spider phobia on work calls, is managing people a miserable job, and more

by Alison Green on May 28, 2025

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

1. Dealing with a spider phobia on work calls

I work from home 100% of the time. I also am deeply afraid of spiders (as well as most creatures with six or more legs). I normally do not encounter creatures with six or more legs due to living in a big city, but unfortunately I still get the occasional unwanted visitor. I’ve worked very hard over the years on getting my fear reactions under control, but if I get surprised and the spider is within close range, I often can’t help but let out a short scream or yell.

Thankfully this has only happened once while on a call, and it was an informal call with one of my coworker buddies so we both just laughed it off, but what do I do if this happens while on a call with multiple people who I don’t necessarily know very well? Or even worse, what if it happens while I’m presenting or running a meeting? It usually takes me a long time to deal with a spider because I’m too afraid to kill them myself and I live alone, so I have to resort to calling in my cats and getting them to take care of it, and it’s entirely possible that I may be out of commission for several minutes or more until the threat is neutralized. I know that spiders are a very common fear, and chances are that most people in any given meeting would be sympathetic, but what exactly should I say if this happens? What is the professional version of “I’m sorry for screaming, everything is fine, but I’m being menaced by an eight-legged beast and must leave immediately until the threat is contained”?

I’m also happy to hear if you or the commenters have advice for dealing with creepy-crawlies when you are deeply afraid and live alone, but unfortunately I cannot use bug vacuums (long story, it just doesn’t work for me with the specific way my phobia manifests). Technically my current system works, it’s just inefficient. My coping skills for outdoor encounters are much more advanced.

If it happens on a call with people you don’t know well but when you’re not presenting: if you let out a yelp, it’s fine to say, “Sorry about that, there’s a huge bug here that startled me.” People will get it! If you’ll then need to take a few minutes to put the cats into action, I might skip the bug explanation altogether and instead just say, “So sorry, quick emergency I have to deal with here, I’ll be right back.” The yelp will be assumed to have been related to that (and that could be anything from a suddenly leaking ceiling to a moose peering in your window).

If you’re presenting or running a meeting: in many cases you could use the “so sorry/quick emergency/be right back” strategy from above, but you should make it pretty quick. Would your set-up allow you to move into another room when that happens and resume the call with a closed door between you and the spider?

2. Is managing people a miserable job?

I recently attended a training for managers and left feeling a little dispirited by the way other managers talked about how hard it was to be a manager and the tone they spoke about their employees with.

I’ve only been a manager for a few years. I have a very small team and I’ve been lucky enough to have interviewed and selected every person on it. Our department pays well, has a great work/life balance, and we get to operate very autonomously. Managing people has still been challenging because I’m developing a new skill set, but it’s been much more rewarding than I anticipated. I’ve watched my employees really blossom with just a little bit of trust and support and I’m so proud of the work they’ve done and how they’ve grown as professionals.

People in my training seemed really worn down and talked about their employees lying to them, refusing to do their jobs, making every piece of feedback into a grievance, spreading rumors, undermining them, not coming to work, etc. It was just really visceral how fed up they were and how much bad blood they had with some of their staff. Many of them talked similarly about their own managers.

When I accepted a management role, I was really worried I would hate it and be bad at it. My experience has been the opposite, but is it just because it’s a unicorn role? I’m concerned I’m spending my time growing as a manager only to realize managing people is miserable and I was just extraordinarily lucky.

Nah. These managers are telling on themselves more than anything else, I’d guess. Managing can be really miserable for people who don’t know how to do it well (or who just don’t want to do it, or who aren’t well-suited to it). But if there are significant problems on their team that they’re not actively and assertively addressing, they bear a lot of the responsibility for those problems themselves! (An important exception is if they’re working in environments that don’t give managers the tools and authority to do what’s needed to manage effectively … except in that situation, the solution is for them to recognize that and get out of an impossible job.)

If you’re careful about screening future management jobs to ensure you’re working in places with cultures that support managers (not “against employees” but “in doing the jobs they’re responsible for”) — and as long as you remain committed to getting the building blocks of management right (like hiring well, setting clear expectations, addressing problems, and supporting the people on your team) — you don’t need to worry you will become them.

Related:
are new managers supposed to be this stressed out?

3. Asking to be called “Doctor” in an interview

After 25 years as adjunct faculty, I finally completed my PhD last month and am now interviewing for academic positions. I’m wondering about name etiquette during interviews.

In the preliminary Zoom interviews, I’m typically asked if I prefer my full first name or a nickname. I know academic departments in my field tend to be informal. Everyone in these Zoom meetings is presumably a “Dr.” but they invite me to use their first names. Still, I’m proud of all I did in my journey to “Doctor.” Plus, I recently changed my last name for really personal reasons, and it brings me genuine joy to hear “Doctor Goodname.”

