew up mostly in the southern US. For the most part growing up, people ignored it, but I did get a couple of boys in high school who made (what they thought were) hilarious comments. I usually played dumb.

        Eventually I got a job working with a more diverse population than I was used to and weathered a few odd looks, but I was working with teenagers and that was part of the job anyways. I know there’s nothing wrong with the name in this context but I was sure relieved when I got married and changed my name. My brother continues to be annoyed by it – various social media websites will occasionally ban a profile with that last name in it. It’s just kind of something that you shrug and deal with.

        1. Marion Ravenwood*

          I’ve had similar experiences with my surname (Cooney – it’s Irish, but more common in the US than the UK) being unfortunately shortened by friends of friends who didn’t know better. (These people were in their early 20s at the time.) I’ve never really wanted to give it up for any reason other than it’s a pain to spell, but it does occasionally get some odd looks when I meet new people.

        2. Worldwalker*

          I have a friend whose last name has “ass” in it — think something like “Cassiopeia.” He’s run into the Scunthorpe Problem repeatedly. He couldn’t use his actual name for his World of Warcraft account, for instance.

        3. Annie*

          Yeah, I know a “Coon” last name, and it’s really not that big of a deal if you’re not using it in the derogatory fashion.

        4. anon for this*

          I’ve run into issues with profanity filters as well- not my own name, but my organization partners fairly regularly with a Van Dyke Family Trust. I’ve got a list of media outlets that I need to submit edited copy to when promoting events because they just won’t post it!

        5. Medley of books*

          My mother’s maiden name is “Coon.” Interestingly enough, my father’s surname is “White”. It has crossed my mind that I should probably be careful in the way I talk about the two sides of my family in public for fear of being misunderstood. But really in my area, I was only ever vaguely aware of “Coon” being a slur. I have never actually heard it used in that way in person.

      6. Selina Luna*

        A bit of a funny story about this exact thing: in my first teaching job, I had a child who was in a family of boys who all had variations on the same name. The dad was Richard, the oldest was Rich, and the student I had was Ritchie. But the other variations were there too: Rick, Ricky, and Dick were represented. There were a couple of others, too. It’s not a surprise to me that most of them acquired nicknames from their friends as they went through school.

      7. NerdyKris*

        Yeah, from the sounds of the letter, it’s probably something like “Sissy”, which while a very rare name, is still a name that’s used sometimes.

      8. fhqwhgads*

        This question reminded me of when I read Trevor Noah’s autobiography and he mentioned a pattern growing up in South Africa where some kids were named after horrible violent dictators. The parents weren’t necessarily well-versed in the doings of said dictators. They just knew that person had power, so they named their kid what they thought was a powerful name.
        I am not in any way suggesting that was equivalent to a name that phonetically happens to sound identical to a slur. But the discomfort associated with saying it rings very similar to me.

        1. StephChi*

          I’m a teacher, and I work in a school where the majority of students come from Latin America (mostly Mexico). I cringe inside every time I get a student named Adolfo, especially since I teach world history, so Hitler’s going to come up in the second semester. I would never let the student know how I feel about the name Adolph, though, because it’s my problem, not his.

      9. Meep*

        I had a Great Uncle Dick, speaking of which.

        But I am pretty sure I know what the name is that LW #1 is taking offense to. It is the same name as a certain popular criminal who got released a year ago after killing her mother.

      10. tamarack etc.*

        **content warning: I’ll write out slurs**

        Avoiding to say someone’s name when it’s Dick or Jemima or Bodhi or Cheyenne or Pip(p)i because they may have been given with some offensive overtones is I think crossing the line. These are just names. A difficult situation is when the word in question is undoubtedly offensive but was probably arrived at through a process that has nothing to do with the slur (eg Kike when it’s a Northern European abbreviation of something like Katharina). Names I would have a problem along the OP though are for example Gypsy (which I guess is the one in question here) or something like Squaw.

    4. diasporacrew*

      I’m not sure it’s quite as easy as that. This is an extreme example, but I once met someone with the given name Hitler. It was spelled very slightly differently but was both clearly meant as a reference to and pronounced like Hitler. This wasn’t someone who changed their name to be provocative, it was their given name their parents called him.
      I never saw this person again past this first meeting, so didn’t have to figure out what I’d do, but I think I would have had to come up with an alternative.

      1. Interesting*

        How would you get the other person to agree to be addressed as the alternative you deem appropriate?

        1. diasporacrew*

          As I said, I never saw this person again, but I don’t think I would have been able to call them that and seem warm and normal toward them.

      2. Jessie J*

        Hitler is a real Germanic name though, along with Adolph. And families still use this name in Germany because well, it’s common to them.

        1. diasporacrew*

          I’m not talking about the German family name but someone (definitely not German)’s first name.

            1. jtr*

              I think that diasporacrew is saying that this non-German person’s FIRST NAME was “Hitler” – like Hitler Tiberius Kirk.

              1. Jessie J*

                I understand but it’s such a common name so it’s not that alarming. I’m germanic and lived in germany and switzerland, and saw this name often.

                1. Harriet Vane*

                  No, it isn’t. It really isn’t. I can’t speak for Switzerland (but I very strongly doubt it), but Hitler, or any variation thereof, is not a common first name in Germany, nor has it ever been historically. Given there are regulations about what children can be named in Germany, I don’t think the name would be approved by any registry office. As for Adolf, yes, that once was a common first name, but it has rapidly fallen out of usage after 1945.

                  Germanic, btw, is a term that was core to Nazi ideology, so I would be careful to use it as a self-descriptor unless you are a language family or a pre-medieval tribe. You might give people the wrong idea.

                2. jtr*

                  Jessie J, are you really saying that no one in Germany would bat an eye at naming a kid Hitler as their first name, because the name is so common there? I find that…well, pretty unbelievable, to be honest.

                3. Emmy Noether*

                  Harriet Vane is right in all points. It’s not common in any German speaking country, it IS alarming.

                  And “germanic” is for languages and for ancient peoples causing the fall of Rome. You are not germanic.

                4. Myrin*

                  What? I’m not sure whether you are just misunderstanding what others are saying or what, “Hitler” is not a first name at all!

                  And I am German, have lived in Germany all my life, and majored in German language and literature, and I have actually literally never encountered it as a surname, either (probably because it indeed wasn’t very common to begin with and after the war, despite Germany having very strict conventions and laws around changing your name at all that would be one of the outstanding reasons for being allowed to change your name immediately).

                  But also, again, it is not and has never been a first name!

                5. amoeba*

                  What?

                  No, no, it’s really, really not. I mean, I could *probably* get over myself and use the name if it’s somebody from, whatever, South Africa (apparently, it’s a thing there? Trevor Noah has a very funny story about a boy called Hitler in “Born a Crime”…), but a German person? No. Just no. Even “Adolf” is not really used at all anymore and I’d *definitely* be at least a little suspect if I met an Adolf, and a lot more if the person was born after, like, 1950 or so.

                  There’s an Austrian football coach called “Adolf Hütter” and even that name raises quite some eyebrows here – apparently, he’s named after his grandfather or something, but it does not land well. He uses “Adi”, I assume for that reason.

                6. Limmy*

                  I’m European and lived in Germany for a long time and I don’t believe this for a second. Germans are acutely aware of the shadow of their past. No one would choose this as a name (which is NOT common or historical) unless they were deliberately being provocative and they wouldn’t be allowed to. Anyone with that surname would have changed their name generations ago.

                  I do not believe the poster making that claim is German or has been to Germany.

                7. Regina*

                  There is even a German film from 2018 (“Der Vorname” – “The Given Name”) about a couple that announces over dinner with friends as a joke that they plan to call their unborn child Adolf. This kicks of a heated discussion because the idea itself is so scandalous in Germany.

                8. MassMatt*

                  Very surprised to see someone say the name Hitler is a common name, for either a first name or a family name. I’ve travelled extensively in Germany and Austria and never encountered it, nor the name Adolph.

                  There was a really interesting documentary from 2014 called “Meet the Hitlers”, about people (mostly in the US) with the last name Hitler or other prominent Nazis. Some were related, others were not. One guy was in court because he tried to name his kid Adolph Hitler, fortunately he lost. He didn’t help his case of claiming that it’s just a name with no relation to the OTHER Hitler when he showed up in court wearing a Luftwaffe uniform.

                9. Sparky*

                  Where the eff in Germany were you living where it was common to see people with the given name Hitler? There’s no way that would get approved by the register. Germans already don’t do the “surnames as first names” thing anyway.

                10. amoeba*

                  @Sparky yeah, in addition to everything else, using a last name as a given name is also just not possible/legal in Germany, anyway! Like, even for something like “Müller”, nope, sorry.

                  (Of course there are some names that can be both a given name and a family name – rest assured, Hitler isn’t and has never been one of them.)

                11. Artemesia*

                  I lived in Germany of a year and never met one and Germany has laws that require given names to conform to appropriate name lists. I bet Hitler is not an approved first name there.

        2. Emmy Noether*

          I am German and just want to note a few things:

          1) people do not call their children Adolph in Germany anymore, although there are still people in their 80s with that name. I have never met one born after 45, and I would assume his parents are Nazis.

          2) Germans have never used “Hitler” as a given name. It’s a last name, and pretty much extinct.

          3) Changing one’s name is difficult to impossible in Germany (a judge has to decide your name is harmful to you), and carrying that name is one of the few things that will fairly automatically go through.

          1. Testing*

            You are of course right on all accounts. But the ideology of someone’s parents should not influence how you treat (or whether you hire) their adult offspring. I also don’t think it’s fair to expect people to change their given names, they may have many reasons not to which have nothing to do with their parents’ ideology.

            1. metadata minion*

              To be honest, if someone was actually named after Hitler by their parents and it wasn’t just a really unfortunate homophone with, I don’t know, Danish or something, I would give them side-eye if they didn’t go by their middle name or a nickname even if they didn’t completely change it (because hey, that’s a giant administrating mess and can be expensive to boot). That’s just…your parents are apparently die-hard Nazis and you kept the Nazi name they gave you? I’m not going to believe you if you say you reject their hatred.

              1. Observer*

                I would give them side-eye if they didn’t go by their middle name or a nickname even if they didn’t completely change it

                That assumes that the kid *has* a middle name.

          2. UKDancer*

            Yes when I was a child in the 1980s with German family friends there was one guy in their small Rhine village called Adi. He was in his 70s then, really sweet old chap. We only found out after his death when we saw the funeral information that his full name was Adolf. He’s the only one I’ve ever met in Germany. It’s really not common there.

            1. Emmy Noether*

              Fun fact: Adidas is named for Adi Dassler, whose given name is… you guessed it!

              Very common nickname among a certain generation.

          3. Myrin*

            I do know (of; he used to live in my town but I’ve never met him personally) exactly one Adolf who was born in 1970 or so and as far as I could tell, literally every firstborn son in his family since the 1880s at least had that name and it was passed down like a regular “family name” (which I’m pretty sure is the reason the Standesamt even allowed it at all). But good god, talk about being tone-deaf and not aware/willfully ignorant of how that will come across at best (at best!).

            1. Emmy Noether*

              Yeah, that is the kind of situation where I could see the name being allowed, and also the whole town talking about it. He’ll have to either never leave the town where everyone knows (of) him, or get it changed.

              There will also always be a whiff of… maybe it’s not just naïveté/stubbornness on the part of the parents.

              To bring the discussion back to the letter, the Adolfs I knew all went by Addi. I’d call one by the full name if he wished, though. Names are complex things, with complex reasons behind them, and they most often say more about the parents than the person.

              1. Blue*

                This is so interesting and only seems possible because Adolf wasn’t a tremendously common name to begin with? It’s not like anyone is scandalized when a child is named Joseph…but then again maybe that name is now uncommon in formerly USSR states.

                1. Emmy Noether*

                  I have wondered about exactly that example before. Possible explanations I came up with:
                  1) Adolf was not that common to start with, and not used in that many languages
                  2) There is no prior famous Adolf, like there is with Joseph, where I think the biblical one is still the stronger connotation
                  3) AH is more often referred to by his full name than Stalin is. A lot of people probably have to think a moment for Stalin’s given name.
                  4) Germany’s view and rememberance of it’s past is very, very different from Russia’s. Of course it is different across different states of the former USSR, but Germany is kind of unique in how vehemently and passionately we (well, most of us – insert side-eye at AfD) reject it.

                2. Observer*

                  @Emmy Noether, I think that when you say that “ A lot of people probably have to think a moment for Stalin’s given name.” you have hit on something very important and powerful. That name is not tied to this particular person in the same way as Adolph with Hitler. To the point that I would suspect that a lot of people don’t even realize what Stalin’s given name was.

                3. amoeba*

                  I mean, it wasn’t super *uncommon* either, though, and honestly, most people wouldn’t blink an eye/have a nazi association when talking about a historical Adolf, like pre-Hitler times… for instance, Gustav Adolf was a famous Swedish king and I’ve never even considered that connection when reading about him.
                  I mean, I guess if he’d been called, idk, Peter or something else where there was basically one or two in every family, sure. Or if his last name had been “Müller”, I assume the association wouldn’t be that strong, either.

                4. A Lady*

                  Joseph is also the name of a couple of pretty important figures from the Old and New Testaments. I’d imagine they would overshadow Josef Stalin by a fair bit.

                5. Allonge*

                  A Lady – exactly.

                  And since it’s a common name from the Bible, most European languages have their own version of it which in a lot of cases will not be the same as – in some cases not even that similar to – the Russian Josib (not sure about the English transliteration of Иосиф, sorry). It’s a different calculation than for Adolph.

              2. anotherfan*

                I learned after his death that my Great-Uncle Ad’s full name was Adolph, but he was born before WWII.

                1. Worldwalker*

                  @Observer

                  Most people don’t know what Josef Stalin’s real surname was, either. (Djugashvili)

          4. amoeba*

            This.

            Also, pretty sure it’s very similar in Switzerland (although it might be a little less extreme because, well, not quite so close, historically.)

          5. Caller 2*

            Harpo Marx’s (born 1888) birth name was Adolph, though he later changed it to Arthur. I imagine he wasn’t the only Adolph to do so.

            1. Phony Genius*

              He changed it around 1911, so it was for other reasons. But by the late 1930’s, he was quite happy he had done so.

          6. I Would Rather Be Eating Dumplings*

            Yeah – Adolph also used to be semi-common in Sweden and I have one or two (now deceased) connections on my family tree by that name…but I have never met anyone born post WWII with the name Adolph.

            I think that name has been pretty robustly rejected by modern generations.

          7. CorporateDrone*

            My relative Adolf literally changed to using him middle name after the war. When I asked about it he said it was obvious that no German would use a name to remind of that terrible time. If this is changing, the world is a darker place than I knew.

            1. Worldwalker*

              I’m not sure declining to associate an ordinary, even if uncommon (unless you’re a Swedish king, apparently?) name with an evil dictator is a sign of increasing darkness. Making the name special because an evil person was named that gives him power he doesn’t deserve.

        3. Skippy*

          Anyone read Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime? One of his South African friends was named Hitler. He has a funny/horrifying/eye-opening section in his book featuring that young man and how different things can look from half a world away.

      3. The Prettiest Curse*

        If this person was from South America, there is a tradition in that region of naming people after historical world leaders. The most prominent recent example is Lenin Moreno, former president of Ecuador.

        1. diasporacrew*

          No, they weren’t South American. And Lenin Moreno was named that because his parents admired Lenin… I would argue it is still different than admiring Hitler, which is pretty universally frowned upon.

          1. The Prettiest Curse*

            I agree that Hitler is different than other names and a terrible name choicd (and I would also have difficulty getting past it myself, even as someone who comes across lots of unusual names in my work), but I did once participate in a discussion thread elsewhere where a ton of people gave examples of people they had known in South America with names of foreign political leaders. There’s a Venezuelan footballer whose first name is Stalin, for example.

            I’m sure part of it is people naming a child in tribute to a leader they admire (or not doing research on the source of the name), but also there is probably some of it is ‘hey, this name sounds cool to me, wasn’t this person famous?” and not realising the name will be received differently in other cultural contexts.

            1. This Old House*

              Think about how in the US, a lot of presidential surnames have become popular first names. While I bet some of the first parents to name their daughters Reagan were admirers of the president, I know several Reagans whose parents I think were not thinking of politics or leaders at all – eventually it just starts to sounds like a name and people stop thinking much about where it came from, or decide the history of the name doesn’t matter if they like the sound. And that’s without switching languages/cultures/political environments.

              1. Aerin*

                Regan is a Shakespeare character (one of Lear’s daughters) and it’s possible that the US president’s spelling just took over for some people. Although I’m guessing that’s highly regional as I’ve never encountered Reagan as a first name.

          2. Spaniard*

            Were they from Spain? The Spaniard short form for “Enrique” sounds a lot like a slur for Jewish people and, while is normally spelled with “Q” some people chose the “K” instead (not knowing, of course). I did not learn that was the same spelling as the slur until years into moving to US. If that’s the case 1/ it’s not pronounced the same and 2/ you can explain and ask them to go by the not-shortened name

            1. Avery*

              Wow, I was about to comment below that I’d just come across a guy on a dating app with that name – with a K. It stopped me in my tracks, but he did appear to be South American or of South American descent, so it must have been from this. As other people have mentioned, you’re going to come across words and names that are totally normal in one culture that…stand out for other reasons in another. But I do wonder if there was any impact on his dating success rate!

        2. Bay*

          Not just Latin America either– Trevor Noah wrote about a popular DJ in his neighborhood when he was a teenager in South Africa named Hitler, because Famous Foreign Names were popular

          1. diasporacrew*

            I remember that being a result of a few historical factors, namely: black south African people being forced by apartheid-era legislation to have English sounding names in addition to their actual names; their having no innate understanding of cultural conventions around English-language naming conventions; and apartheird-era schooling and education being woefully inadequate around the evils of the Third Reich (I wonder why…)
            So, not historical neutral, and the story did revolve around Jewish people finding it unbearable to address him that way (rightly).

            1. Caller 2*

              Yeah. A lot of colonised or formerly colonised peoples saw WWII as being chiefly Britain vs Germany and had a hard time seeing what Germany was doing as any worse than what Britain had been up to until very very recently (or was still up to).

          2. amoeba*

            That story is amazing. I believe it was a dancer, not a DJ, and the rest of the troupe were cheering him on because he was great, so they were going “Go Hitler! Go Hitler!” at all the contests. Until they went to a Jewish school and suddenly the audience went very quiet…

            I’ll also always remember the time when my German friend was telling that story to us two other Germans in the break room and our French colleague came in right when he quoted “Go Hitler”. Must have been quite the look (context matters, people!)

        3. History together*

          I knew a South American whose given name was Richard Nixon. I can’t remember 100% where he was from but I think he was Brazilian. (Didn’t know him very well, it was a work situation where I worked with him once and was vaguely aware of him otherwise, and the name stands out a lot more in my memory than which country he was from or what his first language was.)

        4. Juicebox Hero*

          There’s a man in my town whose first name is Stalin, and he does have a Latino last name. He’s totally normal and not dictatorial at all. It’s puzzled me for ages why anyone would name a child after Stalin, and now I get it. Thank you for solving this minor but annoying puzzle for me.

        5. Baunilha*

          I’m from South America. It’s not so much a tradition, it’s more like people (often poor, but not always) hear or read foreign names, most times completely unaware of the source or meaning of the name, and just pass it along to their children.
          That being said, even here the name Hitler would be frowned upon, and the naming regulations would likely come in to place, so it wouldn’t be allowed anyway.

          1. Worldwalker*

            There’s a fellow who’s usually at the receipt-checking station in Costco whose nametag says “Rambo.” Come to think of it, from his looks, he may be South American.

        7. Worldwalker*

          Brazil seems to have a tradition of naming people destined to be race car drivers with the surnames of famous people. Emerson Fittipaldi, for instance, or Nelson Piquet.

      5. Productivity Pigeon*

        It’s a times like these I’m glad I live in a country that doesn’t allow offensive or ”too weird” names. (Which is definitely problematic most days even if they’re not super strict. )

    6. Suze*

      Agree. I knew a woman called Jihad, and since she was a Muslim I initially felt uncomfortable. It can sound like an insult specifically directed at Muslims, and I was a bit worried that other people who didn’t know it was her real name would think I was insulting her. But I looked up the name and found out it’s a perfectly normal name in her culture meaning struggle (a struggle to be a better person), and after that I quickly got used to calling her that. I recommend that the OP look up the original meaning of this name and understand the cultural context for why their parents chose it.

      1. Peregrine*

        If it’s the name most of us are figuring it is, there wouldn’t be any cultural context. That’s one thing that makes it weird—in addition to being a slur, it’s like, for example, naming your child an off-color word for Swedish people when you’re not even Swedish.

          1. Aerin*

            One that’s currently running a well-regarded revival, no less! I’m not sure if they’ve addressed the name thing at all, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a contextual note in the playbill or something.

            1. nodramalama*

              well the musical is called for the woman the musical is about, so they can’t really do much about it. It was her chosen name.

        2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

          Back when the parents were chosing a name is likely 20+ years and maybe decades more, so likely not widely thought of as a slur.
          Even now many younger people outside this ethnicity and also outside the white middle class professional bubble don’t realise this. Especially someone ESL that maybe only knew of the musical.

        3. Nina*

          If it’s the name I think it is (a slur for Romany people), the cultural context is that I still, frequently, in 2025, have to tell people that ‘gypped’ is not an appropriate word to use in any context and ‘swindled’ would be better, and that ‘gypsy’ is in fact a slur and not just a Fleetwood Mac or Cher song. Like, this is still news to a lot of people under 30! Especially in Britain, where being racist to/about Romany and Traveller people is still fairly normal and acceptable.

          I can absolutely imagine somewhat-alternative (maybe not even that alternative) parents naming a child Gypsy and having no problem with it, right now, let alone 20-odd years ago for the child to be old enough to be interviewing for jobs.

          1. amoeba*

            Yeah, this. There was also quite a bit of romanticising going on there, so while definitely not appropriate nowadays, I honestly don’t think most people would have considered the word in any way problematic in, like, the 70s?

            1. Tasty Corner*

              Usage and interpretation varies geographically. There are some people from Traveller communities (or family backgrounds) retaining it as their own preferred identity term – either reclaiming or never seeing it as a slur in the first place. That’s an in-group choice, not anyone else’s to make for them. (Can only speak for UK context)

              1. Nodramalama*

                I didn’t say it was right, I said a lot of people do not know that gypped even has any connotation, let alone that it could be offensive.

                1. Lexi*

                  I’ve noticed that a lot of people think it is spelled jipped 2hich makes the conversation even more confusing.

              2. Mr McGregor's Gardener*

                I went and looked this up, since I usually note think that Americans find it to always be a slur, no question; and the UK census of 2021 had 71,400 people self identify as Gypsy/Irish Traveller (0.1% of the population). That census has a space to write in a preferred identity if the one you use isn’t included on the pre-printed list (same way you can write in Jedi under religion), so the option to use Roma or any variation thereof was there.

                I think, as Tasty says, there is a conscious effort to reclaim the word, in much the same way queer has been taken back from being a slur. Tyson Fury, the boxer uses the ring name The Gypsy King- although he’s actually Irish Traveller, which is another matter. Of course, it absolutely does get used as a slur, and context and location are key. But if you go in assuming that someone using the word gypsy is either malicious or ignorant it’s entirely possible you’re going to put your foot in it.

