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

1. A patient threatened to hit me

I work as a dental hygienist. I see most patients several times a year and build a relationship with them while providing their care. I love my job and especially love winning over anxious patients who are worried about pain or have had previous bad experiences. I work hard to make sure my patients are comfortable.

Today I had a new patient who was very nervous. At the beginning of the appointment, they expressed how sensitive they are during dental visits and said, “I will scream if I you hurt me.” I 100% understand that anxiety often looks like rudeness, and I spent several minutes discussing options to make the visit as comfortable as possible, we settled on a plan, I applied a desensitizer, and proceeded to clean their teeth. The patient said how easy the cleaning was and that it didn’t hurt at all. Victory! It was time for the next step and I explained what I had left to do, saying that this part should be comfortable and we were done with the hard part. They became very nervous again and repeated, “If you hurt me I will scream,” only this time adding, “And I will hit you.”

I am not okay with this. It is never acceptable to threaten to hit a health care worker who is doing their job, even in a joking way. It felt especially egregious after spending the previous 30 minutes doing everything I could to make the visit comfortable and had already successfully completed most of the visit without causing any pain.

In the moment, I was shocked and I didn’t say anything. I let a long silence fall between us and finished the appointment with minimal further conversation. I am disappointed that I let the comment slide and wish I had conveyed how unacceptable it was, but I was stumped on a response that was firm and clear without escalating the hostility. Hours later, what I came up with was, “It is never okay to threaten to hit me. I am working with you to make this visit as comfortable as I can. If you need to reschedule for another time or another provider, we can do that. But if I am going to finish your appointment today, I need for you to treat me with respect and kindness.” This feels too long and I’m not sure it’s quite right. I’ve thought about some simpler options such as “what a terrible thing to say to me” or “it is never okay to threaten to hit someone.” But those don’t seem like enough. Any thoughts on a script future me can use should this ever happen again?

How about this: “If that’s a real possibility, we should stop here. I can’t continue to treat you if I’m at risk of being hit. Would you prefer to reschedule for another time or with another provider?”

That doesn’t get into respect or kindness, but it does convey the essentials: what they just said was unacceptable enough to bring the appointment to a halt.

It also allows for the possibility that they didn’t mean to be disrespectful but truly were worried about having a physical reflex response. You don’t want to be hit whether it’s by reflex or design, so the response works either way.

2. Should I have told my boss my coworker was job-searching?

A couple of weeks ago, I was on a call with a teammate when they excused themselves to take another phone call, but didn’t mute themselves. I couldn’t hear everything that was said but I quite distinctly heard the caller say, “I see you’ve applied for the position of…,” after which my teammate quickly hung up the call.

I had already expressed to my manager my concerns about their performance and skills. After this call, my manager followed up on this, and I reiterated my thoughts. However, I didn’t mention what I had heard on the phone.

I then went on leave a couple of weeks, and when I came back, my teammate had resigned. Should I have told my manager that I had heard my teammate take a phone call about applying for different positions?

No. People deserve to be able to job search discreetly. It’s not something that rises to the level of “our manager needs to know this.” (In fact, in this case, it sounds like a good thing! Your coworker was in a job they weren’t doing well in, so they looked for and found a new one. That’s good for everyone.)

This does get murkier if you’re in a management position and learn someone is actively working on leaving while you’re planning a major new initiative around their hard-to-replace skills or you suspect they’d stay if they knew about the promotion being planned for them, or similar. Even then, though, it’s an ethical landmine and you need to remember employees can always be thinking about leaving (or have an amazing opportunity fall in their laps), whether you have advance knowledge of it or not. More on that here:

my employee is job-searching — should I tell my manager?

3. Top leadership won’t meet with me

How can I express concerns if top leadership won’t meet with me? I am a director at a nonprofit. There are three tiers of leadership above me. I feel heard by the first two tiers but not the top leadership. I brought my concerns about the workload, employee morale, and overall organization culture to Human Resources, and the VP stated they would attempt to set up a meeting with top leadership but I never heard back. That was two weeks ago and I sent a follow-up email.

They might not be willing to meet with you. If they’re not, then you probably need to be satisfied with having given your feedback to the two levels of management above you.

Whether it would be reasonable for them to decline to meet depends on things like the size of the staff overall, their investment in the topic you want to meet on, what else is competing for their time (a lot, usually), how much capital and influence you have (a long-time, highly valued employee will get a meeting with top leadership more easily than someone new or without much capital), and how much they trust the managers below them to flag feedback they need to hear. Since you’ve already met with two tiers of leadership above you, they could reasonably conclude that’s sufficient; large organizations have layers of management because the people at the top don’t have time to deal with every issue that arises. They might see it as squarely someone else’s job to meet with you on topic X, deal with anything that needs to be dealt with, and pass on to them anything they should be aware of.