If I rolled it out with a little humility and humor, would it be off-putting to say this? “Feel free to call me Firstname, especially if we end up working together, but for today’s interview, I’d love to be called Doctor Goodname”?

Don’t do it!

If they’re introducing themselves by their first names and no honorifics, you should not ask to be called by a honorific yourself. It would be distancing and risks seeming inappropriately self-important (there’s nothing wrong with being proud of the title you’ve earned, but it’s not appropriate to use a title in every context — there are some schools, and many workplaces, that don’t use them at all) and making them worry about a culture mismatch. It’s not a good idea to do in an interview.

Congratulations on the PhD!

4. Correcting HR when they misgender me

I work at a place that prides itself on inclusion, acceptance, etc. It’s in our mission statement and everything.

I go by my middle name professionally, or really, a shortened version of it. It reads as a traditionally masculine name. I’m non-binary and use they/them pronouns (they’re in my messaging app, on my badge, and they used to be in my email signature but I removed them — long story, etc.). Most people in leadership are good about using them. I have neither the time nor energy to correct people who don’t directly manage me — I’d spend all my time correcting them rather than working and would probably run into resistance and people not caring. I’m fine also being called she/her. It’s not my favorite, but I look and sound like a she/her, so I get it.

Today, a member of HR (who I’ve never spoken to) referred to me as Mr. and he/him in an email to a candidate we were contacting. The issue is that I’d called the candidate on the phone earlier and I don’t sound anything like a mister. At all. I’m afraid to confuse the candidate (“in the email HR said Mr. Lastname was reaching out to me, but that sounded like a Ms. Lastname”) but more importantly, I’m afraid of correcting the HR person due to the power imbalance. I don’t want to email and say, “Hey, just a heads-up, I don’t use gendered honorifics — just Firstname is fine!” because it feels like I’m being a pain or whining about something that, in the grand scheme of things, is really small and silly. I get that there are some non-binary people who have no pronoun preference, but it rubbed me the wrong way. I feel like I should say something because even if it doesn’t bother me (a lot), it might bother someone else, but I’m not sure how to do that.

How about, “Quick correction, I’m not a Mr.!” If you want, you could add, “I use they/them, and just Firstname is fine” — but you could even skip that and just address the Mr. part, which is the part you’re concerned is confusing the candidate.

You aren’t being a pain or whining. You’re correcting something that was wrong, and assuming that of course the HR person wants to get it right next time. (Hopefully they do!)

5. Do my resume and online application need to match perfectly?

I recently finished grad school and have officially re-entered the job market. I’ve been filling out a lot of online job applications, and many of them have required me to upload my resume but then also fill out a form with my work history. (Mildly annoying, but I know it’s pretty common.)

I’m currently in the middle of filling out an application that’s asking for my work history from the past seven years, but my resume includes a job that I left eight years ago. Will it look weird if I have a job listed on my resume but not on the online application? Should I take it off my resume entirely? Or include it on both and assume that the “past seven years” thing is more of a guideline than a hard cutoff?

And in general, does it matter if my resume and the online form don’t match perfectly? I wouldn’t change anything substantial — I mean things like adding an extra bullet point that I left off of the corresponding resume entry to save space.

Nope, that’s fine. Your resume and the online form don’t need to match perfectly as long as they don’t contradict each other, since they serve different purposes. (The resume is to present your candidacy in the way you think is strongest, while the application’s purpose is partly to ensure you present specific categories of info they definitely want included and to ensure you attest that it’s accurate.) In other words, having a job on the form that you didn’t include on your resume is fine, but having different dates listed a job in one place than in the other would be a problem.

You may also like:
{ 374 comments }

{ 374 comments… read them below }

  1. margaret*

    Lol, I just had #1 happen to me a few weeks ago on a call with several people, some of whom I didn’t know well. A spider came down from the ceiling on a thread and tried to land on me. I yelped while unmuted and rolled my chair backwards. I’m a bit shameless though and did tell them I had to go get my cat to take care of it. It was fine! If it was a more formal meeting I would have said what Allison suggests and turned my camera off quickly to do what I had to do.

    1. RC*

      Is it a feasible option to keep a big (designated-spider) cup handy? Big because that makes it easier to safely and quickly enclose the spider (away from you; can also go into the other room if needed), and then it can be dealt with at a later time?

      I once got a mouse surprise while in a zoom call; loud exclamations were made… in large part because one of the cats got him before I could react and then ran into another room SO FAST! The mouse was safely retrieved and returned to nature (i.e., put outside in a park under a nice bush).

      1. margaret*

        In my case, I have a grabber tool always handy and used that to put the spider on the floor. By the time I retrieved my cat the spider had fled the scene. And I have also resolved to be more attentive to my ceiling on days I wear green.