                1. Jay (no, the other one)*

                  When I first found an online crossword community in the 1990s, there was a pitched battle about the word “gypped.” Many saw it as a slur and others argued about the etymology and made the usual arguments you hear from people who are proudly “not PC.” By 2000 the word was no longer seen in mainstream crosswords.

              3. Lellow*

                Yup, I know as acquaintances several Gypsy people in their 20s/30s who absolutely hate how “gypsy is a slur” has spread, particularly among people who don’t even know anyone from the community. (And they have explicitly asked everyone who knows them to state this whenever it comes up in discourse, which is why I’m doing so.)

                1. Nah*

                  Meanwhile every person of Romani descent that I have talked to (and I believe several organizations representing the group) would like people to recognize it as a slur and stop using it. One group does not override another (though in this case of “triggering slur” vs “yeah that’s okay” one should lean towards not using what would be considered a degrading recital term), and acknowledging that many people of the affected group find it problematic or distressing at best is not a bad thing! Heck, the European Roma Rights Center calls for people to stop using it, and considers it a slur against themselves. The World Romani Congress voted to stop its usage and label it as a slur in the 70s!

              4. MigraineMonth*

                This is one of the complicating factors. My understanding is that many of the Irish Traveler communities in the UK self-identify as gypsies. In contrast, most of the Romani ethnic group in Europe considers it a slur to be referred to with that word. They experience racism and violence at high levels.

                So it’s not just the usual “some consider it a slur and some have decided to claim/reclaim it” that happens with many offensive words. There are fundamentally separate groups that are being referred to with the same name.

            2. Insert Clever Name Here*

              Yeah, I am a white middle class woman who’s almost 40 and while I knew that the word meant Romany people, it’s not one that I frequently heard at all growing up on the US gulf coast, to the point I didn’t even realize it was a slur until literally 2 years ago watching an episode of Derry Girls. And I read a LOT, in a lot of various genres and authors from different backgrounds. I just…didn’t come across this information.

              1. Aggretsuko*

                There’s not a lot of Romany in the US that I ever hear about, so it was a surprise to me too when that blew up.

            3. Eukomos*

              I think those of us who spend a lot of time on the internet need to accept that it’s just not a slur to a lot of people. Certainly if you know you shouldn’t refer to any Romany that way without their explicit request to do so, and we should all be sensitive to the terrible racism directed towards the Romany and push back hard on anyone who expressed actual hatred towards them, but racing around playing whack-a-mole with a word that many people don’t view or use as a slur is a waste of energy.

          3. Prof*

            What I have discovered in the US is that many people there don’t know that Romani people are real. I guess the minority is very small in the US? I had a conversation at university there, where people thought that they were a sort of fairy-tale phenomenon. When I said that there are (quite many!) actual Romani people in Europe, to them it was like saying we have knights and dragons.

            1. Seeking Second Childhood*

              Partly that’s because some* immigrant families were recorded at Ellis Island as being the nationality of the country they emigrated from, and they settled into cities.

              *At least the case for my college friend whose Roma family settled in NYC.

            2. Emmy Noether*

              I mean, some countries do still have knights. Neither the knights nor the Romani usually look or act quite like they do in fairytale illustrations, though.

            3. Aggretsuko*

              Yes, exactly. One author I like claims Romany heritage and otherwise…you just don’t see/hear about any in the US.

            4. Banana Pyjamas*

              I mean the family I know, immigrated from Romania and choose to go by Romanian Gypsy. They originally identified as Romanian Romani and had to have a lot of conversations about the difference in the two words, so they identify as Romanian Gypsy. I wonder if that’s particularly common?

            5. Parakeet*

              It’s VERY small and also a lot of Romani immigrants intermarried, I think. I am part Roma (from the area that was then called Bohemia) on my mom’s side, and that branch of the family ended up in Wisconsin of all places. And intermarried with local farm families. So I wouldn’t claim some kind of deep connection to Roma or more general Romani culture. Though when I have, on a couple of occasions, encountered Romani people in the US (sadly, in situations like “helping a homeless lady with first aid for her leg”) they’ve been delighted when I eventually mentioned the Roma ancestry.

          4. Person from the Resume*

            I learned on this website the gipped is actually short for gypsy and thus a slur.

            It’s certainly not widely common knowledge for an American in their 40s.

            While I know that gypsy is considered a slur, that is knowledge learned late in life and it doesn’t subconsciously register as a slur.

            Also I live in a place where there were German immigrants. I’d assume anyone named Adolph was quite old or named after their grandfather/ancestor. For me the first name is just a first name and not associated with Hitler or Nazis (like Joseph, not like Hitler).

            1. Lellow*

              FYI, “gypped” isn’t a slur in usage because of it being short for gypsy, but because it’s using a particular group as a shorthand for a negative act. (Another synonym for being swindled has been “being jewed”, which probably illustrates what I mean better than my explanation above.)

          5. Starbuck*

            In the US especially I think it is just not common knowledge because the community here is much smaller and not prominent the way it is in Europe. Really the only historical education I got on the topic was “oh yes this was one of the other groups that was also targeted in the Holocaust” with no extra context.
            That word is also one I’d heard a few times but never seen spelled, so I was extra clueless about the connection because I had been assuming it was written with a J.

        4. ACG*

          in my part of the world the (assumed) name usually has a *positive* spin on it, and brings to mind romantic free spirits and such. It’s a weird disconnect to know that it’s a slur (and to stop my own usage) and to drive down essentially main street and see the restaurant named basically (Slur) Kitchen.

          1. amoeba*

            I’d argue that the positive connotation might also be a bit the part of the problem – there was quite the trend to romanticise that, also in Germany, in the 19th century, with loads of “G* dances”, “G* songs” etc. in music and art, etc (Brahms comes to mind, for one popular instance). And obviously all done by white people with very little idea of the actual culture, etc. So, similar to what happened with Native Americans in literature, etc. – not portrayed in a bad way, per se, but very clichéd and inaccurate (while at the same time, the actual people were not treated well at all).

            1. Aggretsuko*

              Yeah, it took a long time to find out that the g-word wasn’t just “people who like to travel around a lot and wear great clothes” (or the Broadway variety), since that doesn’t seem offensive to say “people who travel around a lot.”

        5. History together*

          Assuming it is this word for a certain group of travelling people, I have come across people who didn’t quite realise that it was a real ethnic group. I think they’d kind of thought of them as storybook people, like hobbits.

          Just as I’ve come across people who kind of didn’t quite realise Indigenous North Americans are real modern people and not just from stories. In both cases they were like, oh yeah, duh, when I pointed out that they are real people.

          1. History together*

            A lot of people also don’t realise Sherpas are an ethnic group and not just a job. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people who thought the word we are discussing described people who followed a certain lifestyle rather than an ethnic group.

            1. metadata minion*

              Thank you; that’s my learning moment of the day! I am one of those people who thought “Sherpa” was a job title. Time to go do some reading :-)

            2. Crooked Bird*

              You’re 100% right. I worked with a young intern who used the term one day and I gently told her (apologies to Lellow & their acquaintances above!) that she probably shouldn’t use that term and clarified when she asked that it wasn’t the real name of their people and they’d prefer to be called by their real name. She was shocked to learn this was an ethnic group and said she thought the term meant a lifestyle!

            4. iglwif*

              Yes, I had read more than one Everest narrative before I figured that out. You’d think it would be something such narratives clarified … but nope.

              1. TeaCoziesRUs*

                I had no idea until checking it the Eddie Bauer website, where they’ve started replacing their “Sherpa” fabric names with “faux shearling,” in part because so many Everest holders use their gear and they really lean into the mountain hiker aesthetic. They’ve apparently teamed up with some of the Sherpa people in community work.
                “Faux Shearling
                An important note on the use of a culturally appropriated term in this product description:
                Eddie Bauer has replaced the term Sherpa with Faux Shearling as part of our company-wide effort to remove culturally appropriated designs, terms, and names from current and future products. Sherpa refers to an indigenous people native to Tibet and Nepal in the eastern Himalayas of Central Asia.”

                1. iglwif*

                  Oh that’s kind of cool! (I didn’t know anyone was calling fake fur “Sherpa” — apparently I do not shop at the correct stores to know this — but I am glad at least one place has stopped doing so.)

          2. Dahlia*

            Ngl the amount Americans use the word Esk**o without realizing it’s a slur is really uncomfortable for me.

      2. Elsa*

        Yup, I’ve met people named Jihad, it’s a pretty normal Muslim name. And last night out for dinner we started chatting with the waiter, and someone in our party asked him what his name was. He sort of flinched while saying his name was Osama. I’m sure he knows it sounds weird to Americans, but I think it’s also a normal Muslim name. We said: “Nice to meet you, Osama.”

        2. Libellulebelle*

          Yep, there is a student in my kid’s class at school named Osama (not sure on which spelling).

        3. Phony Genius*

          I have known people with both names. Jihad preferred to be called Jay. And after 2001, Osama went by Sam since he had to deal with the public at his job.

          1. Kay*

            Oof, and after 2001 specifically? Depending on the region it may have been for his own safety too! Pity, since (as others have said) it’s just a name.

    7. Nodramalama*

      I agree. It’s their name, they should be called that. I think it’s pretty weird that girls are called things like Chastity, but it really is none of my business.

      1. Cats Ate My Croissant*

        Chastity always makes me think of Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, where a family names their daughters after virtues and their sons after vices. So there’s a character called Bestiality Carter.

      2. Aggretsuko*

        I just finished listening to Cher’s autobiography and she got that name from a movie she was in. I was all “ohhhhhhhhh,” because I never got why a Taurus would pick a name like that :P

        1. fhqwhgads*

          I’ve seen clips of Cher with small child Chaz saying Chaz (or possibly spelled Chas at the time).

      4. Worldwalker*

        There was quite a tradition a few hundred years ago of naming children, especially girls, for virtues the parents hoped they would express. For that matter, in the 1960s, a girl on my school bus was named Patience. But historically, there were names like Prudence, Charity, Patience, etc. (look at the names of the Pilgrims) Hope isn’t unknown even today.

        Name preferences change a lot throughout time and place. I don’t know anyone named Athelstan or Edwina, but there were three Sharis in my elementary school classes.

        1. J*

          Prudence, Charity, and Patience aren’t really unknown today either. Not common, but not so distant as hundreds of years ago either.

    8. CityMouse*

      My great grandparents were from a rural farming community and not terribly literate due to lack of education and so my grandmother and her siblings were named some odd things (think Marine instead of Maureen). I definitely could see someone from a similar situation being in the situation here. So there’s an aspect to which unusual names may represent a non traditional background.

            1. CityMouse*

              Some of the other names were kind of silly (like Royal Highness [lastname]).

              Point is, though, is that having an unusual name may indicate someone from a non traditional background or socioeconomic status for the job and you can’t hold their parents’ choices against them.

      2. Freya*

        There’s one particular name that pops up every couple of generations in my dad’s family. I’ve seen 4+ different spellings, all of them phonetic in different ways, for slightly different dialects of English.

      1. Ohio Duck*

        No group is being targeted by the person’s name. In this context, it’s just their name and it would be disrespectful not to use it.

        1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

          It can be true that the word is a racial slur targeting real people in the office AND that it is a person’s name. The name targets nobody, and (if it’s the one people are assuming it is) should be used, but let’s not pretend there’s no possibility for misunderstanding hurting people.

      2. Worldwalker*

        “Mark” the name is not the same as “mark” the crayon smear, and nobody thinks they are.

    10. Orange Line Avenger*

      Agreed! I literally encountered this situation a few months ago. A colleague from a non-English-speaking country had a name spelled identically (but pronounced differently) to an unambiguous “get punched for saying it”-tier racial slur. I was really uncomfortable with it, but talked to a friend who challenged my way of thinking and reminded me how often non-Anglo people are pressured to change their names for the comfort and ease of English speakers.

      This is a different kind of discomfort than encountering a name that’s “too long” or “too hard to pronounce” in English, but Alison is correct that a slur is in the usage, not an inherent property of the word itself.

        1. Orange Line Avenger*

          She is a historian of racial identity, so she’s uniquely insightful about many things!

      2. AnneCordelia*

        There was a big case in the news a few years back — a prof in California got fired because he would not stop pressuring a student to “Americanize” her name. He objected to her name because it was Phuc (which is Vietnamese). No, Phuc doesn’t have to become Frances or Fiona –people just need to get over themselves.

        1. Koala*

          I have a dear friend named Dung and am always impressed with her grace and good humor when people encounter her name for the first time.

      1. CityMouse*

        Yes, but that does cost money and create a hassle to do so, especially when your degreea are in a birth name, and you’re still going to have to provide past legal names on a background check.

        So it’s still not something you should choose to hold against someone.

        1. Worldwalker*

          Exactly.

          I’m sure that there’s some language in which my first name would be derogatory in some way. (with thousands of languages in the world, that’s true of any name) But I wouldn’t change it for that reason. It’s my name. It’s not a word, a noun, a verb, anything. It’s my name, it means me, and it starts and ends there.

    12. BW*

      I had a client from a foreign country whose entire name read as a series of slurs in English, but not in their own language. It was not my place to giggle or refuse to call them by their name.

      I also had an uncle whose first and last names were all euphemisms for penis. He named all his sons after himself, a la George Foreman. Again, not my place to refuse to say the name.

    13. Dinwar*

      This is extremely context-dependent. For example, if a visitor or client walked in and didn’t know this person’s name was that word, they may take your usage as you being offensive. It would be understandable–without the knowledge that it’s the person’s name, the visitor or client will typically assume you’re using a word in its common usage in the culture, which means they’ll assume you’re being offensive.

      The webcomic SMBC recently had a list of examples of this sort of thing. There’s another term for rooster, for example, which, in a quote with insufficient context, can make older literature sound quite dirty. In context it makes sense–it’s no different than terms like bull or heifer or hen, it’s a technical term in agriculture–but if you lack that context you default to the cultural context you are acclimated to.

      I’m not saying that you should therefore give them a new name. Just that it’s more complicated than you make it seem.

      I’ve seen people with highly suggestive names in the past. One guy’s name was Rusty Dick, for example (no joke, he was good friends with my family and died a while back). We also knew a family of Hookers (I worked with the mother and daughter). Most either go by a non-suggestive version of the name (Rusty in his case), or by nicknames, or by middle names. The Hookers used to make money on bar bets–after a few drinks you’d tell someone “Bet you $10 that girl over there’s a Hooker”, and give her half the money. These folks tend to be FAR more aware of the suggestive/offensive nature of the name than we are, having dealt with it most of their life. They typically find the humor in it; it’s that, or go “Boy Named Sue”.

      1. iglwif*

        I also knew a family named Hooker in my hometown. The dad was a college instructor and told us that he started each semester with an announcement along the lines of “Believe me, I have already heard ALL the jokes you are thinking of right now, so don’t even bother”.

        1. Worldwalker*

          The slang meaning comes from aspersions cast on the camp-followers of one General Hooker. There are lots of Hookers out there, probably more than there are hookers.

          1. xylocopa*

            This is a popular folk etymology but the use of “hooker” in that sense predates the general.

          2. Aerin*

            My sophomore history teacher had a noted disdain for the Civil War’s focal point in the standard curriculum at the time, so we covered it in about a week. At the end of the year, we joked that our takeaway for the whole Civil War was “hookers and sideburns.”

      2. Caller 2*

        The correct name for a female dog has a similar stigma as the name for rooster (in fact, cock is the correct term for most any male bird, at least in some contexts, for example canary breeding). It’s just funny how word uses and meanings change. I could call my male dog a son of a bitch and it would be completely accurate, but I’d hesitate to say it in front of children

    14. Karen*

      Agreed. And also to comment on the name. Every time someone tells me my name is a slur, my feelings toward that person shift a little bit into the cold zone.

      I’m job hunting right now, and it hadn’t even occured to me that people wouldn’t interview me because of my name.

        1. Worldwalker*

          Exactly.

          I doubt if anyone, ever, has refused to interview someone because their name was Karen, any more than they’ve refused to interview someone whose name was John or Randy.

          1. Bast*

            I’d agree, and go so far as to say Ashit, Osama, and Phuc (names mentioned upthread) would be more likely to have their names held against them than Karen, Randy, or Dick etc., and the common denominator is that the first set of names all sound “normal” and “blend in.” I think this may be unconscious bias on the part of some people — they are not necessarily cognizant of the fact that they are choosing to interview Randy instead of Osama because of his name, but it comes into play for one reason or another. And then Osama has to become “Sam” to make people more comfortable, which is sad.

    15. Trivia*

      As people have commented that slurs change over time: in the Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow is seen at the end as a farmhand named “Hunk.” This outraged my grandparents, since “hunk” was an ethnic slur against Bohemians (via “Bohunk”). Now the word means a hot guy. Just a point of interest!

    16. Momma Bear*

      “The important distinction is that in this usage, it’s their name, not a slur.”

      I agree. LW says they don’t know the gender of this person, which leads me to think the applicant is not from an English-speaking country and it may be something that sounds like a slur, but is very different in their language. Social media is full of translations that don’t convert to one language or another well. Context matters. I hope LW interviews this person if they qualify and treats them with respect. A lot of smart, hardworking people get overlooked because their name isn’t Jim or Mary. LW needs to be careful not to discriminate.

    17. Grandma*

      Many years ago, a kindergarten teacher friend had a child named Vagina in her class. Her mom didn’t mean it to insult or offend, she just named her that because that’s where she came from. Mom evidently wasn’t the brightest bean on the pole. But what do you do with this in a professional setting? Say to your prospective customer, “And this is my colleague Vagina.”? Little Vagina must be approaching 60 by now, but I do wonder about her journey through life with that name.

    18. Ann Nonymous*

      I had a Pakistani driver when I lived abroad whose name was Fakr Al Deen. I always felt weird calling his name out in public even though the country I was in was Muslim and aware of that name. It was also weird when non-Arabic-speaking people were in the car with me and I had to instruct him “gaddam” – meaning In Front Of or Go Forward.

    19. Jenny Juniper*

      The OP is doing exactly what the slave masters did when they changed enslaved people’s names to English names.

      In the UK, the word gypsy isn’t a slur. some American Roma also call themselves gypsies.

    1. K*

      Almost certainly is the word frequently used for Roma people which begins with G. Since it’s not always acknowledged as a slur and has positive connotations in some contexts, there are nonzero people who have it as a given name.

    3. ??*

      It depends on what languages you’re exposed to.

      I personally know of words in 3 languages that sound “offensive” in English that could be a person’s surname that are not offensive at all.

      It would be odd to not address a person by their name.

  4. TheBunny*

    OP #3

    I used to travel for work a lot and I found that, for the most part, others who are traveling for the same thing (unless the travel is part of the experience) really don’t care who travels, when, or where they sit on the plane. They are more focused on getting there themselves.

    I think you will be just fine if you give your (fake if that works) reason and just matter of factly answer anyone who comments on it. Basically, I am saying that you are giving this much more thought than anyone else will as they are focused on getting their own travel dealt with.

    And, FWIW, I would fly out earlier too. I can’t think of many worse ways to start a work trap than getting 4 hours of sleep the night before the convention starts.

    Good luck.

    1. RC*

      +1. You’re traveling for work, will already have extremely long days, take your travel time during your “normal” workday rather than leaving after a full day of regular work. I’ve seen conferences explicitly start on Tuesdays for that purpose (so people can spend Monday traveling rather than sacrifice a weekend).

      1. ThatGirl*

        Yes – this is the norm in my company, especially going TO whatever it is – to have a built-in travel day before hand. Especially since weather happens, flights get delayed, etc. The last time I flew for work I had to make a dinner around 6 p.m. before stuff started the next day, and unfortunately the only flight that really worked was at 7 a.m. local time – but mercifully the hotel was available when I got in around 11, and I could take a nap, shower and get myself together.

    2. Mutually supportive*

      And even less if there are any delays! What’s the point of making and effort to go to a conference, just to be too tired to take anything in when you get there!?

      1. DJ Abbott*

        That’s what I was thinking too. If there are any delays in the flight, getting the hotel room, getting something to eat… they will get little to no sleep and probably have to sleep through the first day of the conference. It’s inviting trouble.

      2. Funko pops day*

        Agreed. And if asked I think that’s a perfect explanation if someone asks why she took the earlier flight: “You’re braver than me! With the state of air travel these days and the weather this time of year, I wanted to be sure I had a buffer for any delays.”

      3. Freya*

        This! If a delay in a flight is going to lead to me missing significant parts of stuff, then I want an earlier flight.

        (years back, for one particular event I was at in Queensland, some of the flights from Sydney got either delayed or cancelled due to appalling weather. One carful of people DROVE TO NEWCASTLE to catch a replacement flight from there (depending on traffic, that’s a 2.5-3.5 hour drive))

    3. amoeba*

      Yeah, I mean, I’d probably ask my colleagues whether they want to travel together (because I usually actually appreciate the company, and so do they, apparently), but if they just said “oh no, I’m taking an earlier flight”, there would be zero issue. “Ok, see you there, then”.

    4. Junior Assistant Peon*

      Frequent business traveler here. Getting a few hours of sleep and being tired all day defeats the purpose of the trip. Don’t be afraid to take a full day as a “travel day” so you can be well-rested for the conference, meeting, etc the company is spending a lot of money to send you to.

      This is especially important when it’s a situation where lateness could ruin the whole trip. Many conferences will require speakers to arrive well in advance of their time slots as a precaution against flight delays. I had a course for a professional certification with a Monday morning start, and I flew out Sunday morning. I would have had to re-schedule the whole course if a flight delay had made me miss the first few hours, so I made sure that wouldn’t happen.

      1. Worldwalker*

        The first leg of a flight I was on a few years ago was 5 hours late … needless to say, I missed my connection, with all the problems associated with that. Fortunately I had decided to travel a day early.

    5. Falling Diphthong*

      I would imagine most of the senior people are over 30–probably well over–and that’s an age when “I need to get some sleep to be functional the next day” is a dull, obvious explanation.

      1. murderbot*

        It should be, but this company sounds pretty toxic! The OP says seeing a friend is a more acceptable reason to fly out early than wanting more than 4 hours of sleep. That combined with them being expected to be on their feet for 12 hours with plantar fasciitis (excruciating, if you haven’t experienced it) makes me think this is a really toxic, ableist company

        2. MigraineMonth*

          Yeah, I worked at a pretty toxic company that had crazy travel requirements and 12-hour shifts. Even they didn’t expect you to do it on 4 hours of sleep!

      2. Annie2*

        Yeah, in every company I’ve worked in it would be fine to just say “yeah, I wanted to get in a bit earlier to get a full night’s sleep.” In fact, I would certainly not be okay with arriving at 1:00 AM before four long conference days! If LW is feeling like it inherently looks weird to book an earlier flight – it doesn’t.

      3. Anti-ageism*

        I would imagine most of the senior people are over 30–probably well over–and that’s an age when “I need to get some sleep to be functional the next day” is a dull, obvious explanation.

        This has nothing to with being “over 30.” Cut the ageist rhetoric.

    6. the cat's pajamas*

      Not to get too macabre, but some companies explicitly book people on different flights for security reasons, especially after 9/11. You don’t want a whole work team gone if there is a tragic emergency. I don’t know if LW’s role would require this, but maybe another argument to keep in your back pocket just in case.

