candidate used a slur during a job interview, co-manager is refusing to manage, and more

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

1. Candidate used a slur during a job interview

I’m the hiring manager for a position at a nonprofit. The role has a lot of in-person interaction with clients, so we are looking for people who are well-spoken. One of our candidates used a lesser known slur during her interview. I won’t say what the slur was, but it’s a term to indicate being duped or swindled, and the word comes from the name of an ethnic group.

I didn’t address it in the moment, but I can’t stop thinking about it. How would you have handled this? And, should this error carry weight? On one hand, I understand that when you’re speaking on the fly like in an interview, you can misspeak. However, she used a slur! During an interview! How much grace should be extended?

Assuming we’re talking about the slur for the Romani people … well, it would give me some serious pause! It’s not as clear-cut as my response to a lot of other slurs would be because there are still a ton of people who have no idea the word is a slur at all, so my concern would be less “she deliberately used a slur in an interview!” (which is fully a deal-breaker on its own) and more “if she didn’t realize this word is offensive, will there be other ways she offends people without realizing it,” particularly in a job with lots of client interaction where she’s presumably expected to be more polished.

At a minimum, if you hired her, it’s something you should raise early on (“I’m sure you didn’t realize this, but it came up in your interview and I want to make sure you know going forward”). But should it stop you from hiring her altogether? If she was otherwise a strong candidate and didn’t give you other reasons to doubt her judgment (and again, we’re assuming she doesn’t know the etymology of the word, not that she knows and doesn’t care), probably not … but if you have other strong candidates, it’s fair to factor it in.

2. My co-manager never had the title and is refusing to co-manage now

My supervisor left our unit and there was no clear successor. Her supervisor, Adam, decided that her work would be taken over by me and my coworker Jane as co-managers temporarily. It went well for a while. Jane had better knowledge of our work, while I have managerial experience, and we had a good collaborative relationship. Eventually, Adam told me he wanted me to take the official manager title. At the time, I questioned him about the decision since I was still learning the work and Jane seemed a better choice. He said Jane did not want to be a manager and I was more suited to the role. We would still be acting as co-managers reporting to him; I would just get the official title.

The job was posted, I interviewed and received the title. When Jane found out, it was like a switch flipped. She moved to a desk far from me, switched her WFH days to avoid me, and barely spoke to me. Adam told me she confronted him and said that even though she didn’t want the job, she thought she should be forced to take it as the more experienced employee, because that’s how it’s done in her country of origin. She complained that she’s a ”co-manager” but has no supervisory duties. When offered them, she only agreed to take on approving timekeeping for half the staff. Adam made her take a few other tasks. He set up a weekly meeting for the three of us because she wouldn’t collaborate without him as an intermediary and she wouldn’t do her managerial tasks without his prompting.

It’s been a few years and I have mostly gotten over the situation — Jane does her work, I do mine, and everything runs as it’s supposed to. She even started being somewhat nice to me lately. Then two weeks ago, Adam died unexpectedly. Despite his shortcomings with this co-manager situation, he was a great boss. We’re devastated and panicking because he did a lot of things no one else knew how to do. In the aftermath, Jane has started deferring everything to me, including tasks she oversees. She gave me permission to approve her timesheets and leave requests since she knows I was Adam’s backup in our timekeeping system.

Jane and I have the same salary, and she’s never reported to me. I’ve been pushing back, but it feels like she’s trying to give up her co-manager status now that Adam is not here to make her be a manager. I am stressed trying to figure out how to get things done without Adam. She won’t talk with me and I’m not her supervisor, so I have no actual power over her. Adam reported directly to the CEO, who I have no relationship with. I don’t know that HR can help. What can I do?

Adam really messed this up! While it’s odd that Jane thought she should be forced to take the manager job despite not wanting it, it’s way more of a problem that Adam expected her to deal with management-level work without the title, and Jane was justified in pushing back on that. She’s also justified in declining to do those things now. (It does make it a little better that she’s earning the same amount as you, but this is still a very dysfunctional set-up!)

Since Adam is no longer there to sort this out, you need to talk to his boss, the CEO. You’d need to do that anyway, even if you didn’t have the co-manager mess to figure out, because the CEO needs to step in as your manager now or designate someone else to fill that role. When your immediate boss dies (or simply leaves), you’re not supposed to just muddle through without talking to anyone higher up; it’s very, very normal for you to need to talk to the CEO about how things should be handled now, and the Jane situation can be part of that.

3. Did my boss question my ability to discern reality?

I’m unsure if and to what degree a statement my boss made in a recent performance review is inappropriate. In addition to a lengthy upbraiding, he documented in my performance review that “I want you to pause and separate what happened from the story your brain is telling about it.” He said that my sensitivity makes me care deeply but can also mean that I get more worked up about situations, and that is draining for others.

I think that this comment is inappropriate because it hints at mental health issues and lays the foundation for questioning my sanity and competency. Can you please tell me if this comment is inappropriate and if so, how exactly?

I don’t think it’s inherently inappropriate. He’s not hinting at mental health issues or questioning your sanity. He’s saying that you have a tendency to turn things into something more frustrating or upsetting than is actually warranted by the situation, and that it’s taking a lot out of the people around you, and he’s asking you to work on doing less of that.

It’s pretty serious feedback — particularly combined with the “lengthy upbraiding” — and I would try to really think about what he’s saying and what handling those situations differently could look like. It’s also exactly the kind of thing therapy is very useful for (because if you do in fact react more strongly to situations than is warranted, that’s bad for your quality of life and your relationships with other people, and therapy can help unravel where those instincts came from and how to free yourself from them).

4. Can a business hire only women?

I recently listened to a podcast that mentioned a rehab center staffed only by women, with only women as patients. While I think that’s awesome, and certainly informed by the trauma that the patients have experienced, I was wondering how that works, since companies can’t discriminate based on sex.

The laws prohibiting discrimination based on protected classes (like gender, age, etc.) include an exception for what’s called “bona fide occupational qualifications”; employers can make a job single-sex-only if it’s truly necessary to the work. The law allows this exception in three circumstances: privacy (for example, you can preference women when hiring a women’s locker room attendant), “authenticity in the arts” (like in casting for movies), and when the qualification “relates to the normal operation or essence of the business” (like the mandatory retirement age for pilots for safety reasons or requiring that priests be Catholic).

I don’t know enough about this particular rehab center to know if it would qualify for one of the legal exceptions, but I can imagine situations where it could.

5. Planning a vacation during a job search

I’ve got a milestone anniversary coming up this summer and I’m job searching. We’re planning a week-long trip to celebrate. Should I just go ahead and book the dates that work for us now? Or, should I wait? I have no clue how close I am to securing my next job. I’d hate to lose out on an opportunity because of our celebration — but if we don’t book, then we won’t go.

Go ahead and book it. If you get a job offer before then, you can explain you have a trip booked for (dates) and ask if they can accommodate that, even if it means taking the time unpaid. If they say they can’t, then you can decide at that point if you’d rather move forward with the job at the expense of the trip (and whatever nonrefundable deposits you might have paid), but this is a very common request when negotiating a job offer and the majority of the time employers can accommodate it. There are exceptions to that — like if that’s a really key week for the job for some reason — but most of the time they can make it work.

Related:
everything you need to know about time off when you start a new job

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