        1. Elizabeth West*

          For those who prefer not to smush them, there is a soft “insect grabber” that allows for humane relocation — google My Critter Catcher.

          1. RC*

            Does it actually work, especially for little flying ones? I guess I’m glad someone has tried to make no-kill more trendy, but it seems a long way to go to replace the classic “cup and a piece of card” capture system, heh.

      2. Ginger Beer*

        RC, I read the end of your comment too quickly and thought it said “put outside in a park under a MICE bush” and I wondered if there really is a type of greenery preferred by mice!

        1. RC*

          Haha I did walk farther than I would have otherwise to find one that seemed suitable (and far from other residences). This was also the height of the Covid-time Weirds and it was a fairly informal call that was interrupted.

        2. Laser99*

          Listen to this—I live in the country and currently a teeny cute field mouse is living in my bedroom. Yesterday morn it jumped on the bed and ran over my bare foot. I have three cats, two of whom were present. Neither moved a muscle. I ask you .

          1. Hannah Lee*

            My brother occasionally has a mouse show up in his living room. Just the one. (or one at a time)

            It will come into the living room when he has friends over, and sit up on it’s hind legs and just look around, watching them talk, like it’s waiting to join in the conversation. And then eventually hop away (I didn’t know mice hopped)
            I didn’t believe him when he told me, and then it happened while I was there one time. It’s very cute.
            He sometimes puts out little have a hart traps, but this mouse never gets caught.

            1. Anonymous For Now*

              A mouse that’s smart enough to drop by when someone has guests and acts as if it wants to join in is probably too smart to get caught in a conventional trap.

            2. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

              As a former gerbil owner, I’m wondering if that “mouse” could be someone’s escaped pet gerbil. Gerbils sit up on their hind legs like that frequently, they’re not usually scared of humans, and they definitely hop. Boy, do they hop, like tiny, rodent shaped kangaroos!

              I’d love to know what that critter’s tail looks like. Mice have naked tails, but a gerbil’s tail is covered with hair and has a little tuft on the tip.

      3. Elizabeth West*

        I mentioned this when it happened, but my neighbor and I had mice come in upstairs from a recently vacated apartment below mine last year; I was sitting on the sofa one night when Mickey or Minnie or whoever hopped up on the cushion and just strolled by me as if I wasn’t even there. The audacity!

        1. Dancing Otter*

          At my parents’ house, a mouse came trotting down the hall into the dining room while they had guests for dinner.

      4. Grandma*

        I would have let kitty reap his/her reward. The local park doesn’t need another rodent, although the first passing bird of prey or outdoor cat would probably get it in short order since that was a house mouse. The bad news would have been if Mousie was pregnant and delivered another 6 or 8 or 12 babies to the park environment! The exception, of course, is if you or your neighbors use poison to control pests, then don’t let kitty eat it.

        1. RC*

          Yes, I have no control over what Nature may have done out there, but I didn’t want a mouse corpse in my house. The mouse was returned to the great circle of life some way or another. And it was the only mouse we’ve ever seen in 8 years here, so it seems to have been a one-off.

          Fun fact, rodent poisons are actually illegal in the state of California, although yes I still don’t trust everyone to know that rule.

          1. Hannah Lee*

            Yeah, the poison thing is a bummer.

            So many hawks, owls, other wildlife that turn up dying or dead near where people live are found to be poisoned by rodenticides. Traps people … use traps.

      5. Festively Dressed Earl*

        I got the impression that LW 1’s phobia is too severe to trap or kill the spider themself.

    2. Moopsie*

      I had an on camera incident where there was a dying wasp, and my dog, who is allergic to wasp stings made a lunge to catch it (insert roll eyes emoji) and apparently I went from talking normally to shouting “OH GOD NO!” and moving to grab my dog mid-leap. At first everyone on the call got a bit of a shock, but once they knew the crisis had been averted, we all laughed it off. So if you have a moment, remember everyone has them from time to time, and it’s fine. I’ve also had moments where I’ve had to say ‘oh that’s my doorbell, give me a minute’ and mute and camera off to sort something out, so remember that’s always an option.

      I have the same phobia which I generally don’t tell people. My major practical thing has been a box on the end of a broom handle, because those grabber things/vacuums require me to get too close (I also live alone, and the dog no longer chases spiders, even when I point them out!). Mostly these things are solved by clearing my route to an open window, and using the full distance to scoop up the spider and depositing them back outside. Sometimes if they don’t oblige there might be yelling! It has yet to happen on a call, as mostly I think spiders try to avoid humans (I also tell myself they are very polite so if they disappear, it’s because they’re mortified to be found where they’re weren’t wanted, and they won’t come back because of the social faux pas!)

      Solidarity!