      1. Antilles*

        Not in this case. First off, all the senior execs *are* taking the same plane, so clearly the company doesn’t have that policy.
        But even if they did, such policies usually are intended for the very senior people so you don’t, e.g., lose the entire Board of Directors in the same plane crash. The fact that OP describes themselves as mid-level with “5+ levels” of folks above them means OP isn’t that level of irreplaceable.

      2. Worldwalker*

        A while back I pointed out to my boss that letting our IT guys travel in the same car (there are only two of them) was risking catastrophe. They’re not likely to get into a wreck — but if they are, the company is in deep doo-doo.

    7. Person from the Resume*

      From what I read the LW books her own flight.

      I’d say I want to be in the city/hotel and by early evening to be rested for the conference.

      I wouldn’t say, I’m flying for work so I’m mostly flying during work hours because that’s the hours you get from me.

      Both are true.

    8. Harper*

      Agreed. I travel often for work, and I don’t think twice about making arrangements for my own comfort, regardless of what others are doing. For example, I don’t like to sprint through airports, so I rarely book connecting flights with less than an hour between them. I rarely book afternoon flights, especially when traveling home and *especially* at the end of the week, because they seem the most likely to be delayed or canceled, and/or I want to leave time to catch another flight the same day if my original gets canceled for some reason. Like the OP, I wouldn’t book flights that would create an exhausting, miserable schedule for myself. I think this is a non-issue that wouldn’t even need to be discussed in most workplaces. Just do what works for you and offer no excuses to anyone.

    9. Crooked Bird*

      Sorry to be trivial, but “work trap” definitely sounds like a Freudian slip–very appropriate to this situation!

    10. iglwif*

      +1.

      Take advantage of the fact that you are too far down the org chart to have someone else arranging your travel and book a flight that works for you! IME nobody will pay any attention unless your flight is more expensive than expected.

      I find conferences and on-site meetings deeply exhausting — like, some parts are fun, but all of it is exhausting — and one of the ways I deal with that is to travel alone if I possibly can. If I can’t travel alone I try to avoid sitting with any colleagues on the plane/train. I don’t tell people I’m doing this, because you never know who’s going to interpret it as weir and anti-social, but I absolutely do it!

      My recent business travel experience also suggests that if your flight is earlier you may end up being the only person who arrives on time for this event. I can’t think of a flight I’ve taken in the past 5 years that hasn’t been significantly delayed.

    11. JMC*

      Screw the optics. Do what feels right for YOU. And if others are shallow enough to care that’s on them.

    12. The Nanny*

      I agree OP, and since it sounds like you know your company culture, if anyone asks just say you have a friend in City and wanted to get dinner with them.

    13. Lisa*

      Agreed. And I’m going to guess none of the other travelers will even notice, let alone care, that you booked a different flight.

      Where I work the only reason you might get side-eye for booking a particular flight is if the cost is significantly higher than other options.

    14. Spreadsheet Queen*

      Don’t worry about what the execs are doing. Their lives are non-stop meetings and they make the big bucks to compensate for not being able to get away earlier.

      Normal people travel during regular work hours, allow for delays and cancellations, and try to get checked in for a decent night’s sleep. Delays or cancellations may screw up the sleep part, but you’ll be better positioned.

      I do prefer to sync with coworkers when transportation is a problem (like if the place I’m going doesn’t have its own airport) because I have some issues with distance driving. Actually, even before I started having those issues, I still preferred a coworker to drive.

    15. Slow Gin Lizz*

      And who knows, it’s possible that the flight your coworkers are on is already full and you’ll need to book a different flight anyway. In this day and age, it can actually be difficult to get on the same flight as someone when you want to, so if you end up on a different flight no one will even think twice about it. The only exception to this would be, I guess, if you CWs’ flight is substantially cheaper than your flight, but it’s pretty rare that that would be the case if you’re flying on the same day. Accounting won’t even be looking at your flight times, so the only thing you really need to worry about is what to say to your coworkers, and Alison already gave you a good script for that.

      Good luck with your travel, hope it’s as uneventful as possible!

    16. BethDH*

      In my org and at previous companies it has been pretty normal that higher-ups are quite likely to arrive very late, or even miss part of the conference, because they are balancing other important commitments.
      I wonder if OP’s colleagues are all arriving that late not because it’s some company norm but because they have something big right before.
      In any case I have never heard of a place where it would be out of touch to leave any time the day before the conference starts. No extra hotel room nights, no big deal.

    17. LifebeforeCorona*

      Considering the weather and air travel, planning to fly out at the end of the day is gambling on a very tight arrival. Any kind of delay or cancellation and you could be arriving at 3AM or even early the next morning. It’s a smart move to give yourself some leeway.

  5. JSPA*

    #1, on a practical level, there’s a reasonable chance they themselves pronounce it differently, or go by a nickname. Or that you can ask if they’ve ever considered going by Kiki or Gipper or Spock, as you’d be happy to do that.

    But you can’t give them a new use-name if they’re not looking to get one.

    And you can’t refuse to use their given name to their face, singling them out in doing so.

    This is even true if the name was given to be provocative or to “own” people.

    What if the person is self-named? In that case, the problem is the attitude (“I want to make people uncomfortable unless they share my views”) rather than the name. (You can very reasonably decline to hire someone who likes to see people cringe, to the degree of changing their name to do it.)

    1. Despachito*

      “Or that you can ask if they’ve ever considered going by Kiki or Gipper or Spock, as you’d be happy to do that.”

      I wouldn’t do that. It would be insinuating there is something seriously wrong with their name.

      OP, I think you are massively overthinking it. As in all other cases, just call the person the name they want to be called. If you have feelings about it, it is up to you to deal with them.

      2. Sparky*

        I thought the k-word was an antisemitic slur?

        I assumed they suggested a shortening to “Kiki” as a way to suggest a nickname that could be formed from a slur like that, so the recognizability was a little intentional.

        2. Lellow*

          Oh no, if you’re replying to my comment below you’re right, I got it mixed up with pike/piky. (I seriously dislike how much I’m writing derogatory names for people today and hope to not do it again for a long time!)

        1. Despachito*

          Me too.

          I can think off the bat of several foreign names that would come across as offensive/rude in my language, but for Christ’s sake, it is THAT PERSON’S NAME, given to them in a completely different system and definitely not meaning anything wrong in their language. It is completely up to me to deal with any feelings I may have from its possible connotations in my own language.

          How come people even consider their own feelings may matter? I find it very self-centered and xenophobic, as if “only my language matters and I have a right to be offended by something that is this person’s normal name”.

          Reminds me of a thing I always hated – giving people of Asian descent who worked here “our” given names because their own were difficult to remember for us. I still remember the real name of a guy I shortly worked with forty years ago, although most other people called him “Peter”, and it still irks me.

          Please don’t let us do this to people. Treating their name with respect is the bare minimum we can do for each other.

          1. Peter the Bubblehead*

            Who sayspeople “give” western names to Asian immigrants? Ever consider someone chose a name on their own? My ex-wife’s given name was Yu-Fen, but she gave herself the name “Mickey” when she arrived in the United States and that was the name she preferred to be address by. Likely 90% of the people we knew weren’t even aware she had a name other than Mickey.

    2. EllenD*

      I did wonder if it was a name that would be pronounced differently from the racial slur, even though it’s spelt the same. The only option as JSPA says is to ask how it’s pronounce or whether they use an abbreviation or alternative in day to day dealings. On job applications, many people tend to go by the name on their ID/driving licence so it’s easier to do identity checks, etc, even though they use a nickname or abbreviation.

    4. Lellow*

      I’m not sure if you’re aware, but assuming that the name is Gypsy (this is very locationally dependent on whether in-community people actually think it’s offensive or a neutral descriptor BTW), you’ve chosen two options that are extremely close to words that ARE slurs for them. (To spare guessing, kike in the UK is always derogatory, as is the verb use gypped.) I’m giving you benefit of the doubt that this was by accident, but wow.

      1. JSPA*

        That’s the point; these are

        1. actual names with benign cultural antecedents (e.g. Kiki’s Delivery Service is a beloved Miyazaki movie, “win one for the Gipper” is deep Americana, after George Gipp, Mr. Spock is a beloved TV character whose name recognition has persisted for generations and iterations)

        that are

        2. not themselves offensive

        but are

        3. extremely close, and thus a “normal” nickname, for someone whose given name is the matching slur.

        Obv. these are merely examples.

        Point is, if you say, “We use first names or nicknames here; any chance you go by Kiki?” to someone whose name is the Jewish slur, you have at least a modest chance that they’ll say, “sure!” or, “that’s not how it’s pronounced, it rhymes with Nike” or “it rhymes with Nickel-minus-the-L” or “no, it’s like Mickey or Nicki” or “I often go by Kai” or “my friends call me KD for my initials, would that work” or something else that will be not-actually-the-slur.

        You can do the banana-fana-fo-fana on the others, if you’re so inclined.

        Point is, you launch an option as an example. This gives them a sense of the level of formality in your workplace, it gives them the clear OK that it’s fine to go by a variant of their name, if there’s one they use, and it gives them a moment to recalibrate, in case they were assuming a more formal workplace where they’d be Ms. Limberspoon or Mr. Turtledove.

        Also, this is miles away from, “We can’t ask people to remember Ramachandran, so we’ll call you Ralph, OK Ralph?”

        2. Fluffy Fish*

          Again, do not suggest someone use a name they haven’t asked you to use. You don’t need to offer them examples. No one is suddenly going to be like “You know, you’re right. I think I’m suddenly going to start going by Becky.”

          It’s weird at best, offensive at worst.

          You can certainly asked if someone has a preferred nickname. But suggestions are not it.

        3. Witchsmeller Pursuivant*

          I have a 4-syllable first name. Others have tried to foist a nickname on me, but I shut that down immediately because only my parents can do that, I am an adult, and they’re dead.

          What next? Are we going to call Dick Van Dyke Penis Van Lesbian?

      2. Baunilha*

        I had no idea about the word kike, so thanks for clarifying. Where I’m from, Kike is often an affectionate form of the name Henrique, so there’s another scenario of a name that could be harmless in one language and offensive in others.

        1. Lellow*

          It’s incredible and incredibly depressing how many nasty things we’ve all come up with to call minority groups over the years :(

          1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

            The baseball player Enrique Hernandez uses that as his nickname, with an accent mark over the e. It was disconcerting to see at first, but I’m sure he’d used it forever and it wasn’t an antisemitic slur.

      3. fhqwhgads*

        Yeah but the name Kike is pronounced “kee-kay”, even if some folks omit the accent mark on the e. Heck for that matter, Kiki is also pronounced completely differently than the slur. They’re close only in spelling.

    5. Tasha*

      In the 70s, my American cousins had a European exchange student whose name was pronounced “shat.” They modified it during his stay here.

      (I don’t remember the country or the spelling.)

    6. CorgiDoc*

      I don’t think you can/should do any more than what you should do with any new hire, which is say something like “Do you prefer to go by NAME, or is there something else you prefer?”

      I’ve had people named Stephanie ask to be Steph, people named Samantha ask to be Samantha, never Sam, people named Kayla ask to be Rebecca

    7. Riley*

      Just gotta say—it is more than a little jarring to see the k-word spelled out by multiple people in this thread. This is not either a new or debatable slur. I’m stunned that so many people chose not to use asterisks or call it the k-word or use some other variant to avoid using a racial slur.

      1. Worldwalker*

        Why? If you use asterisks, it’s still the same word. If you call it “the k-word” it’s still the same word. The meaning is still the same. The context is still the same. You’re just changing the symbols you use to write it. We’re talking about a racial slur. No matter how you write it, that’s still what we’re talking about. Pretending we’re not — or that it’s the particular sequence of written symbols, rather than the meaning, that’s offensive — is foolish.

        I used to play an online game where their chat filters changed a word they thought inappropriate to “maid.” Subsequently, players were punished for using the word “maid” — a word chosen by the game management specifically to be innocuous — because the powers that be “knew” that the people really meant the word that was filtered to “maid” even though they had actually typed out m-a-i-d and the internal chat logs would show it.

        1. Koala*

          are you part of the group the slur is directed towards? Because with all respect, if you aren’t, your opinion is not actually relevant here. Knowing the word being referenced doesn’t have the same impact of seeing it written out.

        2. Starbuck*

          Being all over this thread telling people to just chill already and slurs are just words sure is a choice. I think it’s settled that the person in question should be called by their name but your comments seem to go beyond that. It’s getting weird.

          2. Mango Freak*

            Yeah I have no idea how that “maid” anecdote is supposed to be relevant to this situation.

        3. Parakeet*

          I get what you’re saying – that it’s the same word – but I’ve also had experiences with that word being directed at me and seeing it spelled out does have a different immediate emotional impact, in that first second or so of coming across it, than the asterisks. There’s a kind of startle reflex there stemming from past experiences. I suspect I’m not the only one with that reaction.

          If someone were using it as a slur toward me and used asterisks (which has never happened), it wouldn’t change my understanding that it’s a slur. We’re talking here about commenters who aren’t trying to attack anyone with it and the asterisks do make a difference to me in that context. It’s about “do I get that startle and a slideshow of related memories, even though the speaker didn’t intend it, or not.”

          As far as the diminutive of Enrique, this is why that accent mark is important.

    8. Momma Bear*

      How it’s pronounced is a possibility – I know someone with the last name that was pronounced Bee-Goh, but that’s not how it was spelled. But it still comes back to this is that person’s name and LW needs to treat them with respect. Most of us did not choose our full names.

  6. Jen*

    Is it possible housing is considered part of compensation, and also, is it possible that live in aides do not need to be compensated for time sleeping? Add the stipend, the employer provided housing, and that you are sleeping most of the time, and maybe, the roommate job is over minimum wage after all…

    1. Jinni*

      But having to pay tax on that ‘free’ rent is going to catch up as additional taxable income…at least in the US. Will the stipend cover the extra tax?

      1. Fineday1*

        I wondered about that too. I have a number of friends who took jobs as apartment managers to get free rent and don’t get much above that.

      2. MK*

        I doubt the “free rent” is going to be declared as income; and whether non-monetary compensation is taxed (and so should be declared) depends on the tax code where one lives.

    2. Properlike*

      If you’re expected to respond to emergencies or bathroom help, you are “on call” and should be paid for that time.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        I’ve heard of programs like this for older people who just want someone there in case they fall (so hopefully never actually needed), and I think that’s fair in exchange for very cheap rent.

        This sounds like more that that, though. If they can expect to have to do something every night, or even just regularly, that does sound like “on call” work that should be paid.

        1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

          That can work out ok if it’s just in case of rare/occasional falls, but otherwise lack of sleep would likely interfere with their performance at their day job / life.
          The big difference in this case is the close connection to a VP of the day job and the VP misusing his access and power over employees. Big red flags

          1. Emmy Noether*

            It’s my understanding that it’s more as an insurance against a potential fall, not reoccuring actual falls.

            And I agree that the job connection makes it too messy anyway.

          2. doreen*

            Of course, I don’t know the details in this case but there are situations where disabled adults mostly need someone present at night just in case a rare event happens – a fall out of bed or a fire. ( My father had a home attendant 16 hours a day who took care of feeding and bathing etc. Overnight he basically needed someone who could call an ambulance and let the EMTs in if necessary) Just like kids of a certain age don’t need regular physical caretaking during the night but do need an adult present. But even if that’s the case here, the problem is the VP sharing this “opportunity” with the staff. What might be fine to post in a Facebook group or on a supermarket bulletin board is not necessarily appropriate to share at work.

            1. Elizabeth West*

              Yeah, I have a friend who did this overnight as a job for two developmentally disabled women who just needed someone there at night while they were asleep in case the house caught on fire, or whatever. They had other care during the day.

              She wasn’t working a full-time job during the day in addition, though — which is what it sounds like this boss is suggesting.

        2. amoeba*

          Yeah, this, and also for company, help with the shopping and upkeep of the house, etc… there was a programme like that called “living for help” when I was a student, and it was basically that. Students got a free room, elderly people got some help at home and company. And sure, some “insurance” in case of a fall or medical emergency

          I think that’s actually completely alright. But that was people who were generally self-sufficient, not actually requiring regular caretaking! That’s a whole different story.

          1. S*

            There is a similar program in my town (maybe it even the same one?). As far as I remember, it came with reduced (but not free) rent. And the hours required (grocery shopping, general company, small tasks around the house) were capped at 10 hours per week, I think.
            I agree with you that the above story is not at all comparable to this.

      2. Tuesday Tacos*

        Yes exactly, not just on call, but I would say actually working because if this person needs bathroom help, they are not capable of taking care of themselves, and this is obviously going to be an intensive overnight caretaking role.

      3. Laena*

        most people go to the bathroom at least every few hours, a disabled person could quite possible have to go more often… helping with that is straight up work, not being “on call”

    3. Dhaskoi*

      I work in the industry and what are called ‘sleepover shifts’ are still shifts. Even if you’re sleeping you’re being paid to be available if necessary – on call as another commenter said – and if you are needed in the middle of the night you get paid more.

      This arrangement seems more like a sneaky way of getting around having to pay for that – and that’s before factoring in how much assistance the person will actually need. Depending on the level this offer could actually involve a lot of work and many nights of broken, irregular sleep.

      1. Spooz*

        And also curtail your ability to have a life! If day shift leaves at Xpm, presumably you HAVE to be at home from then until they arrive again. What if you want to go to the theatre and out for drinks afterwards and get home at midnight? What if you decide to take up running really early in the morning before the day shift arrives? What if you want to go on holiday? All fine to give up if you’re being paid for it. Less if you’re just getting these mysterious “benefits” and “stipend”.

        1. MK*

          I would also question how the “roommate” relationship would work in the context of one person being paid to provide services to the other as part of living in the flat. Can they have people over or for visits? Is it understood that it is only appropriate to ask them for help at specific times? If the daughter does ask for help at other times, is she asking her roommate for a favour, and will they feel comfortable saying no if they don’t want to do it?

        2. Artsygurl*

          I had the same thought. A roommate can come and go, take a weekend trip, stay out with friends as late as they want, but a home aid would be working those hours. Would the “roommate” have to give advance notice if he or she wanted to travel or attend an event at night so there would be additional coverage?

    4. WS*

      It’s pretty common around my university for elderly people to offer cheap/free rent for students in return for help around the house, but they’re not on call and they don’t have to help with overnight bathroom visits. That’s a job.

      1. Clisby*

        Yeah, when one of my brothers started college in 1981 he rented a room in an elderly woman’s house for $40/month including utilities. (Two other guys rented rooms too.) I’m sure she did it partly for the safety – with 3 college age guys coming and going the chance that she might suffer a bad fall and nobody notice for a few days was pretty close to zero. They did help with things like taking out the trash, changing light bulbs, etc. but nothing like nightly on-call. (The only disability she had was old age.)

      2. 2025*

        This is how I pay my rent/utilities. The homeowner is 75, bad health but very active socially and with business. I’m there to help with shopping, etc, but my real responsibility is to be there at night in case he needs 911 called. No personal care required or asked for. A great deal for us both.

    5. Ipsedixitism*

      Regardless of income, this is a pretty serious conflict of interest. Say, for example, that the daughter has a terrible night with an upset stomach, and employee/aide is up all night helping. Are they going to be given understanding if they are unable to work, or unable to be productive? What if there are concerns with performance in either role, is the SVP going to get involved? Is the employee risking their paid employment if they have a disagreement with Daughter?

      Alison has always flagged the potential damage that can be done by relationships (even as simple as close friendship) when they occur in the reporting line. I feel like this is that situation, on steroids.

    6. PurpleCattledog*

      It’s not uncommon in my (not US) country for people to advertise free rent in exchange for an agreed to level of care. They need care – they have room. Someone else can provide care and needs accommodation.

      These arrangements are legal, but the duty of care the carer owes differs than from a paid carer. They are effectively friend-carers. This can help both parties financially. Person needing care gets help without having to a) pay out of pocket, or b) have the financial liabilities of renting out a room in their house. Person providing care doesn’t have to pay for rent and likewise isn’t attracting tax liabilities. Many pwd could never afford to pay for a professional carer 24×7.

      The problem with this arrangement is really the imbalance of power. Unless the LW has had a discussion with the daughter or the parent about the details – they’re speculating about what the arrangement actually looks like, and therefore whether the agreement is fair. If the daughter only occasionally needs overnight assistance, and there’s arrangements for being away for blocks of holidays or occasional events – I could see this suiting some people.

      1. LW3*

        Great points, thank you! I’m the LW. For context, Alison helped me make this anonymous by removing a lot of details; I shared the full email with her which contained a lot more detail about the deal, so I’m not jumping to conclusions about what the agreement was. I understand the kind of arrangement you’re describing, and this isn’t quite it. It’s much more akin to an overnight aid job. Thank you for sharing your knowledge though!

    7. Aggretsuko*

      I have disabled friends, one of whom has workers come over and sleep on her couch, for pay. However, you have to go through various trainings to even qualify for that job. A “roomie” who isn’t getting trained is…not how it’s supposed to go.

    8. Freya*

      In Australia, if accommodation is provided for a worker, free or discounted, then it is part of the compensation package (unless it’s in a remote area where it’s difficult to find suitable residential rentals, or it’s a normal part of the industry). The employee usually doesn’t pay income tax on it, but it is reported as a ‘fringe benefit’ on their yearly income statement / PAYG payment summary / group certificate, BUT the employer has to pay fringe benefits tax (to the value of the tax that the employee would have paid were it given in cash instead of as a benefit, as if that employee were taxed at the highest possible tax rate). Reportable fringe benefits also count as employee income for the purposes of child support and government payments and loans and some other things.

    9. rebelwithmouseyhair*

      Yes. I have a friend with MS and she offers a room in her flat for free in exchange for helping her to bed in the evening and simply being there in case of emergency during the night. There is no stipend. She puts an ad at the nursing school and there are plenty of student nurses who welcome the idea of not having to pay rent in return for a quick half-hour of work every evening. My friend’s daughter can occasionally stay the night if the student wants to go out. It’s a perfect deal for the kind of introvert who only goes out when thing are planned in advance. Of course, rent here usually eats up the better part of any student’s budget. Her last student saved up a fair bit of money thanks to that deal.

  7. Jinni*

    LW 5’s question hits close to home. I’ve been out of my profession for 17 years and have been thinking of returning to some low level temp/contract roles. While I was away, the industry coalesced around one specific software. Since I missed the learn on the job moment a decade ago, they’re hiring only those who have recent experience or are certified. Certification is $700. Completion of which does not guarantee a role, just a greater chance of being pulled from the database when a contract gig becomes available. The downside is I can’t discern if this specific lack of qualification is the culprit or whether it’s having to list year of professional license acquisition is the barrier. But spending hundreds of dollars for the possibility isn’t attractive. At least LW5 would possibly get a higher level position…maybe….

    1. LW-5*

      LW-5 here!
      Oof, that sounds tough! I think it’s silly that your industry is requiring certification for even entry level employees! I feel like my situation is different in that the certification definitely ensures you have the right knowledge base, but it’s not critical for functioning in the role. Also this is a one person job- so I wouldn’t have the chance to ask a friend.
      Do you know anyone who is still in the industry? Maybe they could show you around the system then you could honestly say you’ve received one on one training? (Don’t know if that’s dodgy because of copyright stuff)
      Good luck either way!