That said, I wouldn’t conclude any of that after only two weeks. It can take time to get on a busy exec’s calendar if the issue isn’t time-sensitive. Give it another two weeks and then check back with HR. When you do, ask if the meeting is likely to happen or not; it’s better to know than to be strung along.

4. Should you tell someone they have an error on their resume?

We are hiring for a position on our team, and our manager has asked me and my coworker to review resumes and do short interviews with people who get past an initial interview with the manager.

We just received a resume from someone who says they are good at “building repertoire” with customers. It’s obvious they mean “building rapport.” This role requires very high attention to detail so it stands out.

They also mix tenses in their descriptions of their past jobs — “I do such and such” combined with “I did such and such” on the same former role. That one is not as noticeable and is likely because when they no longer had that job as the most current one, they never went back and updated all of the tenses.

He’s not the strongest candidate for this position but appears to be succeeding pretty well in his current role. I can tell because he’s an internal candidate and I know he received some not insignificant recognition for it. Part of me really wants to help him out by pointing out that he’s using the wrong word but would it be appropriate to do so? More embarrassing than helpful? Does it matter that he’s an internal candidate vs an outside one?

For an external candidate, I wouldn’t. You’ll see a ton of mistakes when you’re hiring and it’s not your role to be people’s job coach. But for an internal candidate — i.e., a coworker — sure. Wait until the process is over, and at that point, reach out and say, “By the way, I noticed these two things that I thought you would want to fix.” (Don’t do it mid-process though. Let things play out first.)

5. People with more accrued vacation have to take more mandatory vacation days

We received notice from management that due to poor forecasted results, mandatory vacations will be required for May, June, and July. Mandatory vacation applies to all employees with over three years of employment:
May – all employees over 100 hours accrued take one day vacation
June – all employees over 150 hours accrued take one day vacation
July – all employees over 200 hours accrued take three days vacation

Is the above legal? I understand the financial benefits, and those employees with the higher balances and over three years employment are probably in the higher end of the salary ranges. But this seems really unfair to the faithful, long-term employees — “thanks for sticking with us, now we’re going to stick it to you.”

Yes, it’s legal. Their reason for doing it is undoubtedly that unused vacation sitting on their books is a financial liability if they have to pay it out when people leave.

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

1. My boss keeps giving me food I can’t eat

Is there a tactful way to ask my boss to stop giving me food-based tokens of appreciation? My boss occasionally gives donuts, cookies, candy bars, or buys pizza for our small work group to show her appreciation. While I know it is the thought that counts, I cannot eat gluten. My boss is aware of this dietary restriction, yet continues to give me the “gift” of gluten-containing items. She is a wonderful manager in many other ways, and but these small tokens leave me feeling annoyed instead of appreciated.

“Would you take me off the list for food items? I can’t eat them so they go to waste.”

Then if she forgets and gives you food anyway, hand it back to her in the moment: “Oh, remember I can’t have this, let me give it back to you for someone else.”

Also, with the pizza for the group, is there something else she could order for you at the same time (ideally from the same place but if not, then from somewhere else)? If so: “I can’t eat pizza, but I’d love it if you included me by getting X on the side so I can participate with everyone else.” If she doesn’t want to do that, so be it, but if she actually wants you to feel included and appreciated rather than excluded and annoyed, you’ll be giving her clear info about how to do that.

2. Employee gave lots of notice, but now we have someone who could replace him

I’m writing this question on behalf of my boss, who owns the company (I’m his EA). One of his employees (Gary) gave notice that he’s moving out of state, likely three to four months from now. My boss has cultivated a workplace where long notice periods are common, because he is known as someone who isn’t going to push someone out early or punish them for giving notice.

However, my boss just learned that a different person (Lance) is interested in working here full-time. My boss has wanted to hire Lance in the past and Lance comes highly recommended. The position is hard to fill as it takes very specific expertise.

In a perfect world, my boss would hire Lance and let Gary just work until he leaves. Unfortunately, we don’t have the budget to have both of them at once. My boss is trying to find solutions to make sure he does right by Gary, while also finding a replacement for him in his hard-to-fill position.

His main solution right now is to have a conversation with Gary to see if he can get a firmer timeline of his departure, especially because he suspects Gary might leave sooner than he originally said. It feels like an imperfect solution, though. Do you have any ideas of how he can navigate this?

Your boss should go back to Gary and be honest: “I appreciate the amount of notice you gave me and I don’t want you to regret doing that. That said, now that I know, it would really help if I can get a better idea of your timeline because I have someone in mind for your role who won’t be available indefinitely, and I want to figure out if he’s even a possibility or not.”

Your boss just needs to be careful not to push Gary out earlier than he wants to leave; if he starts feeling tempted to do that, he should remember that the only reason he even has this potential opportunity to hire Lance is because Gary generously shared his plans early — and that if he’d stuck with a more typical two weeks, this wouldn’t even be coming up. Plus, if other employees get any whiff that Gary got pushed out early, your boss is much less likely to get that kind of early notice from other people in the future.