      1. Jay (no, the other one)*

        In the early 90s we moved cross-country and I had an initial phone interview for a job. It was early morning in my time zone and my dogs did not understand why we weren’t going for our usual walk. I kept muttering “down” and “not now” and finally said “GO AWAY” in a voice I knew was audible to my interviewer. I then explained what was going on in part so he wouldn’t think I was talking to a child that way!

        He was amused, and I got the job.

      2. I own one tenacious plant*

        Spiders are likely more polite than anything, but I lied to a cabin full of shrieking girls at summer camp and told them spiders were attracted to light and were curious. They had their flashlights on after lights out. They were making far too much noise. After I lied to them all the flashlights stayed off and they went to sleep very quickly. I regret nothing.

          1. quill*

            Speaking as the kid who would have tried to catch some spiders… you still did nothing wrong.

      3. SpooderCatcher*

        If it comforts you at all, I have caught and released dozens of spooders at this point in my life and every single one has tried to run away from me and hide, save one that was too big for the jar I brought to get it. (I called Dad for that one because I was at a total loss and I didn’t want to take my eyes off it, but it wasn’t aggressive either). Unless you’re in Australia, they really just seem to want to be left alone!

        Makes me feel better anyway. I’ve encountered so many at this point that they’re startling me less and less, although I’ve never been phobic. Just mildly uneasy.

        1. coffee*

          Most Australian spiders want to be left alone too, but when you disturb them they feel attack is the best defence.

        2. Freya*

          Even here in Australia, they mostly want to be left alone. It’s just that sometimes they want to be left alone in unfortunate places, like the golden orb weaver that had us using only the front door for a couple of months ten years ago or so (it kept rebuilding its web right where you’d walk into it outside the back door).

      4. OP1*

        Oh man, I’ve definitely had the “OH GOD NO” happen before with the cats. One of them once casually walked by my office with a whole piece of tofu in his mouth, also while I was on a work call. Solidarity with you as well on multiple fronts!

        I also have the same issue with the grabbers/vacuums! Even when they stretch really far, the process of sucking up the spider means that the spider is now on purpose being pulled towards me. I like the broom handle thing, I’ll have to see if my brain can work with that (since technically the broom handle connects the spider to my hands… but if it’s a long enough handle then maybe I can trick my brain into not caring). I also like the idea of the spiders being polite, I usually imagine them as being very rude because they are intruding on my personal space without permission, but your framing is much more soothing and kind.

        1. leylakedi*

          Just came here to say peppermint spray has absolutely changed my life! I’m very arachnophobic but now there are like 90% fewer spiders appearing in my house, so I feel a lot calmer. You need to spray it around your doorways or gaps in baseboards/windows every few weeks and they will not come in.

    3. Cmdrshprd*

      OP you said a spider/bug vacuum is not feasible, in my experience those are small/smaller, but would long stick full size vacuum like a Dyson or other similar vacuum worn to suck them up and keep them far enough away from you?

      if possible I would try to invest in a setup and/or prepare a mobile setup for more formal/important presentations that if a spider does appear you can move, but in more relaxed/informal meetings you can just excuse yourself for the time it take to let the cats deal with it.

      1. The Cosmic Avenger*

        My Shark vac is over a foot long, and has a crevice attachment that adds more distance. And there’s a flap to the holding container with a spring on it, so nothing gets out unless you empty it.

        1. Silvercat*

          We always shove a tissue in the end of the attachment so the spider can’t (theoretically*) crawl out.

          * I say theoretically, because I suspect most spiders get killed going into the bag, but try telling a phobia that…

          (I once had to call in a neighbor for help because there was a big spider above the doorway between me and the vacuum and the ladder that I would’ve needed to squish it with a shoe)

      2. Retiring Academic*

        I was also going to suggest the long stick vacuum. I hate spiders but have got brave enough to approach within a vacuum’s length and send them to the big cobweb in the sky (or in hell? It’s probably in hell). Sadly I can no longer use the cat solution.
        LW1, I don’t know how old you are, but I’m oldish, and I’ve found that I have got less repulsed (not un-repulsed, just less) as I’ve got older.

        1. Silvercat*

          I’ve found I’m not less freaked out, but I can control the reaction better or save the reaction until I’ve dealt with it.

        2. OP1*

          I’m in my mid-30s, and now that you mention it, I’ve actually gotten a lot better with many 6-legged insects as I’ve gotten older. Maybe there is hope that the spider repulsion will also decrease (even if it’s just by a little bit) over time!

      3. OP1*

        Unfortunately the vacuum doesn’t work for me, I can’t mentally get past the fact that it’s sucking them up and therefore inherently moving them closer to me. If there is such a thing as a vacuum where the actual bag part is also very far away from me, then that might work. But that’s a great idea about the secondary setup, I love having all my external monitors but I can just get more and put them in another room. It’ll be Monitor City up in here!

    4. JSPA*

      if it’s a visceral flight reaction, approaching or in any way may be impossible.