      1. What what*

        LW5, is it possible that your job would be willing to pay for the training/certification? If your goal is advancement within the same company you’re currently working for there is certainly a case to be made.

  8. Random Academic Cog*

    LW 3: It’s really normal to book flights that get into town at a reasonable time. Especially when it doesn’t add an extra hotel night to the costs. Though I’ve also paid for the extra night out of pocket when there are no convenient flights available. It’s just not worth being exhausted for the conference. But also consider the timing of the flight back if part of the reason you want to fly separately is to avoid dealing with coworkers on the plane.

  9. RCB*

    #3, I agree with Alison that this absolutely should NOT be an issue at all, so I’d go ahead and assume it is fine. However, if it is an issue, the people you work for are so crazy that they want you to work all day long and then travel all evening for work to get to a conference that is also nonstop 16 hour says, then I disagree with Alison that lying to them is the right option, so I would not say you are going out early to have dinner with a family member. I worry that if the office is that time demanding and unreasonable already then they are going to see you as using company travel as a “vacation” and that’s going to look worse. Of course this is absolutely bull that they see it this way, but you can’t make everyone be rational.

    I’d suggest booking an early flight and if it does come up just say something like “airports (or airplanes) are particularly draining for me so I am giving myself a few extra hours to travel so it’s not so taxing on me.” It’s ambiguous enough that you aren’t disclosing a health issue (lots of perfectly healthy people find airports to be draining), it’s also true, it addresses that it’s an issue for that one day and not a broader “travel is draining” where they might start worrying if you’re going to be too exhausted each day to do the job they are sending you there for.

    1. BellStell*

      I agree on the use of ‘travel is draining’ and would add, ‘to be fresh and energised for the conference to best showcase our firm’

      1. Despachito*

        THis.

        I would emphasize not the “me” part but the “company” part – aka “I want to make sure that I deliver the best quality for the company”.

        1. murderbot*

          Someone up thread suggested buffering for travel delays as a possible excuse, which seems like a good option. The company culture doesn’t seem to allow much room for humans to be human and it sounds like any version of admitting that travelling takes a physical or mental toll might not go over well. There’s a troubling undercurrent of “it’s not safe to be out as needing even the most basic of accommodations*” in this letter.

          *I don’t personally consider a full night’s sleep an accommodation, but it sounds like this company would!

          OP, if you’re reading: I hope you find yourself in a better situation soon!

          1. Jennifer @unchartedworlds*

            Yeah, I’d go with possible delays as the cited reason. “Just building in a bit of slack in case there are travel delays”. That’s much more infinitely reusable than a fake relative.

          2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

            yes, this sounds rather like my previous employer, who thought nothing of making me wait for four hours for a train rather than let me leave ten minutes earlier and get home in time to eat with my family at a normal mealtime.

      2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

        I agree that the angle is “arrive early enough for optimal conference prep” where you can make it sound like you mean shaking out your best suit and practising sales pitches in the mirror, when it actually means decompressing in a hot shower and going to bed with ear plugs in.

        1. Antilles*

          Definitely agree with this framing, though I would keep that excuse in your back pocket until/unless someone brings it up. Unless the company is actively coordinating travel (doesn’t appear to be the case), it’s extremely common for people to end up on different flights, different airlines, etc. So there’s an extremely good chance nobody even thinks twice about the fact OP is on a Southwest flight that leaves at 3 pm instead of the Delta flight that leaves at 6 pm.

    2. Allonge*

      I was thinking the same (go low detail, preferably no lies), especially if this travel thing is not a one-off. It’s going to get weird to claim to have a relative in a dozen different places, or to always visit with them if the travel always goes to the same place. ‘I prefer to / will take an earlier fight, see you there’ is more than enough.

    3. Ama*

      I worked for a nonprofit where it was absolutely not a problem to fly out on whatever schedule you wanted – I had coworkers who would fly out extra early for events on the opposite coast so they could adjust to the time zone, I had coworkers who preferred sleeping in their own bed as much as possible even if it meant they had to take a 6 am flight out day of event. It was one of the nicest things about that workplace, that they understood letting people choose the travel arrangements that made them most comfortable (within reason – we were still a nonprofit so economy tickets only) was a worthwhile business expense.

    4. Destra N.*

      While I mostly agree, I wonder if the 6pm flight everyone else is taking is the one that happens to align with the budget outlined in the company travel policy. As a remote worker who flies to HQ for meetings several times a year, I have to navigate this all the time. Late and early flights are usually cheaper than ones that leave/arrive at a more reasonable hour. No one cares what time I fly, only that I don’t spend more than what’s budgeted, and it’s often tight recently with airfares rising.

  10. Sarah N*

    “Bich” is a popular and beautiful Vietnamese girl’s name that means “gemstone” or “Jade,” and by the way is pronounced “bik.”

    It’s not my name, but I have relatives and friends who’ve sadly relayed comments from unenlightened people who’ll see the name and say things like, Your parents named you the b-word??!! They must’ve hated you, haha!!

    I wouldn’t call this a microagression; this is pure aggression. Pointing out the term of insult in the homonym or spelling of a given name, ethnic or not, strikes me not only as paternalistic and a power play, but also an unwanted calling out of a person’s differences without consideration for their own humanity or ability to contribute to the workplace… or society. And hearing others incorrectly relate their names to slurs over and over again in different settings wears on the psyches of the owners.

      1. linger*

        You’re good either way. Homonym can cover words sharing written and/or spoken form. Homophone = more specifically sharing spoken form, but not necessarily spelling; and homograph = sharing written form, but not necessarily pronunciation.

    2. Peregrine*

      If this is the name most people are assuming it is, it’s more like parents naming their child the N word because they didn’t realize it was considered a slut by the people it’s referring to (obvs the n word has always been derogatory, but I can’t think of another word similar to the g word).

      1. Nodramalama*

        This is not a good analogy because the N word is not a name. This is presumably, a name that people actually use.

        1. misspiggy*

          Yes but it refers to a group of people. It’s exactly the same usage but currently has different status in mainstream culture.

        2. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

          I mean, we don’t know that nobody has ever named a kid the N-word, and I think most people’s answers would be different if that were the case here, but I agree it doesn’t sound like that’s the situation. (The actual name does matter here which makes it hard – how strong the “name” vs “slur” association is is fairly important.)

        3. Throwaway Account*

          But it could be a name/word in another language. Or a word sounding very much like the n word. I’ve met folks from India and China who have names that sound like words I would not want to say out loud.

          In those contexts, I just said, nice to meet you, without saying the name. You could not do that in a work context.

        4. A person*

          It is a surname in France (the French translation of the word). It’s not super common, not like Dupont or Moreau, but I can think of at least one famous person who has it.

          Although the word, as a common name, is pretty distressing, it’s really different when it’s in the context of just stating the surname of a person, especially if you same “firstname surname”.

    3. Yvette*

      Your first paragraph brings up a very good point. The way something is spelled can be very different from the way it is pronounced. Near as I can tell the letter writer has only seen the name. Perhaps once they hear it pronounced correctly it will no longer be an issue. And now I can’t get Joaquin/Wakeen out of my head.

      1. Meet in person*

        I am so glad somebody brought up the example of “Bich”, which is pronounced as “Bik” and not “Bitch” (as I made it up in my head). It is not said that OP will be reminded of the slur once they hear it or that OP will be reminded of the slur when they see the person. They shouldn’t judge just from paper.

    4. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Yes, don’t judge names from other cultures that don’t have the same meaning or cultural baggage as that name in yours. Maybe also not the same pronunciation.
      Use their own name without bringing in your own cultural judgement – unless it is a nickname or shorter version, in which case tell them to use their full forename.

    5. PurpleCattledog*

      The problem with names is that they aren’t just used around the person who knows it’s their name.

      I worked with a guy and people didn’t use his nickname (I don’t think he realised our accents made it sound basically horribly racist) much and stuck with his formal name. Cause there was just no way we’d stand at a community event and call out a racist insult to address the coloured guy. While I can easily call out Hey Steve can you take the water over to the marquee – replace Steve with an insult, slur, or otherwise offensive way people are called that is not locally recognised as a name and it really isn’t the same as sitting in a closed team meeting and saying morning “Steve” how’s the new teapot design going? There’s just so many scenarios where I see things going really really wrong because you’re insisting that everyone should just realise you aren’t hurling insults around – it’s just their name.

      If someone’s name can’t legally be said on day time radio, or would require a language warning on a tv program/movie it feels very head in the sand to pretend that it won’t cause issues by insisting on using it. It may be their name, and may be lovely in their own language/culture – but part of travel is acknowledging that you’re now in someone else’s language and culture and adapting may be necessary or just expedient.

      And yes I would absolutely use a local name if I lived somewhere that my name was problematic.

      1. Throwaway Account*

        I agree. Sometimes a bit of a name change is called for! Of course, the person has to change their own name. But sometimes it just is not possible to use a name in the situations Purplecattledog mentions.

      2. Annony*

        But this is a word that many people don’t even realize is a slur and is not an uncommon name according to the letter. So it would not fall into the category of “can’t legally be said on day time radio, or would require a language warning on a tv program/movie”. I don’t think this is a case where people would think that the person is being called a slur if addressed by name.

      3. Aggretsuko*

        This is what I thought of as the problem, right here. I’d be concerned that some stranger overhearing you call someone That Name in public/outside of the office gets you labeled as a racist and your career suck in 2.5 seconds–because that stuff happens if you’re not rich enough to get away with it :/

        I’d probably do my best to not address them by their name (to be fair, I rarely address anyone by their name unless one has to yell to get their attention across a crowded room), just in case.

    6. iglwif*

      “Bich” is a popular and beautiful Vietnamese girl’s name that means “gemstone” or “Jade,” and by the way is pronounced “bik.”

      I had a friend growing up with that name (I’m exactly the right age to have been buds with kids who came to Canada in the big wave of Vietnamese immigration in the late 1970s), but TIL that the way she spells it — “Bick” — is non-standard. I wonder if her parents were advised to change the spelling for an English-language context (wouldn’t be a problem in French, where the false cognate would be “biche” meaning “doe”) or if it was a transcription error that stuck.

    7. r..*

      Bitsch is also a German last name. It isn’t very common, but there’s a couple tends of thousands of them in Europe.

      Unlike the Vietnamese “Bich” it is, unfortunately, pronounced quite exactly how you might be afraid it would be.

      There’s also Beç/Bécs/Beč, which is pronounced like a slightly garbled version, but really is just the Turkish/Serbocroat/Hungarian name for Vienna.

      In Hungarian you can also slap an i on the end (ie bécsi) to mean someone is from Vienna, and if you’re not listening carefully this can sound like a badly pronounced ‘bitchy’.

    8. Pepperomia*

      I have it from good source, (my Thai colleague, Suvaporn), that Kiddiporn is a respectable female name in Thailand. No sure it would go over well in English!
      (I would nonetheless never consider asking Kiddiporn to change her name or avoiding it !)

      1. Kotow*

        There was a post on here years ago about somebody wanting their co-worker to change their name and speculation that it may have been a Thai name. Apparently, the word “porn” is extremely common (though it’s pronounced more like “pawn”). I have no idea how a linguist decided that needed to be the transliteration!

        1. iglwif*

          When a roman-alphabet transliteration of an Asian language has an r in it but you don’t pronounce the /r/ sound, chances are high the transliteration system was devised by someone with a non-rhotic British accent.

  11. Daria grace*

    #2: even if he were offering a great wage, having someone informally work for the boss’ family would still be incredibly problematic. What happens if his daughter really doesn’t like the “roommate” or accused them of doing wrong by her? What if the “roommate” is or should be disciplined or fired by their job but is stuck caring for the boss’s child in very demanding ways? What if the “roommate” learns things about boss’ family dynamics they probably shouldn’t know? Frankly even without the boss power dynamics framing it as a room mate situation instead of giving it the clarity and legal status of a formalised employment contract almost guarantees problems. There is almost no way the proposed arrangement ends well for anyone involved

    1. Despachito*

      And would the employee be supposed to work 24/7, being on call for the boss’s daughter at night and working for the company during the day?

    2. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

      Yeah, I would steer extremely clear of being my boss’s kid’s roommate even if it didn’t have complications like nocturnal toilet duties. So many ways that it could go wrong that would put your job and your housing at risk simultaneously, yikes.

  12. Anon1234*

    #1: I have sympathy with your dilemma. I had an Italian colleague who told us he went by a horrible racial slur (UK based) for people from Pakistan as a shortened version of his name.
    None of us could use this name. I tended to call him ‘um’ or ‘excuse me’. It wasn’t meant to be a micro aggression on my part, but the name is so offensive and was used to racially abuse some of my friends at school that I just couldn’t speak it.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      If this was a shortened form of his name, or a nickname – i.e. his choice – I’d have told him we had to use his full forename.
      If it genuinely was his full name, then imo you have to use it.
      Especially if this is someone from another ethnic background where this name is normal and without the same cultural baggage,

      1. londonedit*

        Yeah, I think in that case I’d have said ‘Look, I hate to do this, but in the UK the shortened version of your name has some really awful racist connotations, and none of us feel comfortable saying it. Would you mind if we called you by your full name?’

        It’s a bit like how during the Athens Olympics one of the British equestrian team, Pippa Funnell, had her name listed as Philippa because in Greece ‘pipa’ is a slang word for a sexual act and the Greek commentators refused to say it on air. In Britain, Pippa is a perfectly normal name, but it was something that would not be said on television in Greece.

        1. MK*

          The difference is that the Olympics last a couple of weeks and those commentators were talking about her for the most part, not directly to her (barring the odd interview probably). It’s one thing to accept journalists using your full name, instead of your preferred nickname, on television for a specific time period, and another to tolerate your coworkers changing what you are called. Especially since this likely wasn’t only about the commentators personal comfort, but also them not wanting g to come across as offensive to a woman athlete who was a guest in the country (and maybe falling foul of the rules for appropriate language on television). If an English woman called Pippa worked in Greece long-term, I would expect her coworkers to get used to it.

          1. londonedit*

            True, and I don’t think anyone should feel *forced* into using a different name, but if I was a Pippa and I went to live in Greece then I think I’d rather someone said ‘Just so you know, in Greece “pipa” means something rude’, and then I could decide whether or not to carry on using the name. If the Italian chap in question isn’t aware of the history of that word in the UK, he might not even realise people are being weirded out by it. If he decides he still wants people to call him by that name, then fine, they’ll have to get used to it. But I also think it’d be a kindness to let him know about the other connotations.

            1. anonymous greek*

              The funny part is that it’s not actually a rude word in itself; “pipa” in greek means pipe, an in a smoking pipe, and it is commonly used that way. It’s the slang use of the word that alludes to a sex act; my guess is the commentators wanted to avoid giving rise to vulgar comments in the media. You wouldn’t believe the idiotic “jokes” that flooded greek media, social and traditional, when Kate Middleton married Prince William, because of her sister’s name.

          2. Nina*

            I wonder.
            In Te Reo Māori there’s a word ‘whakahau’ meaning something like ‘renewal’ or ‘new life’, which is a lovely name for a person (and there’s documented evidence of its being used as a name for a person). Unfortunately, if you speak American or British English and aren’t super confident pronouncing Māori vowels, it sounds quite a lot like ‘fucker hoe’.
            Would you be able to ‘get used to’ addressing one of your coworkers by their name, including in front of people who don’t know either of you? As PurpleCattleDog illustrated, it’s one thing to be in a team meeting and say ‘how about those reports, Whakahau, do you need any help?’ and quite another to be at a conference calling ‘hey Whakahau, over here!’ across a crowded room of strangers.

            1. MK*

              I think most people would automatically pronounce it in a way (likely equally wrong) that doesn’t sound like that.

              1. Nina*

                which… would be them ‘changing what you are called’ and not in any way ‘getting used to it’, which was what you were saying a hypothetical Pippa’s Greek coworkers should do. Pronouncing Whakahau ‘wacka-haw’ or pronouncing Pippa ‘peppay’ is in fact still changing that person’s name to suit your tastes.

                My actual real life surname is not a rude word and doesn’t sound like an expletive or vulgarity, per se, but it is spelled and pronounced identically to a dictionary word and is something that people can’t quite bring themselves to pronounce the same way as the dictionary word. It’s really annoying. That’s my name. People do not, in my experience, ‘just get used to [calling people by their actual names]’.

            2. metadata minion*

              I’m sure this varies from person to person, but my brain is really good at adding duplicate dictionary entries for words. After the first month or two, the person’s name would register as a different word and become detached from the offensive meaning. e.g. I didn’t say “shit”, I said “Shit”, a totally normal name for my colleague.

      2. Nodramalama*

        I don’t know that I agree it would be reasonable to force someone to use their full name if they don’t use it because it makes someone uncomfortable saying it.

    2. Spooz*

      That’s interesting. I’m also from the UK and am pretty sure I know exactly what name/word you’re referring to.

      But am I that unusual in thinking that I could probably work up to calling him by his name? It would be a shock initially, but much as I could call someone Rose without constantly mistaking them for a flower, or Precious while hating their guts, I think I could draw a line in my mind between the racist term and this innocent Italian name.

      I must admit I assumed the OP would be talking about something like Paddy or Mick. Where it started as a name but became an insult.

      1. londonedit*

        This is the second time someone’s mentioned Mick, and I’ve never heard it as an insult before! You learn something new every day. Paddy also – I know it can be used in an insulting way, but also you’ve got people in the public eye like Paddy McGuinness, and Patrick Kielty is often called Paddy too, and in those cases it’s just their name.

        I think I would have trouble using the shortened version of this Italian chap’s name, and I probably would – as I said just above – try to gently point out the connotations it has here and maybe gently suggest that people could call him by his full name instead. But if he was dead set on the shorter version – and I can completely understand that, I also use a shorter version of my full name because I really dislike the full version – then I think I would just have to make myself get over it.

        1. Emmy Noether*

          I think they are American slurs for Irish immigrants (because they are common Irish names)?

          I think they are also currently waning as slurs, because the Irish are no longer the immigrant group most targeted by American xenophobes.

          There is a pattern there of first names (other option: foods) becoming slurs for immigrants. It’s insidious, because pretty much by definition there will be people whose actual name it is.

          1. londonedit*

            Yeah, now people have mentioned it I have dragged the idea out of the back of my mind that both names can be used as insults. But I’ve never heard them being used in an insulting way, I’ve only ever heard them in the context of being people’s actual names.

            1. UKDancer*

              Yes I don’t think they are used as insults in the UK (certainly not now.) I’ve known an awful lot of Micks (mostly not Irish) and at least 3 Paddys and so I’d think of it as names first and hardly at all as insults because they’re so common.

              At least one of my second cousins (definitely not Irish) goes by Mick or Mickey because he prefers it to Michael.

            2. Rebecca*

              We haven’t heard them used as insults for a while because Ireland has largely managed to pull itself out of the oppression of the 17th and 18th centuries and rebuild, but the scars are still there. I dated a man who thought it was edgy and hilarious to call me a ‘dirty mick’ whenever I had a drink.

            3. Ferret*

              When my mum (Irish woman with a lot of family named Michael) met my dad she was weirded out that he voluntarily went by Mick… but he was an English guy, and this was the 70s and Mick Jagger was cool. It’s one of those that really is a contextual thing and that has faded enough that most English speakers wouldn’t really be aware of it.

        2. Morgan*

          Speaking as an Irish person (though not in the UK or US), it would be deeply bizarre to refuse to use “Paddy” or “Mick” for a person who actually goes by those names just because they also get used as slurs in some contexts. It’d be like problematizing a German coworker named Fritz, for example, or insisting that you can’t call Karen by her name because it’d be misogynistic. If a slur derives from the process that “this is a common name among [group], so we’ll just call everyone in [group] [name]”, treating the slur as the primary meaning is precisely backwards in a way that compounds the offensiveness.

        3. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

          I have Irish relatives who were happy to have US call them ‘Paddy’ and put it on invites etc. but you have to be someone they actually like. It’s incredibly disrespectful for a stranger to address them as such.

          (You think we’re weird in England, spend some time over in the Irish speaking part of EIRE)

    3. Pennyworth*

      People differentiate, I’d just call him Paki, or Paqui or however he wrote it. Its one way of diffusing the slur version. I never think of my cousin Karen as a ‘Karen’.

      1. Seeking Second Childhood*

        Tangent: elseweb I’m seeing people switching to “kraken” so all those women named Karen/Karin/Karrin can have their names back.

        2. glt on wry*

          This is a great trend to know! Karen is a not-uncommon name for women of my generation (I know at least four) and I’ve always thought my totally unconfrontational friends were getting undeserved flak for this.

    4. History together*

      Did anyone ever tell him what it meant in English? If my chosen nickname (or my name for that matter) meant something offensive in the culture I was living and working in I’d hope someone would let me know!

      Also, it’s a slur I heard growing up in Canada too, I might have a hard time using it myself. But maybe not, maybe I’d be able to compartmentalise it as his name. Idk, never been in that situation.

    5. Lokifan*

      yeah – I think it’s still important to use the name people give you but I can understand that. I think the comparisons people are making with Bich, Dong etc aren’t really the same – a swearword’s different from a slur.

      1. doreen*

        I now understand why one of my kids’ camp counselors mispronounced their last name for years – they have one of those last names that’s common in my husband’s culture which is a somewhat offensive word in English but it’s not easily mispronounced ( the offensive word and the name are pronounced and spelled the same). She must have been trying to avoid the offensive word.

  13. Properlike*

    #4 – thank you for asking this! I had the exact same problem you did; lots of “coaching” that I didn’t need, very little practical advice about what kinds of positions I could apply for. One Coach told me to go through websites and write down any job that sounded interesting to “get ideas.” I DID THAT ALREADY.

    More helpful was the commentariat here in reply to a former teacher with a similar question, and others. But I wish there were a resource for people who have skills, can do the job finding part, but have no idea what job their skills are suited for!

    1. Ophiolet*

      The website ONET may be helpful: https://www.onetonline.org/
      It’s a resource where you can look at jobs/careers you’ve had or want and see things like what transferable skills are in that job/career, and even search other jobs/careers you might be qualified for based on criteria such as the skills you have. I’ve found that the job/career database can also help to put into words things that you might otherwise not recognize you have or think to include in a resume/cover letter.

      1. Elizabeth West*

        That site was very helpful to me when I was trying to figure out what to do that would work with my dyscalculia. It’s definitely worth a look.

    2. bamcheeks*

      That is the process for getting to that point, though!

      I’m a qualified (albeit not currently registered) careers guidance practitioner in the UK. I can’t speak to the quality of the coaches you’ve worked with, but what you are asking for is what a lot of clients think careers practitioners do, but it isn’t our job, because it’s not possible. You can’t go, “you have XYZ skills — you should apply for ABC.” There are various online programmes that would do this, but they are only ever a starting point for discussion, research and exploration, because 99% of their suggestions are junk. The list the coach asked you to make was also a starting point: the next stage would be to starting analysing that list by looking for common themes, researching other jobs around those themes, networking in those areas and so on. That’s the process of finding new ideas, new roles, new potential matches and so on. There isn’t a shortcut to is, because vocational choice is never just about “skills -> job match”, but also about identity, aptitude, preferences, material needs, limitations, lifestyle and so on.