Related:
what to do when an employee announces she’s resigning … at some point but not now

3. Turning down a lateral move at a lower salary

A couple of months ago, I got very close in the interview process for a more senior position at a different division within my company, at a slightly higher salary. I was told that I was a strong candidate and it was a difficult decision, but they ultimately hired another candidate. It became clear that they already had someone from their department in mind for the role, and were surprised to find another strong candidate in me. The department head encouraged me to apply for the role that the candidate they hired would be leaving, which would be a lateral move with the same title as the one I currently have. There are reasons why I’d be interested in this change, including a bad personality fit with my current boss.

I applied and when they reached out for an interview, I asked the recruiter to check that my current salary would be met in the new role. I was surprised to learn that while they could get close (higher than the starting salary listed on the job post), it would be a small pay cut from my current salary, rolling me back to the salary I had one cost-of-living-increase ago. I agreed to an interview to assess if the role would be a better fit for me, but was asked to let them know if I wasn’t interested after the meeting so they can move on in their search. It went well and I think there would benefits, including a more experienced manager and more room for career growth. After the interview, I felt good about the prospect and told the recruiter I’d accept the position if offered it. But after thinking about it over the weekend, I can’t get over that it might come at a small but real material loss to my income.

Do I have any leverage here to negotiate a salary match if given a job offer? How is this complicated by me wanting to leave my current role? It seems doubly painful since I know I’m qualified for a more senior position. But on the other hand, they have shown themselves to have a preference for hiring people from within their department — but then again, is it fair of them to ask me what that’s worth to me? Help me wrap my head around this!

Sure, it’s fair for them to ask that. They’ve already agreed to increase the salary but their budget is their budget, and if it won’t work for you, it’s reasonable for them not to want to waste anyone’s time.

If you wouldn’t take the job at the salary they’re offering, tell them that now. They asked you explicitly to let them know and you told them you’d accept, so if you’ve changed your mind about that, you need to tell them. If you go through their whole process and then try to negotiate more money at the end — after they were up-front and asked you if they should be focusing on other candidates — it’s likely to reflect poorly on you. Right now it’s early enough in the process that you can simply say, “After thinking about it more, I’m very interested but couldn’t take a pay cut from where I am now.”

4. A company asked me to keep checking in for updates … how often should I contact them?

I’m currently job hunting, and I recently interviewed with a company that wasn’t hiring immediately. They were very transparent that they didn’t have a position open immediately and that it could be months before a something became available. The interview went really well, with the interviewer encouraging me to check in often for updates.

That was two weeks ago, and I sent a follow up today asking for updates. They responded that the interview went well, but there wasn’t anything new on their end.

How often should I be following up? After that initial follow up, I was thinking monthly.

Should I respond to the email to say thanks? And should I do that with each of their updates? I don’t want them to think I’m rude for not saying thanks, but it feels excessive (I’d imagine most updates are going to be a short “Sorry, no updates”) and I don’t want to clutter their inbox.

Checking in monthly would be way too often. Every two to three months is the absolute most frequently you could do it without seeming annoying (and don’t do every two months like clockwork; vary it). If they have an open position that you’re a strong candidate for, they’re going to remember the person who’s been in touch within the last few weeks without you reminding them so frequently that you exist.

And sure, it’s fine to respond to their emails to say thanks, now and in the future.

5. Applying to two different jobs at the same company

I’ve worked in IT customer support my whole career, but I enjoy and am much better at the customer support side of things than I am dealing with IT systems.

Last week I saw that a local company had just posted a role for an IT department manager. Parts of the role seemed appealing to me and fit my profile quite well, so I figured I’d throw my hat in the ring to see what happens. I wrote a nice cover letter that I’m hoping will get me at least a phone conversation with the hiring manager and later got a response explaining how the company doesn’t use automated processes to review applications and that a real human would soon get back to me. However, the very next day, a customer service manager role was posted, and now I’m absolutely kicking myself because I know I’m a much better fit for this role and I would have definitely applied for it over the IT manager one if they were both presented to me.

My partner thinks I should sit tight and wait to hear from someone on the IT role, but a friend said I should apply for the customer service role as well, so now I’m torn. What should I do?

Apply for the second one. Just make sure you write a letter that speaks very specifically to the second role and isn’t generic. If it’s a small company, you should also explicitly address that you applied for the IT manager job, but you’re also throwing your hat in for this one because (reasons). If it’s a large company, you likely don’t need to do that but at a smaller one, the same people may be reading your application for both and you’ll be better off explaining it head-on. (It shouldn’t be lengthy or defensive, just a sentence or two that explains why you’re applying for two seemingly very different jobs.)

Don’t take your partner’s advice to wait until you’ve heard back on the IT job, because you risk the window closing on the one you want more.