      Until I eventually made peace with giant house centipedes (harmless, beneficial, but freaky if they’re not something you grew up with!), my recourse was to have some strategically-located phone books (yes, I’m old) and throw one from across the room… then not pick it up for at least a week. Next step was throwing the phonebook outside, carcass-side-up, and waiting for the wind to blow the main bits off.

      (I’m squicked by vacuuming any living thing, especially of the “extra legs” variety, so that wasn’t an option.)

      1. PhyllisB*

        I just read a joke on Facebook related to this: I asked my daughter for the phone book. She laughed at me and handed me her phone. The spider’s dead, the iPhone is broken, and my daughter’s not talking to me.

    5. Lilo*

      My cat, when she was new, once came induring a call and climbed up my leg putting her sharp little kitten claws into my skin. I did yelp (I had been presenting) and explained the situation. I now shut my office door during meetings (though she does sometimes sing the song of her people if she hears me talking and won’t let her in, it doesn’t come through the headset).

      1. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

        you DID show everyone the kitten, right? because that would have made my day.

        1. Elizabeth West*

          This is an obligation now; you have to show the pets on Zoom, lol.

          One of my coworkers at Exjob has a big black cat. On a call one day, I was writing a note and looked up just in time to see Kitty walk across the desk in front of him. It derailed the meeting but in a good way. :)

      2. Freya*

        My mastiff will come and knock my hand off the mouse so he can stick his head under that hand for petting if he feels I need a break. He also quietly sings me the song of his people if I lock him out of my home office so he can’t come in and check on me in between sunbathing sessions…

    6. RIP Pillowfort*

      I live in a rural area so a bug getting in happens. I just usually say “hang on a wasp/spider/etc. got in,” turn off the camera, and just deal with it. Life happens and my personal feeling is that you need to be a little more relaxed about disruptions like that if you’re remote. Bugs happen. But that’s just how I feel as a manager.

      I think the worst on call thing I had happen was in our building and I saw a rat tail/butt as it almost broke a tile in the drop ceiling. I had to tell my boss I needed to end this call and then call building maintenance because I saw the above. She completely understood.

      1. I NEED A Tea*

        My sister had arachnophobia (aka a fear of spiders). If there one was in the room she physically could not bring herself to enter that room.

        She saw a hypnotist about it and now she can pick them up with her bare hands! I am not afraid of them but I can’t bring myself to hold them.

        Hypnotism doesn’t always work on everyone but it’s worth trying. Good luck!

        1. SimonTheGreyWarden*

          As a kid I had a phobia of sharks – pictures primarily since we didn’t live anywhere near an ocean. Basically I trained myself out of it with exposure therapy using my National Geographic kid magazine about sharks. First I would turn to the page with the full pic with my hand covering it, then slowly uncover the eyes, more of the body, etc until I looked at the whole thing, then slammed it closed. Over months I got to where I could look at the picture. An unexpected shark pic will still give me the willies, but I have even been able to see sharks in aquariums without a meltdown.

          I don’t necessarily think that would work for everyone, but 10 year old me was very determined to read that whole National Geographic.

          1. OP1*

            I actually have spoken to my therapist about exposure therapy, and she said that she had a client who did it and part of the treatment was literally looking at pictures of bugs and touching the pictures. So 10-year-old you basically independently developed actual exposure therapy techniques.

    7. PhyllisB*

      The spider question brought back an old memory. I’ve told this story here before.
      I was a long distance operator and in the latter years our work area was consoles inside small cubicles. The walls on the cubicles weren’t super high but when you were seated at your consoles no one could see anything but the top of your head.
      I was talking to a customer one day when a HUGE tree roach fell off the ceiling onto my arm. I’m not afraid of roaches, but I don’t really want them ON me. Well, obviously to have one fall out the sky on me was a shock. I jumped up, shrieking and waving my arm around.
      My supervisor came running over saying, “WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE??!!” I explained what happened and she went “hmph…you probably sent him into the next county with that little maneuver.” In the meantime I had just disconnected my customer. I just couldn’t explain that to him. I could just imagine his puzzlement and can just hear him telling someone, “I was just talking to the operator when she screamed and hung up on me!!”

      1. PhyllisB*

        Now MY real phobia is mice. I can barely look at a picture of a mouse unless it’s Mackey Mouse. If A MOUSE had fallen on me I probably would have died of cardiac arrest.

    8. Spider Cats*

      I recently was “trapped” in a meeting while a spider ran across the wall in front of me. I wear a wired headset so I couldn’t easily get up and take care of it. I don’t mind spiders, but this one was a little close and looked like the bitey kind.
      I also deploy my cats on house bugs!

    9. Dancing Otter*

      For all the people suggesting vacuuming the spider, do you want a live spider inside your vacuum cleaner?