      This is why so many people have a story about, “I told my guidance counsellor I liked Z / was good at Y, and they suggested I consider [wearing clownshoes]!!”– because your idea of what it means to like Z, or to be good at Y is wildly different from what someone else means by it, and it’s qualified by a whole bunch of other stuff that you need or want in a job that seems obvious to you but which the guidance counsellor doesn’t know unless you tell them.

      If your coach didn’t articulate that process and the reasoning behind it better, that’s on them as the professional, of course! But if you were expecting them to give you a list of suitable jobs for your skills, they should probably have told you early on that that wasn’t a reasonable expectation.

      1. NforKnowledge*

        I appreciate your take on this as a guidance counselor, but I still feel that part of the counselor’s job IS to help the candidate make that initial list of potential jobs they might qualify for with their skills! Because they have some insight into different industries, the different kinds of jobs there are, and the jargon they use to describe the skills they want. And the candidate has none of that, just a wall of incomprehensibility that they are told to start finding meaning in. That is the task they need guidance to do!

        1. bamcheeks*

          I do agree, and it’s certainly the counsellor/coach’s job to explain what you should do next with that list! There are several different ways to generate that list, though, and IMO “jobs you might qualify for with your existing skills” is one of the worst. Most people either have a specific skill set that narrows the list down too quickly or a very broad and transferable one that leave the field open way too wide. Personally I always find it easier to start with a list of jobs people actually want to explore or a completely random list of jobs , ideally including jobs they would never serious consider, because talking about those things helps you identify people’s values, motivations, their broader interests and also their needs/limitations, and I find that a much better basis for generating a list of Actual Realistic Jobs Worth Researching than the other way around.

          1. Frosty*

            I’m kind of mystified by your assertion that a random list of jobs is a better starting point than one that already takes qualifications into account. With a random list, for a lot of them probably wouldn’t even know what they do, so I wouldn’t know if I could do them, so I’m back at square one. Or do you mean that even with a random list, you would explain what the requirements are for all the jobs so that the jobseeker could think about whether they fit them?

            1. bamcheeks*

              So the first thing is that a list that “takes qualifications into account” is already different from a list of “potential jobs they might qualify for with their skills”. And both of those are different from a list of jobs that they could reasonably do within limitations like geography, expected income, working pattern etc. You’ve got three different lists right there. It’s a good starting point if a client comes in with a list like that, and there are also online tools that will generate something like that, but I always try and get people to throw some wild cards in there too. And usually the next step on from having such a list would be directing them to a database of job profiles which tell you a bit about each role, qualifications, career pathways etc.

              But the really key thing I try and impress on people at this stage is not to approach it with a mindset of “one or more of these jobs is Right For Me”, and a targeted list tend to encourage that approach. It puts people in a practical and realistic frame of mind, and for most people, that means they approach the list negatively and start crossing things off it: “Well, I couldn’t do that because nobody’s hiring for that round here — I can’t do night shifts, so that’s out — ugh, I mean, I suppose I could technically but I’m allergic to llama hair– I’d need to re-train for that, which I don’t think I can afford with the kids this young — ” You simply end up repeating the things you already know and go round in a circle.

              To break out of that, you need to expand your ideas and widen possibilities. It’s the same creative process you use in lots of other fields — the point of blue-sky thinking is NOT to get bogged down in practicalities and can’t-do-thats, but to consider the impossible and implausible, and basically approach it with a sense of play. Having a list of job profiles which includes zoo-keeper and accountant and postal worker and database administrator and sports teacher and start-up CEO and youth worker and freelance owner/writer of a work advice column is a more productive way to establish that you want a desk-based job that pays at least £35k and you like working with the general public but you don’t want to manage people and you can do a moderate amount of spreadsheet work but are not a full-on database person than starting with a “realistic” list and crossing stuff off. You get much more rounded and complex view of what someone’s looking for than when they are approaching it with a scarcity mindset of “please tell me what, if anything, I can do”, and it’s much easier to say, “OK, so how about we explore jobs in this kind of area / industry / skillset.”

              1. Frosty*

                Thanks for explaining in more detail!

                Your last paragraph is probably exactly what the LW finds frustrating: if I am at a point where I just want to earn a living with a job I am qualified for, without interests or passion coming into it, the last thing I want to do is blue-sky thinking or being creative about it. I find that kind of thing super hard and difficult even when I am interested in finding something I can be enthusiastic about, much more so when I don’t care.

                1. bamcheeks*

                  Yeah, I totally get that, and it’s something I have worked through with clients before. It is real catch-22– it’s incredibly hard to engage with that kind of thinking when you feel burnout and ground down by work, but it’s also incredibly hard to convince an employer they want to employ you when you feel like that too, especially if you’re trying to move fields, so you get stuck in a loop of not being able to find a new job but also not really being able to explore anything better and articulate why you want it.

                  If LW4 is in the US and I’ve correctly understood how the professions work in the US (I’m in England), then I think LW4 might be better off seeing a career counsellor who is also qualified to help them unpack some of the emotional blocks they’ve got around imagining something better. It’s not at all easy though.

                2. Pocket Mouse*

                  Presumably there are jobs you are qualified for and offer a decent living, that you would hate having to do. The inverse of “finding your passion” is “avoiding jobs you would absolutely despise”. Isn’t it worth it to engage a little imagination to make sure you at least don’t end up in those roles?

      2. Agent Diane*

        I’d agree with this. I used a career coach to, well, coach me to work out what I wanted from the next stage of my working life.

        It would never have occurred to me to think they’d be like a dating service for specific roles. That’s for me to do with the insight the coaching gave me on what I wanted to do.

      3. Lily Potter*

        Bamcheeks, thank you for taking the time to walk through how you’ve coached people in the past. It shows that career counseling is a process, as opposed to a “I give you money, you give me job leads” transaction. My read of LW#4’s letter is that she’s looking for a Yenta-Matchmaker/transactional service from a Career Coach. She doesn’t care what kind of job she gets, she just wants someone to find her SOMETHING to get her out of her current bad situation (remember – she says she’s been looking for years!) Bamcheeks’ post shows that this just isn’t realistic; the LW can’t expect to simply send over inputs (her past experience & education) and have the coach send her outputs (job leads). If it were that easy, everyone would be using a career coach!

      4. anon recruiter*

        Agreed. AAM suggested a recruiter and as an agency recruiter, I can get closer to the matchmaker idea that LW seems to be working from. However, I still have some limitations. If someone tells me they can do XYZ, I can talk to them about the jobs I’m recruiting for that need XYZ and maybe bring some new ideas, but I only know the jobs in the industries I work in. If they want a broader prospective, they’ll either need to speak to a lot of recruiters or take the time to go through this process.

      5. gyrfalcon17*

        bamcheeks, I am very interested in your reply, and your further explanations downthread. You’ve explained something that has always puzzled me from my one-and-only in-person appointment with a career counselor at my college’s career center. I said I was interested in “helping people” and they suggested “medical careers.” Which have never in any way shape or form interested me.

        But now, it makes sense where that came from, especially as what could have been a starting point if I had had anyway to figure out how to say “hmm, and what else?” instead of “ok, thank you, good bye.” (And taking more time might not have been possible anyway because they were so *massively* overworked there, with very little time divided among way too many students. Plus “medical career” was actually a hugely popular goal for many of my classmates.)

        I’ve found perfectly delightful jobs and careers by other means, including by other resources offered by that very career center, so no harm, no foul. But it has always puzzled me, until now.

        1. Freya*

          I help people all the time with my career in bookkeeping, payroll, and admin – I have, on occasion, received presents from contacts of my clients who I have just explained some of the tricky bits of Australia’s GST system to (usually in order to get them to correct the invoice I was paying so it was valid). Because Australia’s GST and tax system is quirky! I have explained to an infinite number of accountants that there is no GST on milk, but there is GST to claim on bank fees where the bank has sent a tax invoice showing that there is GST!

          But bookkeeping is never suggested as a role for people who want to help people. Even if they’ve got syringe phobias like me, it’s medical field or nothing *grumble*

          1. gyrfalcon17*

            Freya, yes! I also find in all my jobs that I’m helping people — initially database programmer, now data analyst. Because I’m helping them get their jobs done.

            Numbers people of the world, unite!

    3. Totally Minnie*

      Seriously. I would love to find a service where I can give them my work experience and they can tell me what career paths I’m qualified for without retraining. Every service I’ve found so far is more along the lines of “finding your passion,” which would be great if I was a 19 year old about to select my major at a university. It’s much less useful in my 40s when I can’t stop working for years to get a new degree and work minimum wage internships for experience in a new field.

      1. Tea Monk*

        Yes, that would be amazing, especially since these follow your passion types are probably charging $100 an hour at least

      2. Dasein9 (he/him)*

        Agreed. I experienced the same kind of career implosion LW#4 describes and now just want a job that is reasonably not-unpleasant and as non-evil as possible that will fund the more interesting parts of life. But the terminology is so different from one field to another. I was hired in a role that had “developer” in the title, which meant “writing,” but in some industries, that means “coding,” for instance.

        This is a gap in the market: someone who can serve as a translator or matchmaker between candidates and businesses.

      3. OP#4*

        OP#4 here. This is exactly my issue. I’m in my mid 40s in a HCOL city. If I’m going to leave my job, I need to transition to a job that pays my rent. My passion is to one day be able to afford a TWO bedroom apartment. I cannot afford to go back and get retraining for while not making income, and honestly I can’t afford the time! I’m OLD. :D

        1. Caller 2*

          I’m a similar age. Sounds like my passion. If I can go every day to a job that pays decently and I mostly enjoy or at least don’t hate, that’s cool. Why do we all have to be doing our passion for pay?

    4. Beth*

      I also found this a few years ago, when I was trying to change fields and struggling to figure out where my skills would transfer well. I talked to a few career coaches (and ended up hiring and working with one!) and it was honestly a waste for me. Their focus is introspects about your career goals and planning a dream career path, and maybe offering accountability as you tackle job hunting. But if your goal is to get a job now, with your current skill set, in the current job market, most of them don’t have any special knowledge that would give you an edge on that.

      The best advice I’ve gotten was from a friend who’s a recruiter in a field adjacent to mine. Her advice was practical, it reflected the current job market, and it focused on what actually gets you noticed in a pool of hundreds of applicants. If you can connect with someone like that, that’s what I’d recommend.

    5. Aggretsuko*

      Career coaching was useless when I did it, for exactly the reasons AAM said. They are better with “help me fix up my resume and cover letter” rather than a nebulous “I dunno what else I wanna do….” and then you end up looking into parachutes and cheese or mazes or whatever.

      I think it’s easy to figure out what jobs your skills are suited for, though. Look at the job listing. Do you know how to do most of that stuff already? That’s what worked during my job hunting stint. Don’t look for nebulous airy fairy stuff, look for “can I fit into this box?”

  14. Withheld*

    LW4: I am in a really similar position, and I feel you. I would have thought someone who helps you figure out your skills and how to position them (or transition them into a new career) would be a thing, but apparently not.

    All I have done is just looked at all the jobs in my area/salary range, and where I think I have relevant skills/experience, written a resume focusing on those skills and submitted it. Then I’ve had discussions with recruiters about what I need to change about my resume to make it a better fit. It’s actually been really useful, but it’s a bit more trial and error than I had hoped for.

    good luck!

    1. OP#4*

      Distressingly I don’t live in a place where it’s mandatory to post salary ranges. That was part of my hope in finding a career counsellor– to help me focus my energy so I’m not applying for jobs where I’d make even less than I do now!

    2. JZ*

      Yes #4, this is how I would approach it (though also commute is very important to me) – I’d use Google Maps to find a few larger companies with buildings I’d be willing to commute to (excluding ones with missions I found ethically unacceptable), and then look at all the job listings I was qualified for from those companies.

      Hopefully there would be some acceptable jobs in there, and also some job titles to use to broaden my search.

  15. Chocolate Teapot*

    4. I have posted on here before about my career coach, who I have been working with for 20 years now. There are professional associations for coaches and also I would recommend looking at a coach’s background. Mine was previously a senior company executive so they had experience which was relevant to my situation.

  16. Songs*

    LW #4: I went through that too and it was frustrating. But after a few meetings and getting the song and dance of the career testing and passion discussions over with, the career coach did start sending me positions and talking more about practicalities with regards to applying. Although in the end, I wound up going back to school for one of the careers that had come up during our discussions and I’m now super happy in my new career. So if you’ve only just had one or two meetings, it could be worth sticking with it for a few more sessions (since you’ve already invested the time and money with this coach) and seeing if you can also get somewhere! Good luck with your job hunting.

    1. Chocolate Teapot*

      Yes, when I started working with my coach I purchased a block of sessions, the idea being that they would support me through the process of finding a new position. The first couple of sessions were of the identify your interests variety, but then we moved onto more practical topics.

    2. OP#4*

      I ended up doing 5 or 6 sessions with the first coach. I got through the whole “passion” song and dance, but when she sent me an old handout on “how to make a resume” that had glaringly incorrect information (Thanks AMA for making me realize that at a glance!!) I realized she was wholly unqualified to guide me in the parts I really cared about.

      When I tried to find others, they again focused on the passion and wouldn’t really talk about the things that would ACTUALLY get me a job, and I didn’t want to waste another stack of money only to find a printout about resumes from 1985.

    3. Coach but not career*

      #4, also, it is common to “try out” a few different coaches where you call/meet briefly and they talk through their methods and philosophies. That is a great time to be really clear about your goals with the coach. If it’s not a match, you and/or the coach can say that and move on. Coaches aren’t compatible with everyone for every scenario, and that’s part of being a good coach. This “try out” time should be no cost to a potential client.

  17. Bilateralrope*

    #2 That is such a messed up offer that I have to wonder if there is anything illegal going on. Maybe something the LW knows about, maybe something that will only become apparent when the right authority looks at it.

    If it was me, I’d be seriously considering sending the relevant authority a copy of the email. If I could do so without forwarding the email through the company email system.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Maybe I’d go to HR with a printout of the EM, to avoid a paper trail – but only if I were sure they would keep me out of it.
      However, I’d be dubious about trusting an org that didn’t immediately shut him down AND send out an EM stating say this was sent in error and of course no employee should apply :)

      1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

        I get what you mean! I do! But still, I’m amused at the idea of using a printout to avoid a “paper trail”.

    2. Wolf*

      I wonder whether the “roommate” is covered by insurance – imagine they slip and fall while helping the disabled person in the bathroom, and either of them gets hurt.

  18. Seal*

    #1 – Baby names go in and out of style all the time. Some are cyclical while others more or less disappear; for that matter, it’s not uncommon for names that were once considered to be gender-specific to become gender-neutral. As someone with an unusual first name myself, I’d be surprised if the candidate in question isn’t aware of the controversy surrounding their name. In some ways it’s no different someone whose name is an endearment like “Sweetie” or “Lovey” (I stumbled upon a Gilligan’s Island rerun this weekend) or someone whose hippie parents named them “Beanbag” (a real person!). It may feel a bit awkward at first, but ultimately their name is their name. Asking them to change it so you feel more comfortable is just plain rude.

    1. Richard Hershberger*

      No actual research, but my sense is that gender-neutral names as a common thing is pretty recent. There have always been a few, particularly in shortened forms such as “Pat,” but a full name like “Taylor,” which carries no gender coding whatsoever, was really rare until recently. More common was for a given name to start out male and then switch to female, what with no parents wanting their boy to have a girly name. Think “Kimberly” or “Leslie.” (Consider also the stereotype of “Francis” insisting on “Frank” due to the similarity with “Frances.”) Then there is “Madison,” which was a rare name but unambiguously coded male until the movie “Splash” came out in 1984, making it a common name strongly coded female (though with exceptions, most notably the baseball pitcher Madison Bumgarner, born 1989). The Taylor/Tyler combination have so far resisted this trend, which I take as a positive sign about humanity.

    3. KC*

      I worked with a “Honey” and it took a while to get used to, I felt like I was sexually harassing her sll the time! Plus it was weird to say in front of people if they hadn’t been introduced to her yet.

      2. marymoocow*

        I also worked with a Honey (and in KC!) and I got the same reactions. It was at a store for little girls, and customers always thought I was talking to my husband (a man, who would stick out like a sore thumb) instead of believing it was her name, or that I could call a woman “honey”.

      3. HBJ*

        It’s still used. One of that duck call tv show family named her daughter Honey within the last few years.

      4. Paris Geller*

        Also worked with a Honey! It took some time to get used to, but I think after using any name for awhile, it becomes common. Then it only got awkward if I was introducing her to someone else, but those moments always passed quickly.

    4. Jay (no, the other one)*

      I once met a young man who was born and raised on a commune in the Mountain West. His name was Catnip because his mother drank catnip tea to manage her nausea when she was pregnant with him. They did also give him a more conventional middle name that he could choose to use if he wanted to. At 19 he was quite proud of Catnip.

      Reminded me of my father’s experience. Dad (b 1933) had an identifiably Jewish last name. His middle name was Allen and they spelled it that was so if he decided to drop the Jewish name, he’d have a last name ready to go. He always said my brother got the same middle name without the option.

  19. Resentful Oreos*

    I once worked with a woman whose name (in an Asian Indian language) was very difficult for English speakers to pronounce correctly. Therefore, she insisted on going by “Tiny.” Hey, if that is what she preferred, she could be Tiny.

    I would say just call the candidate by their first name. *Maybe* if it’s a bad enough slur that it makes enough people uncomfortable, you *could* say something to her, but…it’s her name, and chances are it was her parents who named her that, and she probably knows exactly what it means. This is a far different case than the employee who insisted on being called “Wolfshadow” or something similar who wrote in a month or so ago. I presume “Wolfshadow” picked their own name, Unfortunately Named Candidate was named by parents.

    1. Observer*

      presume “Wolfshadow” picked their own name,

      If I recall that letter correctly, they did indeed choose their name. And they did it on purpose a “reflection” of why they are.

    2. Insulindian Phasmid*

      To be fair to Wolfshadow, they didn’t insist. They were trying to figure out how best to let people know a middle name was okay

  20. Rew123*

    I had a scout kids called Niga. It was a big awkward when you get the name list but all you got to do is accept it is their name. It became totally normal after few meetings.

  22. Never the Twain*

    ‘Pratt’ is not an uncommon surname in the UK.
    Some names don’t travel well – for example ‘Ruth’ (pronounced in most other countries as ‘Root’) means ‘ugly’ in Hungarian – ‘The Ugly Duckling’ translates as ‘A rút kiskacsa’.
    And even between two English-speaking cultures, I remember being incredulous that Mr and Mrs vanWarmer could be so cruel as to saddle their son with the first name ‘Randy’.

    1. doreen*

      They didn’t actually – his first name was Randall. “Randy” is common as a nickname for Randall in the US but parents don’t always choose the nickname and even if the parents always called him “Randy” it’s not uncommon for people to go by something other than what their parents called them – for example, someone who is “Bobby” to his family and people who have known him since he was 10 but “Rob” to everyone else.

  23. VP of Monitoring Employees' LinkedIn Profiles*

    Re:#1…

    If someone legally changed their name to King Of Turd Mountain and wanted to be called that….

    Is anyone else suddenly recalling SNL’s “Jeopardy” skits with Turd Ferguson?

    2. Ama*

      That’s perfect for Alison’s example because that was just “Burt Reynolds” (as played by Norm McDonald) being a jerk to Trebek. (Pre You Tube, my brother loved those sketches so much he had audio only files he’d replay constantly.)

  24. LBD*

    As a comment to OP 4, I had to do a job search when my job history and skills are pretty scattered (I think my job history might give me a chance at an actual Llama Groomer position!). I started by looking for job postings that I thought might be a fit and made notes on what they asked for. Then, I searched through the online National Occupation Classification system. It might be called something else in your country.
    I started by making a full list of everything that might be required in the type of job I was looking for. I then made a list of everything that I knew, or had done, that fit each requirement. Then I grouped them (software, technical, people, etc), using various coloured highlighters and then pulled out the strongest. I used that info to make a resume with the categories: Key Areas of Experience, Skills, Work Experience, and Education.
    It has made resume writing merely annoying and not something that would send me into a paralytic fit of avoidance for weeks at a time.
    Good luck, I know how hard putting that document together can be, even when you have useful skills and are a valuable worker, like you.

  25. bamcheeks*

    LW4, qualified (not currently registered) careers guidance professional in the UK. We have a slightly different system from the US, where careers guidance / careers advice is a non-licensed, not-regulated profession, but AFAIK it has a bit more crossover with US careers counsellor than US careers coaches. That is, we are not trained therapeutic counsellors (which I think US careers counsellors are), but a registered careers development professional does have to have a degree-level or masters-level qualification in guidance, which a coach does not.

    My guess would be that you would benefit from working with a careers counsellor more than a coach, or else you need to find a really good and experienced coach, who you gel with, who can support you in working through some of the burnout and anger from leaving your first profession. Some coaches will be able to do this, but you would need to interview them to find out: you will probably find that nearly all coaches market themselves as “helping you find your passion” because, well, marketing, but a good one will be able to pivot to work with someone who emphastically does not vibe with that approach. (Personally, I don’t think “passion” is a useful concept for vocational choice, and nor do most careers professionals I know, but many private practitioners use it because it resonates with clients. People are more willing to pay for “help me find my passion” than “help me find a job that doesn’t suck”.)

    That said, I also think there may be a mis-match between what you are looking for and what a careers coach can do. As I said, you don’t need “passion”, but you do need to be able to show aptitude and interest in a job area, because that’s what employers are looking for. If I am working with a client whose attitude is, “idk, just anything, I’m not fussed”, it’s incredibly hard to be successful in a job search, because even applying for “generic office jobs”, you are competing against people who can communicate that they get job satisfaction out of being the office manager or supporting clients or resolving customer queries or knowing that they are contributing to $wider_industry or whatever, and most employers want to employ people who demonstrate at least that level of interest and satisfaction in their application. (Whether or not it’s true.)

    So, even if it’s just identifying things like, “I am good at organising things and helping other people, I have an absolute horror of accounts, I don’t want to commute more than 40 minutes; reliability and good benefits are more important to me than glamour or the opportunity to advance”, you have to do some kind of articulation of what you want and need from a job and in order to know where to start looking. And that’s the beginning of the process– from there you can start researching and looking at job descriptions and get more specific in some ways and broaden out from there.

    But it is a process, and it can be quite a hard and emotional process, particularly if you’re starting from a place where you have strong negative feelings about work and the idea of thinking positively about work feels like a threat. If you came to me as a client, as a UK careers guidance professional, I’d probably give it a 50/50 chance of whether I could help you. I have helped some people who started in that position because we just clicked and I was able to articulate to them how this process worked and they were able to go with it, and others where we just got frustrated on both sides because they wanted me to “help them get a job” but the kind of help I could offer wasn’t helpful to them.

    So you either need a coach who is able to support you with the emotional side of that process, or I would look for someone who is therapeutically qualified as well. You have a really good articulation here of what you actually need: shop around, talk to both careers counsellors and careers coaches. Make them tell you what they can do and why, and hopefully you can find someone whose approach you gel with. Good luck!

    1. TheGirlintheAfternoon*

      This is a really good explanation of how career coaching/career counseling often works, particularly if you’re not affiliated with a specific field or industry. Thank you for taking the time to articulate it! If Allison happens to see this, interviews with people who work in this area could be an interesting feature. I’m often floored when I see someone post on here about bad advice they’ve received from a career professional because it usually feels like the opposite of what I hear my colleagues recommend.

      Regarding US-based services, though, I’d note that at least if counselors or coaches are affiliated with a school or university, the title they hold is probably somewhat arbitrary; I’ve been a career coach, a career counselor, an assistant director, etc., and except for the length of time I’d been working in the field, my qualifications didn’t really change.

      If OP#4 is in the U.S., I’d suggest checking with their degree-granting institutions to see if they have career services available to them as an alum of the school or university. For many schools, this includes access to job listings for full-time work as well as sessions with a counselor or coach.

    2. Spreadsheet Queen*

      That’s a very nice summary!

      I’m in the US and did see a career counselor (was also seeing the same person for therapy, but that was separate). I did take a test thing (Birkman I think). The biggest things that I got out of it was : (1) I had a lot of strengths/needs that I probably wasn’t going to find in a single job. (I’m analytical, creative, and mechanical – but not in an “engineer” kind of way). Some of those things are going to have to be satisfied in hobbies and home projects. And (2) I had the realization that there was probably not “one true thing” that I was supposed to be doing, if only I could figure out what that was. Those realizations were incredibly FREEING, and in a way the OP is kind of half-way there in that they aren’t looking for THAT.

      I can’t actually speak to who you’d confer with to align what you are good at with actual real jobs that you’d actually qualify for. Most career alignment tests (like what I took in HS) seemed to have a fairly narrow set of “jobs people have already heard of” and little regard for what education you’d have to go get to be qualified for them, so I don’t think they are all that useful. I did the temp work thing when I left my previous (awful, awful, awful “career”), and just happened to land in a career that I never heard of before and that I turn out to be really good at (that after I progressed a bit, pays well). Definitely some luck there, plus everything was cheaper then (rent, health insurance, etc) so not necessarily a route I’d recommend today unless you’re completely unemployed.

      Good luck, OP!

    3. OP#4*

      Thank you for this long and in-depth comment. It’s very helpful.

      I think the first career coach I was with was so inflexible and so devoted to “passion” that it put me off the term coming from anyone else, so I may need to give someone else another shot eventually. To be fair, she had found a full time job she could do remotely from a beach in Mexico (and she was!) so she seemed unconcerned by the practicalities of employment– She seemed not to realize that passion and happiness did not, in fact, pay rent.

      I am a good employee, even at a job I hate. I can feign enthusiasm for Llama Grooming with the best of them, and I think my ability to weather insults and bad behaviour from Llamas and Llama Owners (or however we are stretching this metaphor) is top notch. I would just like to be paid commensurate with living in a HCOL city and to go somewhere with slightly better behaved Llamas.

      1. gyrfalcon17*

        LW#4, this is a possibly off-the-wall suggestion. Perhaps searching by the things you name in your last sentence as what you want, will give some ideas? I don’t mean on a job board, but in your favorite search engine, with something like these:

        “i live in nyc what are some jobs that pay livable salaries”

        “what are companies in the NYC area with good company cultures”

        (I’ve just used NYC as an example, as my most-familiar HCOL city.)

        Best wishes to you.

    4. frogtown*

      LW4: Go to a temp agency! One that does temp-to-permanent hires. Many entry level office jobs are filled this way–in fact a lot of places ONLY hire this way. You can tell the temp agency what field you’d like work in. Given your arts background, I suggest looking into healthcare jobs or staff jobs at colleges and universities–both of which often have temp agencies that cater specifically to them. There are many artists/poets/liberal arts types etc. who make a decent living working staff jobs at places like this. They also usually have much nicer working environments than businesses, and usually also have good (sometimes excellent) benefits. You will also be around a lot of very smart, interesting people.

      1. OP#4*

        Alas, my current position is a staff position at a college/university. It does not pay enough for the HCOL, and all my unhappiness comes from tenure making people unaccountable. I have been told it is my job to “Save the faculty from themselves”– in other words, while I have no control over the program or people all the responsibility is mine. It’s untenable. I just got berated for the faculty “not knowing something” when I have had multiple meetings with them and even gave them printed handouts of this information multiple times over the past few months. They just don’t care, and apparently that’s my fault.

        1. gyrfalcon17*

          LW#4, Oh my gosh, as someone who also works in academia (I’m now non-faculty, but used to be faculty), I now have so many flames going up the sides of my face in sympathetic rage on your behalf!

          (a) Academics can be infuriating.

          (b) Academia can be infuriating.

          (c) I would think many companies outside of academia would pay more than what you’re making now?

          That last *might* not be true for you — for example I happen to work at a very well-endowed institution, in a relatively poor part of the country, so for where I live at least my salary is relatively high — but it’s my general perception about staff jobs in academic vs. out of academia. What have you found on this point?

          1. OP#4*

            I assume non-academic businesses pay much more in town. However, no job listings here are required to post salary ranges, so that’s just a guess based on the school frequently saying things like, “We know we underpay you, but look at the benefits we offer!!”

        2. TheGirlintheAfternoon*

          all my unhappiness comes from tenure making people unaccountable. I have been told it is my job to “Save the faculty from themselves”– in other words, while I have no control over the program or people all the responsibility is mine.

          That is just about the most frustrating set of circumstances I can imagine. I’m sorry you’re having to deal with all the fallout!

        3. frogtown*

          Ugh, that does make things difficult! I would think you would still have transferable skills though for similar environments that could either be in a more functional academic environment (legal clinic at a law school? research division at a medical school or hospital? just a different academic department?) or in a research-related business perhaps, like in biotech or medical devices or educational products. All of which might pay better too.

        4. Sunshine on My Shoulders*

          Another former academic here (this is me: https://www.askamanager.org/2023/12/update-friday-good-news.html). I did not find career coaching helpful for the same reason. Passion my foot; I just need to be not miserable. My LIFE coach, on the other hand, was instrumental in helping me do the emotional work I needed to do to figure out HOW to write a resume, what steps to take next, how to make progress. Naturally I scoured this site for advice, and I also followed a bunch of recruiters on LinkedIn, and was able to assemble really good advice for how to frame a resume. I literally set my job search goal to: “not as miserable as I currently am.” And to my surprise I did end up finding something that I love. So, one suggestion is to pursue a different kind of coach who can help you by focusing NOT on “what are you passionate about” but “what is your next step to get out.”

          1. OP#4*

            Oh! Thank you for this! My therapist was the one who suggested the career coach, but it turned out she didn’t really know what a career coach did either, it just sounded like what I needed. (She had the same misconceptions I did.) I reached out to contact a few Job Search Coaches as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but I’ll take a look at some Life Coaches too.

        5. Eukomos*

          Ah, I’m right there with you. I’m working on switching to the advancement division, since the work there is staff and alumni-facing rather than faculty-facing. The pay isn’t fabulous but there’s more room for career growth than within a department and just not cleaning up after faculty would be a blessing.

          You don’t have to do advancement specifically, but look around the university divisions that are more staff-focused or at least have more power to push back against faculty and see if you can get some informational interviews with people who work at your uni. Talk to people in the central communications department or the admissions department or something, see if anyone has any suggestions for you. I’ve also seen people transition from chair/dean/director executive support to industry executive support, which pays way better, if you have anything like that in your resume.

  26. Susannah*

    LW won’t tell us the slur-name (which makes sense, if LW feels uncomfortable even addressing a job applicant by his/her name).
    But at the risk of sounding like I’m pro-slur (I’m not!), is it possible some of us are looking for reasons to be offended by words?
    I imagine, for example, the name LW is referring to is the same as the name of a musical starting with G. I have never understood that to be a “slur” – just outdated (and I lived and traveled in countries with this population). It’s not a word I use, but not because I understand it as an insult.
    I have a friend who sometimes used the word “Oriental.” There is nothing really insulting about that; it’s just not a word we tend to use anyone (said friend is not a native English speaker, and in his language, “Oriental” is closer to the word used to describe Asians).
    Sometimes words are re-thought, and we stop using them (hopefully). I’m personally glad the sports teams “Redskins” and “Indians” changed their names. But I also don’t think the original intention, when the teams were named, was to insult native Americans.
    Honestly, I have a hard time using the term “queer,” which has been reclaimed by LGBT folks, because when I was a kid, it very much WAS a slur – and *intended* to be one.
    At any rate, the irony of possibly denying someone a job because you don’t like his or her name – and then justifying it by suggesting the person’s very identity is offensive – is overwhelming.

    1. Guina*

      The fact that you do not understand that it is a slur does not change the fact that it is indeed a slur. Your failure to be educated, aware and empathetic on this issue does not mean that people are “looking for reasons to be offended”. It merely means that you are ignorant.

      That is, fortunately, a problem you can do something about. The author Seanan McGuire has posted eloquently and from personal experience on the issue on her social media, if you need a starting point to educate yourself.

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          I’m always so confused by the “looking to be offended” angle given there is a plethora of hot garbage out there to be offended by that no one would purposely seek it out because it’s not especially hard to find! And doubly so because it’s not enjoyable once you do find it. So ridiculous.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        All of this!

        Also, FYI, the words I choose to describe myself don’t need to make people outside my community comfortable. I’m not gay or lesbian or bi; I’m queer.

      1. Texas Teacher*

        I think what Susannah meant was that when that football team was named, it wasn’t done as a way to insult Native Americans. People name sports teams things that they think invoke bravery and strength.

        1. Texas Teacher*

          I should say I’m another Texas Teacher, not the one that’s also posted a comment this morning.

        2. bamcheeks*

          Yeah, but they also did that in a context where they, their institutions and their government were perpetrating violence on Native Americans, and the people who chose that name were at least indifferent to that violence and more likely to be supporting it or even engaged in it. It’s important to recognise that “not deliberately being insulting” is at best indifference to harm, not innocence of harm.

        3. Roland*

          Sure but so what? The reason to change that team name is that we live in the 21st century and that word is offensive.

          1. Texas Teacher*

            That’s… why she said she was glad the name was changed. I’m not sure what your point is here.

      2. Susannah*

        I do; absolutely. And as I wrote in my comment, I’m really glad they changed the name. (Now if only we could get the Atlanta Braves fans to stop with the racist tomahawk chop…).

        My point was that when the team was first named, it was not meant as a deliberate way to insult native Americans. Now, hopefully, people realize how insulting it is. Apparently, enough did, so they finally changed the name.

        My point about looking for a reason to be offended by monikers is that 1), sometimes the old name is just outdated, and w2as not intentionally mean to insult (as “queer” was, when I was younger, but has been reclaimed by the LGBT community. And worse, many decades ago, Crayola crayons had a color called “flesh” that was light-colored. They fixed that one, maybe in the 60s, renaming it “peach.” Fortunately. That was horrible.

        And 2- if it’s NOT your community, maybe think more about the name. Half my family is Hispanic and they hate, hate HATE the term “Latinx.” They think it’s a bunch of white people trying to literally defined them and to rewrite their language. They are far more insulted by others rewriting their language and culture to be ostensibly more gender-neutral.

        To equate the G-word we all think is relevant here with, say, the N-work or the C-word is not right. the G-word is outdated to the point of sounding offensive as a relic (like calling someone “colored.”). It is not the same at all as a word that’s intended to insult an entire group of people.

        And for heaven’s sake – it’s the person’s name! And it’s sounding like said applicant will have a harder time getting this job because of a given name. And that is what I find really offensive.

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          “My point was that when the team was first named, it was not meant as a deliberate way to insult native Americans.”

          You’ve said this numerous times and I ask you to think about who didn’t think it was a deliberate insult at the time. Well meaning white people not thinking something through (or not caring, which I suspect is closer to the truth) doesn’t negate that there were undoubtedly Indigenous folks at the time who knew it was offensive. We don’t have to keep centering white folks and their intentions when the harm was probably pretty obvious to those impacted by it at the time of naming.

        2. Isben Takes Tea*

          I get that you mean people weren’t sitting around a table tapping their fingers together saying “What team name could we use to really insult this particular group of people we don’t like?” and you are also right that there are different levels of offensiveness to slurs and different people within an affected group will have different sensitivities to those terms.

          A term can still be doing insidious harm even if it is not used by people intending to do that harm. Now, do some people pounce on the unintentional usage in a performative and outsized way? Absolutely. Is it really being helpful to the people they are ostensibly trying to help? Debatable. Do we all agree it’s ridiculous to not call someone by their given name because you find it offensive? It sounds like it.

          I think we agree on most counts, but people are strongly reacting to the idea that “outdated” terms were “not intentionally meant to insult” ignores the fact that even if the terms were commonly adopted by unthinking people, it does not mean that their original introduction to the lexicon had racist intentions and their continued use was key in enforcing racist norms. A term being “outdated” doesn’t mean it wasn’t offensive at the time it was in common use, it just means the dominant culture didn’t feel the concerns of those who were offended were valid at the time.

    3. Spooz*

      Oriental is an interesting one. I have been scolded online in the last by Americans for using it to describe a group of cuisines originating from countries around China. As in, “Yeah, I’m trying out some new recipes from Vietnam and Japan. I love oriental food!” Apparently that’s super racist.

      But in the UK it’s just a factual term. Even to describe where someone comes from if you’re not quite sure on the specific country.

      I was told to use “Asian”, but that already has a meaning in the UK: from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh…

      I really struggle with it. I usually do police my words online for that because I don’t want all of America to think I’m racist, but in the UK I would absolutely use those terms no problem.

      1. bamcheeks*

        Oriental is definitely used for food and art in the UK, and I know a very small number of people who self-identify that way, but as a white person I wouldn’t use it for people without being very sure that that specific person preferred ot, and that’s been the case since the late 90s. If I didn’t know whether someone was Thai, Chinese, Korean, etc I’d use East Asian or Southeast Asian as a broad term. I don’t agree that it’s a neutral factual term to describe people.

        1. londonedit*

          Yeah I’m familiar with ‘Oriental’ in terms of food, but not people. That feels, to me, very old-fashioned, to put it charitably. And the ‘Asian’ thing definitely differs – in the UK we use it mainly to mean India/Pakistan/Bangladesh etc, but I know that in the US it primarily refers to China/Korea/Hong Kong/Taiwan etc.

          1. bamcheeks*

            I had a month in 1999 where I had a Singaporean Chinese friend tell me that he found it weird when people from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan were called Asian, because yes, whilst they were obviously TECHNICALLY Asian, they weren’t ASIAN-Asian. And then a couple of weeks later, completely unconnected, an Indian co-worker said exactly the same thing to me the other way around. I was a fairly sheltered white 19-year-old, and I was like, hm, so you’re telling me that ethnicity, race and identity are complicated and do not necessarily fall into nice neat categories? noted, ty. :D

        2. This n this n this*

          I grew up in a place with a white majority but very large East and South Asian populations. When I was a teenager my teenage Asian friends and peers self-identified as Oriental or Brown, and so did the rest of us whenever it was necessary to differentiate groups. It wasn’t until I was a little older that I heard that Oriental wasn’t okay to use about people. I would avoid it now. But I think myself and my teen peers were ok, because those were just the words everyone used without ill intent in that time and place.

          Not sure if kids in the area use the same words now, but I should check in with some of my old friends and see what they think of the use now.

      2. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

        The word would be super racist referring to people, and is generally seen as eyebrow-raising in other contexts. You can choose to complain about your innocent intentions and good will or you can accept changes in polite terminology and use words like “East Asian” or “Southeast Asian”.

      3. Susannah*

        Yes, here in the US, “Oriental” is considered the wrong word to use to describe Asian people (rugs, OK!) It’s just… sort of taking people from a part of the world and making them exotic in some way. It grates on me when I hear it used to describe people – but I sincerely thin k the peel who use that term are not *meaning* to insult, as people are clearly doing when using the n-word and c-word.

        1. AdminGirl*

          Well…I actually think that can depend. For instance, what kind of tone are they using? If they’re clearly talking about an “Oriental” person in an insulting, disparaging way, I wouldn’t assume that they didn’t know that “oriental” is considered an offensive term for Asian people. And if someone, especially an Asian person, were to say that their use of the word offended them and they were prefer if they used “Asian” instead, would they actually make the change with no fuss, or use it as a chance to go on about how sensitive people are these days? That’s another way you can tell whether someone is genuinely well-meaning. As a Chinese woman myself, brutal experience has taught me not to just assume the best of people where racism is concerned.

    4. londonedit*

      I don’t really think it matters about the original intention, and I don’t think it’s people ‘looking to be offended’.

      Go back 80-100 years and the N-word was a fairly common name for dogs here in Britain (yes, especially for a black dog). People really didn’t see a problem with it; I’m sure it made perfect sense (to the white people naming their dogs, at least) at the time. But thankfully society moved on, and people realised it wasn’t at all appropriate. And so these days no one in their right mind would ever think to call a dog (or anything or anyone else) by that name. The same has happened with so many other words – in the UK, for example, and in my lifetime, the word ‘spastic’ has been completely erased from all sensible vocabulary because it came to be used as a particularly offensive slur for disabled people. We even had a charity called The Spastic Society – which changed its name to Scope in the mid-90s – because originally it was a perfectly acceptable word, the ‘correct’ word, in fact. But it grew to be used in an insulting and derogatory manner, that meaning took over from the original, and people took action.

      I think your argument skates dangerously close to the ‘you can’t say anything these days, it’s PC/woke gone mad’ stuff that you see. And that’s not the point – the point is, if a word is or comes to be used as a slur against a particular group, then an inclusive and caring society has a responsibility to stamp that out.

      1. Susannah*

        No, I’m not saying “you can’t say anything these days,” because of course you can say anything. Here’s hoping people make the right choice, making an effort not to be insulting or offensive.

        Honestly, I’m floored people used the n-word to call a dog. Here in the States, that is not an old-fashioned word; it’s a word that was created to insult and denigrate. Maybe our reprehensible history with slavery is the reason it feels like such an aggressive slap here. I don’t remember any time here when it was considered anything BUT an intentional slur.

        So yes – intent matters.

        I remember when the R-word was used to describe people with intellectual disabilities. And I’m glad people have come to realize how horrifyingly offensive it is.

        Yes, knowing the origin matters – and not everyone does.There are people still who do not know why saying someone “welched” on a bet is an ethnic slur.

        But in this case? Someone’s actual name? I’m gobsmacked that the LW seems to be hoping/looking for a reason to deny someone a job based on a name that is not only the title of a musical, but half the name of an excellent band. I think it’s an outdated term and I would not use it myself, but no – no way do I see it on the same level as actual, intended insults. Intent does matter.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Um, no? The n-word was not originally a slur, it was just a description of skin color. The history of chattel slavery, colonization and dehumanization is what made it a slur.

          Similarly, the r-word comes from the word “slow”. The history of ableism, institutionalization, eugenics and forced sterilization, and separate school tracking is what made it a slur.

          Words are part of a living language and they are constantly gaining new definitions and connotations. Original derivation doesn’t protect a word from gaining negative connotations or becoming a slur.

    5. Caramel & Cheddar*

      My experience of people say that others are “looking to be offended” is that they’re usually someone doing the things causing offense but don’t really want to admit to it, which your comment bears out. I’d suggest that next time you think someone is “looking to be offended”, you re-frame and wonder if there’s something that your own experience is missing out on why people might find that thing offensive.

      1. londonedit*

        Agreed. When someone complains that they ‘can’t say anything these days’ or that ‘people are just looking to be offended’, I think OK, that’s telling me you want to be ‘allowed’ to say insulting and derogatory things with impunity. And, to me, that isn’t the mark of a very nice person.

        1. Marion Ravenwood*

          Yep. To me it’s a subset of people who use ‘I’m just being honest’ as an excuse to be spectacularly mean or offensive.

      2. Susannah*

        No, that is not how I see it – and no, I do not give people a pass for saying offensive things, on the theory that someone, somewhere will find it offensive and complain no matter what.

        We need to think about the things we say, and think about how they might hurt people. And then NOT hurt people.

        I’m saying we cannot take all words that have some offensive quality to some people and put them in the same category. A word that was actually designed to offend a race or group (like the N-word) is a lot different than a a word that we have come to recognize as offensive (such as former sports team names). And here, LW seems to be looking for a justification to deny a job to someone because of her name. Which is … pretty bad.

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          “And here, LW seems to be looking for a justification to deny a job to someone because of her name. ”

          This is not supported by the letter. LW’s letter is specifically about dealing with their own discomfort surrounding saying the name, and they explicitly mention that they don’t want to do what you’re suggesting they’re going to do: eliminate someone from the candidate pool based on the name itself.

          Everyone is getting hung up on this line: “The position is still open so I may get so many better qualified candidates that it doesn’t matter, but if I do end up needing to interview them … what am I supposed to do?” which isn’t the LW asking to not interview this person, it’s them expressing that the need to address their discomfort might become moot if more qualified candidates come along. But if this person ends being amongst the most qualified candidates, they wanted suggestions on how to deal with their discomfort, which they recognize throughout the letter as being their problem, not the problem of the applicant.

    6. Dinwar*

      “….is it possible some of us are looking for reasons to be offended by words?”

      Yes.

      My favorite example of this is Speedy Gonzolas. They took him off Loony Toons because they thought Mexicans and Hispanics might be offended. Turns out no, they love him–a smart-aleck wise-cracking toon that can keep up with Bugs and Daffy, without the typical stereotypes is hard to come by and loved by many (not all, obviously) in those communities.

      I’ve also seen discussions on this forum and elsewhere about things being offensive because of extremely tenuous associations, stuff that is really obscure. Like, some racist nitwit once used it so now it’s got to be banned, that sort of thing.

      It’s a fine line to walk and I’m not 100% sure how to do it. Comes up in my religious practices. For example, I occasionally wear a necklace with the algiz rune on it. I do it because of its religious meaning, and the folks who gave it to me, but it, along with a LOT of the Norse Pagan symbolism, has been co-opted by the worst elements of the Right wing in the USA. How do you fight something like that?

      To be clear, I think it comes from a good place. I think people have realized that casual bigotry was commonly part of our language, and we’re striving to fix it. And obviously good people have no desire to be associated with bigots actively doing harm. But some people take it too far. It gives the bigots too much power. And it must be admitted that some people use this healthy desire to not offend as a way to control people.

      1. Susannah*

        Agree completely – and you said it well.

        I also think it comes from a good place, but to punish someone for a name not everyone sees as offensive (and even if they did – it’s her name!) is pretty awful.

  27. Richard Hershberger*

    Plantar fasciitis and twelve hours days on your feet? Yikes! That is beyond grueling, into debilitating. Also, unreasonable. Does the company know about this? At the risk of offering unwanted medical advice, I will note that I have had very good results with cortisone shots, and better shoes of course. If you are a few weeks out from this torture session, there is still time.

    1. Throwaway Account*

      I have PF and flare ups are so painful!!

      I’m very wary of the cortisone shots bc of evidence that for some ppl they bollocks your feet up.

      I respond very well to PT and calf massages make a huge difference to me. And the right shoes!! I finally got a custom made orthotic that I wear in my exercise shoes. They were too expensive to get fitted for all my shoes.

    2. murderbot*

      I’m kind of surprised there aren’t more comments addressing how painful it is to be on your feet for 12 hours with plantar fasciitis! I hope the OP’s isn’t too bad, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to be on my feet for 12 hours, much less mask the pain enough to talk to people when I had it. I sometimes use a wheelchair for other reasons now, and while my current health stuff is a lot more all encompassing I’m not sure it limits my walking/ standing more than plantar fasciitis did (by which I mean that plantar fasciitis also made me housebound! In a less permanent way, but it can be really debilitating).