      1. Owl*

        I mean not particularly, but I can’t see how it hurts? Who cares? Won’t it starve in there eventually?

      3. Festively Dressed Earl*

        From what I’ve read, spiders don’t survive being sucked up a tube and slammed into a canister.

    10. maysterism*

      I had a wasp get into my house once, and it flew right at the window I was sitting in front of while on a video call. Luckily it was just with my direct report, because I both yelped and knocked my laptop to the floor! I have a phobia of bees and wasps, so I needed a minute off camera to get myself together while my partner got the wasp.

      All to say to LW – stuff like this happens! Lots of people have a fear of bugs, sometimes they get into our houses, and most folks will laugh it off and forget if you get freaked out.

    11. toolegittoresign*

      I have had a big spider appear during a presentation I was giving over Zoom. I managed to blurt out “oh my God, sorry but there’s a big spider and I have extreme arachnophobia” and went off camera and on mute. EVERYONE understood. I thought I’d be okay on the other side of the room, but then ANOTHER SPIDER appeared on that wall and I had to excuse myself again. I relocated downstairs and when I got back on the call everyone sympathized. It’s a very common fear, so people understand. I still don’t know why there were two in the same room at the same time — it’s never happened before or since. Just bad springtime luck, I guess.

      I also once had a spider appear in a conference room where I was interviewing a candidate for a job. I managed to calmly say “I have to leave now because there is a spider under the table” and leave briskly but not running. My manager at the time was also in the room, killed the spider and only said “You stayed so calm! My wife would have screamed!”

    12. Clumsy kitties*

      If #1 for any reason is embarrassed to say that she has to pause to handle the spider situation (or any situation), my coworkers all believe that my cats are absolute terrors who constantly knock my water glass over, because that’s my go to excuse when I very suddenly have to pause a Zoom or phone call.

    13. LavaLamp (she/her)*

      I had a giant spider land on my desk while on the phone with a customer. I yelped a f the said I was sorry but a spider just landed on my desk. Customer was amused and completely understood. I have also had very tall boss get rid of bugs for me that I cannot reach. Its fine. Most folks dont like being surprised by a bug

    14. Hello Dolly*

      I didn’t realize how common the “go grab my cat” strategy was. I thought I was the only one! Yay for cats.

    15. Spiritbrand*

      I was unaware of how common it is for people to use their cats to deal with spiders.

    16. OP1*

      Oh my god, this happened to me once in the shower, I was SO mad at the audacity of the spider… like, how dare you descend on me from above like some kind of Mission Impossible spy BS? Who do you think you are??

      I’m sorry that that happened to you, am still laughing because the image of physically rolling away from the desk is funny and highly relatable, and appreciate you sharing!

  2. Daria grace*

    #4 you’re not being a pain, you’re pointing out something that if fixed will make for a less confusing candidate experience which is hopefully something HR cares about. You could say something like “when I’ve talked to candidates on the phone I probably sound feminine. Can you please use they/them pronouns when referring to me in emails? Those are what I prefer to use and will be less inclined to confuse them about if they’re talking to the same person than calling me Mr”.

    1. Lyon*

      I agree that it’s 100% normal and not being a pain to want to correct being misgendered, but I would use even less explanation. You don’t need to get into the gender of it all if you don’t want to. Even cis people are sometimes called by the wrong honorific in emails, so you can deal with it as briefly and perfunctorily as they would. Alison’s “quick correction, I’m not a Mr.!” seems perfect to me. You never need to justify why you’re not a Mr. (I’m also nonbinary fwiw, and generally dislike gendered honorifics, but have a definite preference about which one is better.)

      1. Sam I Am*

        I don’t think it needs to be justified, but the HR person may assume that “not a Mr.” means “I am a Ms.” so it would be helpful to share the correct answer, too. “Just to let you know, I’m not a Mr.; I use they/them pronouns or Mx. LastName.”

        1. Eukomos*

          Agreed, I’d just tuck an “Mx. Lastname, not Mr.! Anyway, see you on Tuesday” into the reply email. If your pronouns are in your email signature you don’t even have to specify that part, they’ll notice now that you’ve made mention of it. As long as you’re matter of fact and friendly about it everyone else will take their cue from you.

    2. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      Exactly! And really this has nothing to do with the OP being non-binary. This can happen a lot with people who have names that are gender neutral or a name that leans towards a different gender. For example, there was a girl growing up who was named Kirby (I think after the baseball player). One time she got assigned to the boys cabin for camp. Even though all of the paperwork her parents would have sent in said girl, she was still set up to the boys cabin based solely on her name.
      The OP should kindly correct the HR person, and hopefully they will email the candidate beforehand with the correction. This will be a good learning opportunity for the HR person to double check and maybe not use just honorifics.