      OP I’m not sure if one of the reasons you want to avoid your coworkers at the airport is so you can use the wheelchair service, but I hope you’ll consider it if it would help!

      1. Jennifer Strange*

        I don’t have plantar fasciitis (as far as I know) and 12 hours on my feet still sounds like torture!

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Honestly, 12 hours only occasionally on my feet was really difficult for me when I did it. I am not built for endurance.

    3. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

      My wife developed PF and found some houseshoes that are, essentially, slides with 4-inch-thick soft foam rubber. We both prefer to go barefoot inside, but those shoes meant she could walk around without getting that really grim “I’m in pain” look on her face. (She ended up getting a 2nd pair for outdoor wear, like when checking the mailbox. It all made a difference for her and she doesn’t need them anymore, but we still have them just in case.)

  28. Redaktorin*

    OP1, I was named after a U.S. suffragette who reacted to Black men getting the vote before White women by having a bit of a racist meltdown. I found out in my twenties, assumed my mother didn’t know what she’d done, and tried to tell her that she’d named me after a famous racist…

    JK, turns out she knew all along and didn’t understand why I was making “such a big deal” out of it!

    For the next decade or so, I wondered if every single coworker and date I introduced myself to could tell my mother was a bad person. I also was scared to change the name because it would mean offending my family while they paid for my disabled kid’s very expensive care. Fun times. I’m only in the process of fixing this mess within the past few months, as my daughter has made enough progress to go to a mainstream classroom in a public school.

    Anyway, I’d feel extremely awkward in your shoes, but I do think you have to say this person’s given name with a straight face at work. Just keep in mind that they may very well know and already be on a path to changing it.

    1. Observer*

      I wondered if every single coworker and date I introduced myself to could tell my mother was a bad person

      I’d say that it’s extremely unlikely. Most people know very little about most of the suffragettes in general. And even fewer know about the racism of some of them. Partly because they just know very little about any give suffragette, and partly because they are often all looked at as a monolith, rather than as a *highly* variegated group with radically different personalities, ideologies, politics, and goals.

      Think about it – you didn’t find out about this particular issue till you were in your 20s.

    2. doreen*

      Not at all asking what your name is – but although I’ve always assumed most white suffragettes were somewhat racist , there weren’t many (maybe any) famous ones with unusual names. I wouldn’t assume someone named “Susan” was named after Susan B Anthony.

      2. RussianInTexas*

        I have no idea who OP means! But in general, unless the name is something REALLY notorious, I would never presume a person is named after a historical figure. Especially a 3rd-tier one.

    3. Nancy*

      Highly doubtful, since o one knows who you were named after unless you tell them, and many of the suffragettes have common names.

  29. Texas Teacher*

    Generative AI (chatGPT, Claude) is really good at identifying jobs based on your skills. You obviously have to use your own background and experience on top of it, but it’s a great starting point.

    You can pop in your resume and use a prompt like: Act as a career coach. Based on this resume, what jobs am I qualified for?

    After it populates the first response, you can ask it to find you current listings for those jobs in your area.

      1. A. Lab Rabbit*

        I did this with Gemini and it just threw back all the job descriptions I had in my resume. It was completely worthless.

      3. Orange Line Avenger*

        Yeah, I’m baffled why you’d use a tool that’s infamous for “hallucinations” (to say nothing of the environmental impact of the extreme energy use) for a search you could perform independently on an actual job board.

    3. Isben Takes Tea*

      ChatGPT! is not! a search engine!
      It does not! know things!

      It is a text prediction machine! It spits out what it thinks the answer to your question should sound like based on masses of (plagiarized) input!

      Is it sometimes accurate? Yes. But “accurate” is not actually what it is designed to do or be!

  30. I can see you*

    “but I don’t want to lie.”

    You also don’t need to blab everything about your personal health history to everyone all the time—especially at work. If this is the type of office environment where saying that you’re flying out earlier to meet someone is the more acceptable solution, then there’s your answer, fishbulb*
    And before everyone jumps in all “but what if OP’s coworkers expect a full dossier on their friend and the visit and want to meet the friend—“
    That’s not going to happen. Just say “friend is great!” And then pivot the conversation to whatever boring reason you’re all out at that conference to begin with. Duh.

    *obscure simpsons joke

  31. A Librarian*

    LW 4…If you went to college, perhaps try your alma mater’s career office. Many offer services, for free, to alumni. I was recently struggling with a job search and was able to meet with someone to go over my resume and how to improve it (I hadn’t redone it in almost 20 years) and then work on targeted job searches.

    1. MCMonkeybean*

      This was my first thought! Definitely check if your college (or colleges?) have a program to help alumni in this situation. Some college career programs are better than others, but I think they’re at least generally more focused on the practical “what are you qualified for” type questions you want.

    2. Totally Minnie*

      I tried this during my last job search, and it was…less than helpful. I’m in government, and she kept advising me to do things that I knew from 20 years of experience are not done in government jobs in my area. And when I pointed out to her that her suggestions weren’t in line with public sector norms, she told me she’d only ever worked in academia and didn’t really know the ins and outs of applying for non-academia jobs.

      And when I went through the list of what I wanted in a job (no customer service, no evenings and weekends, limited supervisory responsibilities, I’m detail oriented, good with excel, interested in problem solving, etc), she said she didn’t know what job titles or industries might fit. Sure, it was a free service for alumni, but it didn’t really provide me with anything tangible.

      1. gyrfalcon17*

        I have had both ridiculously unhelpful, and extremely helpful, support/resources from my college’s career center. I think it’s worth a try for LW#4, because there might be some helpful things there, but also to vet what she finds against other sources if she can (e.g. any resume-writing advice they might give).

        Also, if she has different schools she’s affiliated with within her alma mater(s), to try all of them that she’s eligible for. They can vary widely in quality, even within an overall overarching institution.

  32. Tuesday Tacos*

    LW4- make up a good resume, or have someone help you with that. Then start networking. Find groups in your area that meet about business or are with certain groups (think- all women networking, or pet industry networking etc). then just get to know people. Every job I’ve ever had I got through networking.

  33. ChurchOfDietCoke*

    No-one’s name is ‘a slur’.

    It’s their name. If you happen to be offended by it, that’s on you. It’s their name.

    1. Throwaway Account*

      But names sound like slurs.

      In two of the examples from above, it would be very hard to say loudly, hey racial slur sound, come join us! And one woman was named after a racist and her mom knew that and did not think it was a big deal.

      Even if the name is not a slur, it can sound like one.

  34. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

    One complexity I don’t see addressed (for me most of it boils down to being a name people are familiar with as a name, and that not everyone recognizes as a slur, in which case yeah, use the name, it would be different if someone’s name was the N word) is talking about them in the third person. Mentioning “I’m still waiting on the TPS reports from Racial Slur” in a context where people may not know that’s a given name can be problematic in a way that “Racial Slur, what’s the status of the TPS reports” when addressing them directly is less likely to be.

    1. Merrie*

      I think that can be done with a little bit of finesse. “I’m still waiting on the TPS reports from my colleague.” And then if they ask “which colleague?” “My colleague (slur) is working on them”. Or such. Something to make the context of the word clear before it’s said.

    2. duinath*

      Well, when they’re fairly new, you could say “ I’m waiting on the reports from Slur in department” which will hopefully give them the chance to be like ? and you can say oh yeah, Full Name started there recently, you haven’t met them yet?

      But after a while, people will just know them, and if someone new comes in you can go back to referring to the role with the first name, or just use the full name. Provide context and info so there’s no confusion, basically, but be cool about it, you don’t want them to feel singled out.

    3. Dinwar*

      I had that happen. I had a great-aunt named Butch. She was a seamstress, and made my wife’s wedding dress. When I mentioned that my aunt Butch was making the dress my in-laws got very concerned and offended, quite understandably. But…what was I supposed to call her? It’s the woman’s name, and every time we called her “Mrs. Lastname” we got stuff chucked at our heads (she wanted to be called by her name).

      In this case it lead to a mild misunderstanding and a bit of amusement, but it can get a lot worse, especially if the term is considered more offensive (not saying that this term isn’t offensive, just that there are degrees of offensiveness).

      1. SimonTheGreyWarden*

        Great-aunt Butch solidarity here, though in her case it was her nickname, and in my case she also named her dog Butch.

        1. Dinwar*

          A lot of lesbians I know consider it derogatory when used by someone like me (straight cis-gender male). And a lot of straight women used it as an insult, implying a lack of femininity on the part of the person the name is applied to, with a healthy dose of homophobia mixed in–it was considered obvious in the past that being homosexual was a bad thing, so anything that implied you were was an insult. Think of it as the feminine equivalent of the rant from the sergeant in Full Metal Jacket.

          It may be losing the stigma. It’s not nearly as common a term as it was when I was a kid, either; I honestly haven’t heard the term in any context other than my great-aunt in ages.

          1. metadata minion*

            Ahh, ok, thanks! I’m in a kind of queer bubble, so I mostly associate it as a fairly neutral but in-group word, and also a (primarily men’s, so I would be mildly surprised to hear a of woman named Butch) somewhat old-fashioned first name.

  35. R*

    LW 1: If I had a good relationship with someone I might think it was appropriate to make sure they know the connotations of their name in English, if there was genuinely a chance they don’t. It’s then their choice entirely what they do with that information. I don’t know that I’d bring that up to someone I worked with, I think I would ere on the side of leaving it alone in most cases. Luckily though you’re not in a situation where that line is ambiguous. I can see why this situation made you stop in your tracks for a moment but I’m not sure what other option you think you might have other than using their name.

  36. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

    FYI many Romani people have asked those names after the slur to change their names. It feels extremely similar to the “white people dreads” conversation, in terms of the target minority’s varied response. But I think we can use that as a guide: at least some of the target minority wants the names to be changed. So do with that what you will.

    1. murderbot*

      Thanks for adding this context. It does feel different than the other examples people have shared in that the name was derived from the slur rather than just happening to sound like it

  37. The esteemed governor*

    For #3, in my experience I doubt your colleagues will care if you take a different flight. But if you have plantar fascitis AND they are expecting you to stand for 12 hours per day I think that’s the perfect reason and wouldn’t require you to lie

  38. Jupitergal*

    LW5: Does your workplace have any kind of learning opportunities budget for employees?

    It’s possible you could ask your boss or HR to pay for the certification. Even if they say no, at least they know that you want to learn more skills and that you’re open to the possibility in the future.

    1. LW-5*

      That is a great idea!
      Before this was even published, the hiring team decided to switch tactics and do a “within 6 months of hire” clause, since they had several applications- none of which had the certification!
      I did appreciate that the hiring manager actually circled back to me and asked if I had started the certification process yet or not, before they announced the change in requirements.

      So I have applied, and I plan on asking about getting the cost of both the test and the study material covered, if I get to the interview stage.

  39. curious mary*

    My school had an immigrant student with a name that many in this country would find offensive. We spoke with her parents, who genuinely had no idea as it had a different meaning in their country, and they said they would prefer for her to go by a nickname rather than risk offending other students and risk her being the object of teasing. We did frame this as a choice, not a requirement, but it all worked out for the best. So I’d say you can have a discussion with someone about whether they realize the meaning of their name and whether they might prefer a nickname, but you shouldn’t require them to use a nickname.

    1. Observer*

      So I’d say you can have a discussion with someone about whether they realize the meaning of their name and whether they might prefer a nickname,

      No. It was iffy even in your situation. And I am troubled by the implication that had the parents insisted on using the child’s actual name, the school would have allowed her to be bullied. Yes, I know that the school will not *officially* do that, but still the implication is that you wouldn’t really feel the need to put a definitive stop to it. It’s worth thinking about the very real possibility that this played into the parents’ decision.

      With an adult who is old enough to be holding a job and is not an extremely recent immigrant, it’s totally out of line.

      1. DataWonk*

        I’m in the opposite camp where I have a (western) name that sounds close to a bad word in a non-western language and I am happy to go by a nickname around my colleagues that speak that language. I feel like I am doing them a favor by sparing them the embarrassment of having to say it.

        “Bullied” is one thing, but even standing out as “different” is something that a lot of people want to avoid, and IMO it’s right for the parents to want to take that into consideration. This topic seems like one of the clearest differences between people from collectivist vs individualist cultures.

        1. Observer*

          and IMO it’s right for the parents to want to take that into consideration.

          I have no problem with parents who take this into consideration. My concern here is *not* with the parents’ choice. But that they may have felt pressured to conform. And that they felt the pressure to conform because the read the framing as this is *officially* a “choice”, but do you REALLY want to make that choice? And the fear that the school would look the other way of the child was bullied over this.

          And it sounds to me like the school would absolutely look the other way.

      2. Roland*

        I agree that it wouldn’t be cool with a non-immigrant adult, but having a (non-coercive, informational) conversation was the only ethical choice when it came to the immigrant parents of a young child. Like, there’s a name out in the world that means “whore” where I live and it would be so irresponsible not to tell the immigrant parents of a young girl that this is what her name means. It literally doesn’t matter how hard adults try, they would not be able to stop kids from teasing her when teachers are not around, until the novelty wears off. The staff had a duty to do their best IF the parents and child really wanted her to go by her full name, but they most certainly also had the duty of letting them make an informed choice.

      3. Isben Takes Tea*

        I agree that it’s ridiculous and out of line to bring up with an adult, but I do take issue with you saying curious mary’s case was iffy.

        1. There is no indication from curious mary’s post that if the parents hadn’t chosen to go by a nickname, the school would have “allowed her to be bullied.”
        2. There is a BIG difference between being teased and being bullied.
        3. You cannot ask or expect a school administration to prevent all teasing. Should they address and curb it as it happens? Absolutely. But it’s still going to happen. Teasing happens for the most inane reasons, and if you add on layers of differences like language and immigration, it is stacking the deck against the child.
        4. Most importantly, teasing between classmates does not just happen at school, and it’s not the school’s responsibility to monitor or address that.

        It is reasonable and in the best interests of a child to at least bring up the situation with the parents, especially if you have good reason to believe they might not know it’s an issue.

        Should parents feel pressure to conform? Absolutely not. Should the school treat every student with dignity regardless of their name? Absolutely. But to not even bring it up is not doing the child any favors either.

    2. ChurchOfDietCoke*

      I taught a student called Kont once.

      We did not ask him to change his name. What an awful thing to even contemplate.

  40. KeinName*

    Re/names: How do you feel about unique family names of known, say, Nazi operatives, that people do not change?
    There‘s a person in our city who moves in what I’d call left-alternative scenes, is an academic (publishing and teaching), and ca. 40years old, and the ancestor whose last name they carry is a Nazi – it’s a recogniseable name if you were taught history in my country.
    I always wonder what the meaning of holding on to this double-barrelled family name is.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I do wonder how many people take the “Office Space” approach to this stuff, where a character named Michael Bolton says “Why should I change my name? He’s the one who sucks.”

      Is that person descended from the Nazi operative specifically or do they just have the same last name?

    2. N C Kiddle*

      I lived in Germany for a year in my 20s and my landlord – who I never met because I sublet – was called Herr Göring-Lensing-Hebben. I’ve often wondered why he didn’t just quietly drop the high ranking Nazi part of that name.

    3. UKDancer*

      I think people shouldn’t have to change their name because of their ancestors. Thry aren’t responsible for what the ancestors did and changing the name won’t undo it. What has happened has happened and shouldn’t be hidden. Obviously it’s different if people want to.

      I think Eichmanns youngest is an archaeology professor who starts his lectures saying “Eichmann was my father. I disagree with all he stood for.” Then he moves on.

      Pressing people to change the name reminds me of the way the French monarchy forced the families of regicides like Ravachol and Damiens to change their names forever.

      Too much like putting sins onto the next generation.

      1. KeinName*

        Sure. Might be it feel different to me because I live here, and some of my ancestors were involved in one way or another. And the history we get taught isn’t taught with the message ‚you’re not responsible‘, quite the opposite.

    4. Elizabeth West*

      Well, Mary Trump won’t change her name because, as she says when constantly asked about it, “It’s my name.” So I don’t know. It’s up to the person to decide.

    5. Tom G*

      I have one of those last names (one of Hitler’s inner circle), pronounced the same but spelled differently. When people ask me about it, I tell them my family came to the US a century before WWII and there’s no relation. The only time I was ever self-conscious about it was when doing some work with a Holocaust museum, but as it turned out nobody batted an eyelash.

  41. Blue Pen*

    #1 — Without knowing what the slur is, is there a chance it’s pronounced differently than what you’re imagining?

  42. Diomedea Exulans*

    OP1 made me a bit upset. It’s not up to you to decide if someone’s name is a slur. It might be a slur in your culture but it’s their name given to them by their parents. Please respect that.

      1. Diomedea Exulans*

        Yes. For example, I find it funny if a Richard is called Dick. But I won’t make a big deal about it and won’t go around saying that it’s a slur. If that’s what people call him, I will call him that.

        1. murderbot*

          It’s likely that that the name is derived from the slur in this case. Lots of explanation above, it’s not really comparable to Richard/ Dick. It’s more along the lines of white people naming their kid “China”, except it’s a slur instead of a country

          1. This n this n this*

            I’ve noticed the kids these days are expanding the word “slur” to mean any bad word.

        3. Irish Teacher.*

          I think a slur is different from something like Dick. A slur is something that expresses hatred for a group of people. A name like Dick might be funny. A name that is a slur isn’t funny and I can imagine feeling uncomfortable saying it. Yeah, it might not be a slur when used as a name (or it might, depending on what name it is), but if the LW has only ever heard the word said by people who hate whatever the minority is, then I can see why they would feel uncomfortable saying it. Especially if the LW is a member of the minority group, it’s a slur against.

          And the odds are the person whose name it is isn’t a member of the group it’s a slur against.

          Now, I’m not saying the LW shouldn’t use the name. Unless it’s something truly hateful, like the person is called “Kill All Irish People” or something, they should (I used my own nationality in there because honestly, I’m not comfortable writing it about anybody else). But I don’t think it’s as simple as “OK, it’s insulting to people in your country but the person whose name it is presumably doesn’t think it insulting and that’s what matters.”

    2. Rotating Username*

      This upsettedness, and other similar comments, confuse me. Yes, it’s the person’s name, and you have to call them that (again, unless, as Alison pointed out, they clearly changed the name themselves to be edgelordy). But it’s also a slur. No one is “deciding” someone’s name is a slur. It’s the same word. On the one hand, It’s Just The Way It Is. But it’s also A Problem For Everyone Else Who Has To Interact With That Person.

  43. Kesnit*

    When I was an immigration attorney, I handled a immigrant visa for a family applying to come to the US on an investment visa. (The father was planning to open a business in the US.) The last name was a common one in their home country, but in the US, is a crude slang term for a part of the body.

    I always felt bad for the two children (both under age 10) since they would be enrolled in US schools with that last name. It didn’t keep me from handling and filing their application, though.

    1. doreen*

      If it’s the name I think you mean, there are loads of US born people who were enrolled in school with that as either a first or last name. Like there were pages of that last name in my local phone books when those existed.

      1. Kesnit*

        Probably not the same one since this name isn’t used as a first name. (I am guessing the name you are thinking of starts with a “W.” The name of this family starts with a “B.”)

        I’m sure the kids dealt with it once they started school in the US. (I left that job before their visa cleared so never met the kids.) But that doesn’t change the fact that I have no doubt the girls (both kids were girls) had to listen to schoolyard bullies.

  44. My Boss is Dumber than Yours*

    I work in the new music world (“classical” as many people colloquially call it). One of the foremost practitioners of contemporary flute techniques is named Robert Dick. His seminal book on the topic is called “The Other Flute”. Once you’ve cited “Dick, The Other Flute” in five or ten professional contexts, you stop worrying about people’s names being potentially awkward and just use them.

    (Yes, Jimmy Fallon—or one of the late night guys, but I’m pretty sure it was him—did a bit on this, but the book is also required reading for any composition or flute graduate student.)

  45. Juicebox Hero*

    Back in my retail daze, there was a couple with two kids who were semi-regular customers. The boy, whom I’m going to say was about 4, was a total brat, so his mother was constantly yelling at him. The kid’s name was Wedgie (dunno how they spelled it, but that’s what it was) so this woman would be yelling “Wedgie! Wedgie! Wedgie!” across the floor as she chased after the kid.

    Lord it was hard to keep a straight face with someone yelling about a wedgie right in front of you.

  46. LW1*

    LW1 here! Thanks everyone for your thoughts. I’ve learned a lot of things I didn’t know from y’all sharing your stories. I unfortunately don’t have a lot of free time today to lurk in the comments, so I’m going to try to respond to some of the common themes I’ve seen so far.

    1 – Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in my letter but obviously not considering them for the job was never an option. Most people don’t choose their own names and expecting them to change it if they lost the name lottery is unrealistic and in some places impossible. I legally changed mine in a place where it used to be easy compared to other locaitons and it was still a pain. Now it’s even harder given how popular it is to try and keep trans folk from feeling even a second of authenticity or joy. Anyway – I would be doing a disservice to this person, myself, and my org if I were to reject them over this.

    2 – I didn’t share the exact slur because it’s an uncommon name that would make this person a little less anonymous. I tried to give the social context of the slur to allow judgment/guidance/discussion without identification. I think I underestimated how curious folk would be! For the record, it is a racial slur and it is not just slang for genitalia. I love a name that is slang for genitalia. (I found some campaign memorabilia for a US Congressperson named Dick Swett in a thrift shop once and I have never stopped thinking about it.)

    3 – I would obviously also not just choose not to use someone’s name. That would be unbelievably rude, particularly given the potential power dynamic in play. Which brings me to point 4…

    4 – I saw someone ask what I hoped to get out of asking this question, and I was hoping there was a secret other option that I just wasn’t seeing! That is the genius of getting other perspectives is sometimes there are really obviously things that you just miss. That didn’t turn out to be the case here, so I might have to just be uncomfortable. It’s a very competitive candidate pool and the job is still open so I don’t know if it will even be an issue; I’ll update eventually.

    5 – I am uncomfortable saying words that I know are hurtful and I’m not sorry about that. It’s not a common word and in my social context is rarely used maliciously, but the impact can be harmful even when the intent isn’t. There are people in this office space with the targeted identity. I don’t know what their relationship with it is or how much they’re likely to be affected by hearing this word randomly at work – I only know their background because they shared it as an interesting fact at an icebreaker. I say this to say that I generally think it’s good to err on the side of caution and sensitivity when you can because you have no idea what the people around you have going on inside.

    All that said, there are definitely things that are a higher priority than comfort and showing someone respect by using their preferred name is one of them. There are obviously exceptions (ie King of Turd Mountain) but I didn’t write in looking for permission to reject someone for their name or to address them as “Hey You”.

    Alison is right and I’m a grown person capable of dealing with my discomfort.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Thanks for the extra details! I look forward to the update and hope for your sake it is drama-free.

    2. ChurchOfDietCoke*

      I am uncomfortable saying words that I know are hurtful

      So hopefully you can understand how hurtful it would be to not call someone by their name because it makes you ‘uncomfortable’.