      1. Nonprofit ED*

        Also, the OP said it was an HR person they never spoke with before so the HR person may not know their preference. It makes sense to say, By the way……… if it is something that bothers you.

      2. Desert Rat*

        I once worked with a male Leslie. We worked with the public, and sometimes he’d get an email introduction to a community member from elsewhere in the company that referred to him as Ms. Leslie. He was forever jumping in to explain that he was Mr. Leslie.

        Fun fact, after I was hired, he mentioned that I was the only candidate for my role who had looked him up on the company website and addressed my cover letter correctly to Mr. Leslie. He said it was major brownie points for my attention to detail and skills with building community relationships.

      3. coffee*

        Yeah, it actually sounds like the HR person has just made an assumption based on the LW’s name. So a correction is likely pretty low stakes, which can be a soothing thought.

        Good luck! Hope it’s all quickly resolved.

    3. Certaintroublemaker*

      Plus one to this. HR and an interviewer within the company would be seen as peers working together on hiring, not a situation with a power imbalance.

  3. Heidi*

    100% agree with the response to Letter 3. Eventually LW3 will have students who will call them Dr. Goodname. In the meantime, it would be kind of weird to have a junior faculty member ask to be called “Doctor,” when even the chair of the department is going by their first name.

    1. Honoria Lucasta*

      As someone who just got her doctorate last year, I resonate with this desire to have the achievement acknowledged! But honestly, that acknowledgment in this circumstance comes from being treated as a peer and equal by other people who also have their doctorates. When I was a graduate student I always called my professors Dr. so-and-so, but now that I also have my doctorate I call them Kim or Rich or David. Addressing all of the faculty members on this call simply by their first name, unless they make it clear that there is a local custom to the contrary, is absolutely the way to go here.

      1. JM60*

        I work in a sector in which most people don’t have a PhD, but it’s not that uncommon for someone to have one (tech). If someone asked to be called doctor at work, they would come across to me (and I think most people) as having a really big head.

        1. Anonym*

          OP might think of it this way: the purpose of interviews is not personal enjoyment. Get that celebration and satisfaction elsewhere. :)

          1. MigraineMonth*

            Yup! Get some friends to call you Dr Goodname until you’re sick of it. Don’t ask for it in an interview, where the purpose is to make a good impression and land a job.

          2. Consuella*

            This seems spot on! I had my friends and family call me Dr [My name] for aaages after my own doctoral marathon, and still at holidays am really obnoxious with my brother about calling each other Dr [Our name]. And I still write [My name], PhD, in places where nobody really cares — I just get a thrill about seeing it on, like, the theater tickets I’m picking up.

            100000% agree with Honoria Lucasta (which name, by the way, brings such good reading memories!!): there is a real thrill in the knowledge that you are a peer of interviewers and colleagues, and that you have done this work — earned this credential and honor. And you come to the table with all of the expertise and experience that you honed along the way. All you have done on that journey is still with you, and it will be apparent in other ways. Maybe if it’s helpful, think of asking to be called Dr as a sort of short cut for demonstrating your qualifications in a conversation; while there are so many times for the short cut, in an interview situation, you want to demonstrate rather than simply name. (TL;DR: show don’t tell.)

            Hats off to you, Dr. Goodname, by the way, for all of it. Adjuncting is not for the faint of heart (as I know you know!), and you are amazing. I’m sorry if people were jerks to you or made you feel less than worthy of respect because you were an adjunct. And huge congratulations on finishing your doctorate. Wishing you all the best in this new chapter.

            1. NotBatman*

              Yes! As a fellow PhD, I get the impulse to ask to be recognized. BUT there is no non-conceited way to do it, especially among one’s peers. Bringing it up would be similar to the LW whose employee insisted on going by Ms. Name instead of Name — insistence on titles is so out-of-touch with most cultures’ norms that it’s off-putting.

              That said, OP3’s email signature can be whatever they like, and thus signal their preference to be Dr. Name by default. Also — a new job is a great time to slightly change one’s name. Since I don’t like my first name, started saying “my name’s Bruce Wayne, call me Wayne”; students make it “Dr. Wayne” and colleagues drop the title.

          3. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

            When my aunt got her Ph.D., she ordered new return address labels that said “Dr. Her Surname,” and my mother was happy to address letters that way. That’s the sort of thing that makes sense on a personal level.

            The main way she showed off was to hang the framed diploma on her office wall, but of course you have to already have the job and office to do that.

        2. Galadriel's Garden*

          I’m in a sort of academia-adjacent sector, where the folks here have a wide array of educational backgrounds – and one guy in the C-suite has a PhD and *insists* on being referred to as Dr. It’s…kind of exhausting, tbh, and absolutely gives the sense of an inflated ego.

          1. Christine*

            Hard agree. I worked with someone who’d earned a Ph.D. and who demanded to be referred to as “doctor.” Blech.