      1. AGirl*

        Yes, I think the LW does get that as she writes “All that said, there are definitely things that are a higher priority than comfort and showing someone respect by using their preferred name is one of them.” She’s already saying that if she hires the person, she will deal with her discomfort and use their name.

      2. Hlao-roo*

        LW1 wrote “I would obviously also not just choose not to use someone’s name. That would be unbelievably rude,” “I might have to just be uncomfortable,” and “I’m a grown person capable of dealing with my discomfort” so I think they understand it would be hurtful to avoid the job candidate’s name and are planning to … call the job candidate by their name.

        1. Koala*

          To my mind this is kind of analogous to the situation where you have competing accomodations — it’s a reasonable expectation for the candidate to get to use their name, AND it’s a reasonable expectation that members of a minority group not have to hear a slur used against their group in a work setting.

    3. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

      Hey LW#1, you might like to read up on a former mayor of Fort Wayne, Mr. Harry Baals.

      :-)

    4. ubotie*

      It’s a very competitive candidate pool and the job is still open so I don’t know if it will even be an issue;

      Okay so why are we even borrowing trouble? This candidate might not even get interviewed, let alone hired.

      1. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

        Because being prepared means you can handle things well when they happen? The candidate is competitive and they are in the pool. Planning for a realistic possibility is not borrowing trouble.

    5. HBJ*

      On the topic of Dick Swett, the current vice president of the IOC is Dick Pound. Not kidding, you can google it.

    6. Roland*

      I think a lot of people are being pretty harsh on you! There are plenty of letters that are looking for that “secret third option”, you are hardly the first person to hope Alison can point out something they missed. Because that’s, well, the point of an advice blog, to give you advice when you couldn’t easily answer the question yourself.

  47. el l*

    OP1:

    Two options – just know that either way, whatever they tell you to call them, do that.

    Option 1: “Hello, nice to meet you. Hey, quick question, what do I call you? [Answer] Great, thanks, I just like to ask this when I meet people – you know, getting pronunciation right, sometimes people prefer nicknames or short versions, etc.”

    Option 2: Deliberately mispronounce it and have them correct you. I did this early in my career when one of my colleagues had the last name Krapp. “Your name is ___ crop?”

    1. Observer*

      Great, thanks, I just like to ask this when I meet people – you know, getting pronunciation right, sometimes people prefer nicknames or short versions, etc.”

      That’s a good idea, but only if it’s true. If this person is the only one you do this to, they will figure it out.

      Deliberately mispronounce it and have them correct you.

      Please don’t do that. It’s transparent and does not indicate respect on your part. To the contrary, for a lot of people it’s going to come across as disingenuous, at best.

  48. Sunflower*

    #1 I went to college with a girl named Gay. I overheard someone on the phone asking for Charlie Chan. A former coworker told me Joy is a bad word in Cambodian. Fanny is slang for a female body part in England but I’ve heard of a few older women named that.

    These things happen and perhaps makes us uncomfortable when meeting someone the first few times and then we get used to it. As an interviewer, maybe ask how they like to be addressed (first name, Mr./Ms.)

  49. Nusuth*

    Oddly, the easiest shortening of my last name results in an old-timey slur for Black people. Knowledge of this slur is really varied: I’ve often had people shorten my last name as a jokey nickname and I’ve had to shut it down and explain why, but I’ve also had people bring it up the first moment they meet me, like “is it weird that your last name is Slur?” While for most people the slur doesn’t register at all, this is a common-ish issue for my extended family – kind of surprising how often it comes up. Definitely a much milder version than a more contemporary slur being your real name – but if my last name was avoided or banned, I would definitely feel alienated and like I was being punished for something that is not even my fault.

  50. The esteemed governor*

    Could #1 just ask the candidate directly how the name is pronounced or how they would prefer to be addressed? I’m sure they are used to dealing with this so it probably wouldn’t be too awkward

    1. gyrfalcon17*

      If they’re used to dealing with this, perhaps they’re also sick to death of dealing with this and would like for once their name to just be treated as — their name.

      1. The esteemed governor*

        Yes, but if it were say the N-word, I think it’s fine to make sure before you just start saying it in the office

  51. Nightengale*

    Besides the conflict of interest issue, marketing a caregiving job to a group with a lot of disabled people is also a somewhat concerning choice. Of course, many disabled people are able to provide care for those with different needs. I’ve fallen into this category myself. But it reminds me a bit of the postings in our disability BRG for volunteers for Special Olympics and other similar events – like someone sees “people who care about disability” as a category for all disability related things.

  53. Non-Controlling Controller*

    As a fun aside, I believe many courts in the US have ruled it illegal to name a child, or to change your first name, to King, so you might not have to play along with that example.

    1. Dinwar*

      I’m not a huge fan of this move. I’ve learned that a lot of minority families started using names like this (King, Precious, that sort of thing) as a response to attempts to belittle them. Since it’s their name you have to call them these complimentary terms.

      I’m all for not giving kids ridiculous names–they’re stuck with them for the rest of their lives–but this feels targeted. Like the whole issue of which hair styles are deemed appropriate, which systematically punished minorities for having natural hair.

      1. Goodbye Earl*

        And it’s definitely racial, because Earl is a perfectly acceptable name and also a hereditary aristocratic title, just like King, except Earl is much more likely to be white.

    2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Seems particularly targeted against Black Americans.
      What next though, if it’s on the grounds of religion, moving on to other ethnic groups and e.g. outlawing the name “Jesus” ? Or “Mohammed” and its variants?

      1. Dinwar*

        Depends on the definition of “many”. Texas recently revised their rules for acceptable names, and while I don’t recall the new rules I do recall there were definitely racial components to it.

    7. anon here today*

      I see a lot of listicles about this but I can’t find, e.g., the actual Texas law. Do you happen to know of any official sources for this? (A statute or state governmental website…)

    8. Texas Teacher*

      I’d love a reference link for this. I teach a King, a Queen, and two different kids named Prince. I sure hope those names don’t go away!

      1. Nany*

        The Texas Dept of State Health Services website has the birth registration handbook, which lists the actual requirements (and no, King isn’t banned). If a state had actually banned these names recently, it would be in a legitimate news article. However, courts have occasionally rejected specific names.

  54. Qwerty*

    OP3 – It is really normal to book a flight that lands at a reasonable hour. If anyone asks about it, please don’t read any judgement or get nervous – people also ask all sorts of flight related questions even when everyone takes a different flight.

    I have found that executives tend to have overnight flights like this because their work schedules are so busy or it’s the only way to see their kids while maintaining frequent travel.

  55. Jules the 3rd*

    LW3: If anyone questions “I’m leaving earlier”, use “I want to get familiar with the lay of the land”. Have the front desk point in the direction of the main conference rooms, and boom! done, and looking proactive.

    LW4: Consider starting with a professional resume writer. Going through the exercise of building a resume for a specific target field would show you how to phrase the skills so that they transfer across other target fields. Specify that you want someone who will help you build two resume’s, one ‘General Skills’, the other ‘This Field Specific’.

  56. HonorBox*

    OP3 – A brief story to tell you why I wouldn’t hesitate to book an earlier flight. I had a flight to a conference many years ago. I was connecting through another city, and the flight between that city and my final destination was delayed. I called my hotel and told them very specifically that I was still going to be checking in, but arriving after midnight. Well, lo and behold, when I arrived and made it to the hotel, they’d sold my room because they figured I wasn’t going to show up. So I had to take a cab to another hotel and then cab back with all my stuff just a few hours later so I was ready for the conference.

    Weather in your city, in the destination city, in any connecting cities can drastically impact your ability to arrive on time. If your expected arrival is already 1am and you’re supposed to put in a 12+ hour day the following day, your company should want you there earlier so you can be well rested. God forbid there are any delays. Also, if everyone else is still on that 6pm flight and you’re there, if they get delayed or there is a cancellation, at least you’re on the ground and can represent the company.

    Book that earlier flight. I would hope you don’t need to explain it with anything other than, “I want to get in earlier so I’m fully rested and can ensure I’m actually there.”

  57. Dave*

    LW 1: I suspect that the applicant knows that his/her name can cause discomfort with some people. If an interview is needed I would be direct and simply ask them how they like to be addressed. If they do want to use the name then you need to respect their wishes.

    For context, I used to work with a man from Vietnam whose name is Phuc Van Ho. It’s a common name. He went by Van.

  58. Skippy*

    #1 This is *very* problematic: “The position is still open so I may get so many better qualified candidates that it doesn’t matter, but if I do end up needing to interview them … what am I supposed to do?”

    Names are not in themselves a protected class, but so you hear that you’re proposing to discriminaten in hiring based on someone’s name? and given the conversations here about how names can mean something else in different cultural contexts, you actually might be discriminating against someone based on a protected class characteristic?

    Is that the hiring manager you want to be?

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Eh, I think it’s potentially problematic but not necessarily problematic. LW1 has seen this job candidate’s application, and it could be a middling application. If that’s the case, I don’t think it’s problematic to say “maybe I’ll interview this candidate, maybe I’ll get enough better-qualified candidates I won’t look at this application again” the same way LW1 would if the middling-candidate’s name was John Smith or something equally unremarkable.

      1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

        but the reason the Op is hoping not to consider this application is just because of their name, not because they are mediocre

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          That’s… not at all what they said, both in the original letter or in the update in the comments above. They were explaining that the need to say the name may become a moot point if this person doesn’t end up being amongst the strongest candidates, not that they were hoping to get better candidates so they could save themselves the discomfort of saying the name.

    2. Roland*

      > you’re proposing to discriminaten in hiring

      They’re not? They’re saying “how am I supposed to address them if I call them for an interview, which I will do if they’re in the top X% percent of resumes I get”

  59. Agile Phalanges*

    As someone with a work contact (not direct colleague) named Gagandeep, I sympathize. I do my best to avoid saying his name as much as possible, but there are times I have to refer to him in the third person, and I just go for it and say it just like it’s John Smith. What can ya do? It’s the guy’s name.

    Agree with Alison if this person KNOWINGLY changed their name to a racial slur, that’s a whole other ballgame, but if this is their given name or a common-in-their-culture nickname, then I guess you gotta call them their preferred name.

    1. Pepperomia*

      Yes, a Thai colleague of mine (called Suvaporn herself), has a relative with the unfortunate first name of Kiddiporn…

    2. tabloidtainted*

      I’m having trouble figuring out what’s wrong with Gagandeep. Unless you’re butchering the pronunciation and saying “gag”?

  60. Filicophyta*

    The situation in Letter 2 is exploitive and all the other things Alison says, but it also puts the daughter at risk. There are people who would think “Hey, free rent. How often would she need me at night?” and then not be interested / willing / or even present to help at all.

  61. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    #1 Names are a sensitive topic for me: Some family members (we’re Sudanese/Arab) have over the years felt it necessary to change to white names e.g. one of my cousins whose ethnic name sounds – to ignorant people – like another word for fart, so after bullying in high school changed it to superwhite “Peter”. It should never be necessary.

    Don’t be part of the problem. Just stop judging and call people by their name.

    1. DataWonk*

      Shouldn’t be necessary, no, but people also aren’t going to forget what words mean in their native language.

      I have a western name that is “bad” in a non-western country (as my colleagues from that culture mentioned once) and came up with a nickname. They didn’t ask, but I also didn’t want them to feel embarrassed to say an offensive word, and I’m not going to call them “ignorant” for associating words with their native language. I think many people would truly want to know if their name would make them stand out if they didn’t already know.

      1. tabloidtainted*

        Name changing doesn’t really carry the same baggage if you’re a Westerner and living abroad, though.

        1. Beany*

          Doesn’t it depend on the country you’ve moved to? The power structure in the US was set up by white northern European immigrants who mostly practiced some form of Christianity, and our cultural norms and expectations still reflect that.

          But move to China, Saudi Arabia, or some other large country not overwhelmed by western cultural values, and you’re no longer swimming in familiar cultural waters. Would I (a white northern European-American) feel differently about pressure to change my name to fit in in China than a Korean or Nigerian immigrant to the US would? Why?

  62. SuzyK*

    When I was in secondary school, two classmates had a toddler brother who had a very proud name from their culture/country. It was a good name for them.

    Problem was that when you said the name properly, an inappropriate slang term was heard. He got teased in elementary school and I suggested a close anglicized name as a substitute or nickname. The next day in school, he told the teacher and the class what his “new” name was. Problem solved…. for then.

    The family moved away a few years later & he was teased/mocked for his name in high school & college & even in jobs. He started going by his last name only.

    When I went to see them a few years ago, he “yelled” at me for allowing the family to name him that. I told him that I warned his parents that he would be teased and that his name was related to a slang term. He still was mad at me. I reminded him that I gave him a more common “western” name for school.

    A couple of years ago, I saw his page on LinkedIn. One of the recommendations called him by his “western” name. I guess that he decided that the nickname was a good idea.

    To OP#1: find out if the candidate has a nickname that coworkers can use. Frequently, they do.

    1. Kay*

      But wouldn’t that be noted on a resume? Especially if the applicant knew the name was offensive. My vote is that it’s something like Gypsie or Indica. Something the applicant doesn’t realize certain people could be offended by.

      1. gyrfalcon17*

        Why do you think the applicant doesn’t realize certain people could be offended by her name? We know nothing either way on that.

  63. Chantal*

    I’m curious as to what the slur is. It would make the post much more interesting, and we might learn something.

    3. Peanut Hamper*

      No, let’s not. OP didn’t mention the name for a reason. The point of the post is to be useful to OP, not interesting to random internet strangers. It is entirely possible to learn lots about this subject without knowing the name.

      If you want to know about unusual names that mean different things in other languages, that is something you can google.

  64. madhatter360*

    The first letter reminds me of a great bit by the comedian Michelle Buteau. She married into a Dutch family, and her brother-in-law has a name that is spelled differently from, but pronounced the same as, a slur for black people. There’s a clip on youtube of her talking about running some errand with the BIL and the awkwardness of having to call his name in public when they got separated.

  65. CzechMate*

    LW 1 – Ugh, this is SUCH a difficult one. On the one hand, as Alison says, these names are unintentionally offensive or funny to English-speakers, but pretty harmless and a person with some cultural knowledge will look past them.

    The most difficult one I ever encountered was a Sri Lankan student named Swastika. As you all know, the swastika is a holy symbol of good fortune in Hinduism. It’s also, you know….a symbol of other things, and I don’t think certain people are wrong to have a knee-jerk, emotional reaction when they hear that name. I always wonder about that girl and how she managed in school and the working world.

  66. Cranky Old Bat*

    As far as I’m concerned, unless the name fits under George Carlin’s 7 Dirty Words, call people what they want to be called.

    Also, LW, de-identify the resume and have someone else look at it. Never a bad idea to check your biases.

    1. Nina*

      (Phuc is a reasonably common name in some parts of the world, and ‘Nick’ is homophonous with the f-word in France…) Call people what they want to be called, end of story.

  67. HelenB2*

    We used to have an engineer at our factory in Germany who we usually referred to using his title and last name.

    “Dr. Eschen, have you had a chance to review those specs?”
    “Sure, they look good. And you can call me Focko.”
    “That’s ok Dr Eschen”

    I think it amused him that we were uncomfortable making sure we said his first name properly.

  68. Needful Things*

    To LR #4… with arts degrees, you might consider working in auction houses or as an appraiser. For the appraiser route, check out isa-appraisers.org. It has a little information on Becoming an Appraiser, but the website isn’t the best. You can try filling out their contact form to get better info if you think that might be something you’d be interested in.

  69. Filicophyta*

    I worked for a company aboard whose acronym was D.I.C. All the foreign employees preferred to call the place Dee-Eye-See but the owner insisted on us saying “I work for Dick”

  70. LoraC*

    LW4, I wouldn’t write off career aptitude tests entirely. I’m in my current career because I took a test in my high school career center office that suggested 3 jobs would suit me. I tried 2 of them and decided this was ok (the last one required too much higher education so I never bothered). I’m 10 years in and can see myself doing this for my life unless I’m made obsolete by technological development.

    I can’t recall the name of the test, but it was very long and asked a bunch of questions like how ok would I be with repetitive work. Or questions that assessed if I wanted a job where I would constantly learn new things, if I prefer to work alone or with a team, etc.

  71. Lapsed Historian*

    LW4 — I was in this same situation two years ago. Search for a “job search coach” rather than a “career coach.” The career coach was awful and wanted me to throw away my career for lower-paid work I didn’t want in another industry. When I found the job search coach, she had a concrete ten-lesson program to transform my resume and interview skills, as well as learn things like networking. (I had read the Ask a Manager job search book but for whatever reason I wasn’t actualizing it very well. Working with a live human who gave live feedback helped me actually internalize what I needed to be doing.) I interviewed for one job post-coaching, the hiring manager quoted from some of the verbiage I’d written under the coach’s guidance, said “that’s exactly what we’re trying to do here,” and I got the job.

    I will say, some people find that kind of woowoo job search coaching very valuable. The one I worked with came personally recommended from several close friends who needed what she was doing, but I was in a different place and didn’t.

    1. OP#4*

      Oh my gosh, thank you so much! This sounds exactly like what I’m looking for!

      And yes, the Career Coach wanted the same thing from me: “You have a hobby of petting llamas so you should take this minimum wage job with no opportunity for advancement as a llama groomer!” Well, no, that will make me homeless, and also probably make me hate llamas.

      1. Lapsed Historian*

        Yeah, mine was pressuring me to apply for nonprofit jobs I didn’t have the experience for because I give money to animal rescues and forest preservation charities. Absolutely bonkers and also, the idea was to get back to making a steady tech salary like before so I can keep giving them money, not impoverish myself because I believe in the cause.

        I worked with A Path That Fits in San Francisco, but it was all online. Highly recommended.

  72. Oona*

    A former friend of mine is currently working as a career coach. This person changes careers every 6 months to a year. He has gotten into and dropped out of multiple advanced degrees programs because he discovered a new “passion” and wanted to commit to that instead. He’s rarely made it past entry-level in any career. Whenever he did make it past entry-level he threw it all away because he realized it wasn’t his “passion.” His most recent “passion” was podcasting. He made it five episodes with his first podcast and zero episodes with the second one. He’s working as a career coach as a side gig while he tries to launch his third podcast.

    I wouldn’t touch any career advice he gave me with a 30 foot pole.

  74. wendelenn*

    Related to OP 4:
    My son is 21 and in his last year of a culinary program at community college.

    He has struggled, didn’t have a great high school GPA, community college GPA is better but still not stellar, few interests or activities (Believe me, we’ve pulled our hair out trying). He doesn’t have much to put on a resume.

    He really needs help with the process of finding and applying for jobs (Even fast food and retail haven’t hired him), interviewing well, following through, figuring out what the “missing piece” is to get him into a basic job now, AND then will need help when he graduates to find a job IN his field. It’s been so frustrating for us.

    I know this kind of thing is not what a “career coach” does, but he really does need some hands-on guidance, coaching and motivation. I am just wondering if anyone has suggestions of types of professionals or organizations that we could connect with?

    1. gyrfalcon17*

      Does the career center at his college offer any kinds of programs? The local college in my area has, among other things, a “learning how to interview” service that includes mock interviews, after which they give you feedback.

  75. Meep*

    I love LW#2. How delightfully unhinged and what a strong contender for Worst Boss only 3 weeks into the year.

  76. ubotie*

    I honestly don’t care where I work or what I do — I just want to be paid fairly and not work with total jerks. I feel for LW4 because I feel the same way about my career goals at this stage of my life (and have a similar educational/career background) but this “wish list” is super vague. So I’m not really surprised that the career coach they met with had them start from scratch essentially.

    1. OP#4*

      To be fair, I was trying to keep it under a word count. I do have many preferences that I shared with the career coach: I don’t like organizing events, I love working from home, I’m good with repetitive tasks but also enjoy high level problem solving, etc. But I’m pretty much a jack of all trades, skill wise, pretty good at everything, but not outstanding in any one area, which is what the career inventories and personality tests also supported. My priority is being paid enough to live, so all of that is negotiable if I can get a pay check.

      In a magical world where any pay check was enough to live on (where minimum wage was actually the minimum you needed to live, not the minimum it was legal to pay a person) the career coach could have been great! But I needed her to consider actual practicalities of living, and she seemed incapable of that.

      1. Rainy*

        Unfortunately, there are a lot of private career coaches out there who think of themselves primarily as life coaches, and most of them are going to be focused on “finding your passion” and “what’s your why” and that kind of faff, which isn’t great if you’re trying to find a job already. Ideally you would have found someone who would have focused on brass tacks: what are you good at that the job market is looking for right now, which of those things would you prefer to do for work, and how to usefully find and apply for the jobs that want those skills, with a smattering of interview skills and negotiation for good measure. Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to find the life coach kind, and they tend to market themselves a lot more aggressively than the other sort.

  77. Parakeet*

    I’m basically on the side of “Call people by their names” (though all the people acting like anyone having a reflexive negative reaction to a slur that’s in current usage is unreasonable, made me question that). But can we not pretend like it’s the same as someone whose name sounds like a rude word or slang for a body part or something sex-related? Slurs are not just rude words; they carry the baggage of the violence and oppression that have been directed toward the relevant group and it’s unsurprising that someone might have a different emotional reaction there.

  78. Skytext*

    LW 3: the rest of the people attending the company sound pretty high up in the company. They may not be able to get away any earlier due to meetings, as someone else said. But they also have the capital to show up late—maybe they intend to sleep in and show up after lunch, or maybe they show up on time, but intend to slip out after lunch for a nap. I seriously doubt they intend to spend 12 hours on their feet plus 4 hours of dinner activities for 4 days. That’s for the rank-and-file, such as yourself, to do. The bigwigs tend to slip away to somewhere they can sit down because they usually have calls and video meetings and possibly even some critical paperwork to do, that can’t be the ignored for 4 days just because they are at a conference.

  79. Bike Walk Barb*

    LW3, pointing out one potential problem with Alison’s advice. In my agency if I’m adding to my trip for personal purposes (think, staying an extra day in a conference town so I can be a tourist before flying back) the costs of that time are on me. No per diem, no hotel, and I can only do it if it doesn’t add to the cost of the flight.

    If you say you’re traveling early to spend time with friends or family then you’re not traveling early for work purposes and they don’t have any reason to provide per diem for the meal(s) along the way.

    You ARE traveling for work purposes so stick with that. Giving yourself time for hiccups along the way and getting there in time to be well-rested for very full days are both legitimate reasons to leave earlier than 6pm. (Who ARE these people who think arriving at 1am is a great idea?!)

    And if you’re in a role that means you’re working on your laptop and/or responding to emails on your phone while you wait in an airport or on the plane it’s even more work-y; you’re doing two things at once, both job-related.

    Good luck normalizing a travel schedule that doesn’t take it all right out of your hide. You don’t owe them that.

  80. Copyright Economist*

    Re #1
    There’s a HS football player (soon to be college) called Noah Knigga.
    I believe that his name has a pronounced k. But the memes and jokes about how the broadcasters would pronounce his name were flying a few months ago.

  81. Grith*

    LW4 – suggest doing boring things like getting your LinkedIn up to date and agree that talking to recruiters is a good idea. My last career move came from being “headhunted” on LinkedIn…for a job that was very similar (and very similarly paid) to the job that I was currently doing. But because I was looking to move, I went back to them with a message that basically said “No, but come back to me if you are asked to hire for the job that someone doing this job might look to step up to” – and 3 months later, they did just that.

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