            I hold a Ph.D., and use “Dr.” in my email signature and on presentations and published articles, because it makes sense to do so in my workplace context, but I would never insist on being referred to that way. I think it’s much classier and humble for people to find that out about me than for me to parade it around in contexts that aren’t relevant, like casual conversations and warm relationships with my colleagues.

            Honorifics are not what getting a Ph.D. is about – at all.

            1. Galadriel's Garden*

              I absolutely agree on all fronts! In my particular colleague’s instance, it feels particularly gross and big-headed due to the inherent power he already holds due to his role, so adding that extra layer is just…ugh.

              Congrats on the Ph.D., btw!

        3. not nice, don't care*

          I provide a service used by instructors of varying ranks in the academic hierarchy. I get where the newly-minted ‘call me Dr.’ folks are coming from, but from an organizational justice point of view, it’s a bit much.
          We’re colleagues. Not students, not patients, not subordinates.

      2. Dust Bunny*

        I work in an medical-adjacent library so most of our patrons have some kind of doctorate. I call everyone “Doctor” until they tell me otherwise unless they are clearly not a doctor (as in, they tell me they’re still in school). I’ve been mistaken but so far nobody has been offended. I also come from a family with a lot of doctors in various subjects, medical and non-medical, so we’re pretty used to people being called “Doctor” in professional settings.

        But among coworkers here everyone goes by first names, even coworkers who have relevant Ph.D.s. Insisting on “doctor” would come across as pompous.

        1. What A Good Dog!*

          I’m sorry to agree, #3, that asking people to call you “Dr.” — especially if you’re not an MD — comes across as pompous in the US. This is not to diminish that earning a Ph.D. is a tremendous amount of work and it is an accomplishment to be celebrated. But you’ll be considered much warmer and down-to-earth if you ask people to call you by your first name.

          1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

            SO you must not work in higher ed because it is INCREDIBLY COMMON to call someone doctor if they have a PHD. They are not asking family to be called doctor they are asking potential coworkers. And it really depends on the institution. I know some places where they would automatically call the person doctor and other places where they would not.

            1. not nice, don't care*

              SO I work in higher ed. It’s INCREDIBLY POMPOUS to expect coworkers to genuflect to everyone who rode the PhD bus.

            2. agonist*

              Yeah I work in academic research (well, academia-adjacent now that I’m a postdoc) and have *never* met someone with a PhD who insists on being called doctor. Since I was an undergrad volunteering in labs, every professor I’ve ever met has asked me to call them by their first name. The ONLY time I’ve addressed someone as doctor was when I was both A) contacting them via email for the first time and B) asking for a significant favor, and even then I was acutely aware that I might be coming across as obsequious since using the honorific is so much not the norm.

          2. Ginger Cat Lady*

            lol, no, it’s not pompous outside of medicine. Medical doctors are not any more deserving of the title than any others who have earned a doctorate, as much as medical doctors might like to think they are above everyone else with a doctorate.
            I honestly think it’s *more* pompous when doctors expect to be able to call nurses, administrators, patients, etc by their first names but insist on being called “doctor” for themselves. I work in a hospital so I see this daily, and it’s a ridiculous power move when they do it. Thankfully, it’s a small minority of mostly men that I see do that.
            It’s super common for students to call their professors “doctor”. It’s super common in formal academic settings (conferences, graduations, etc.) for the titles to be used.
            But in casual academic settings, the culture will vary, and following the lead of the group is a wise move.

            1. Emma*

              I’m a nurse practitioner with a doctorate and I work as an inpatient hospitalist. I do call most attendings “Dr” but when we know eachother better I just use first names. I don’t have anyone call me “Dr” because I don’t want to confuse people. I have a doctorate, I’m writing all the orders and signing notes, and I don’t correct when patients call me “Dr”, but I prefer first names!

            1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

              It wouldn’t come across as pompous in every setting, but just from reading these replies, it’s apparent to me that it could come across as pompous in *some* settings and that following the established practice for a particular setting, whatever that is, would be the wisest course.

              The LW described a situation where everyone else was using first names, which tells me that asking to be addressed as Dr. would probably not land well in that particular case.

              I don’t see how anyone can make a blanket statement about how asking to be addressed as Dr. would be received that would be accurate in every possible context, and if I were the LW, I would take such statements with a grain of salt.

        2. LL*

          I work for a professional association and work directly with many people who have PhDs (although I, and probably the majority of employees here, don’t) and it would extremely weird for them to insist on being called Dr. Some of them speak to the media or to congress or whatever and they often use Dr. in those situations, but with colleagues they don’t.

      3. Data Bear*

        Consider also that it’s only a *presumption* that everyone on the hiring committee also has a Ph.D.

        Insisting on the honorific for yourself can come across like you think you’re better than folks without a degree, and if there’s someone there who doesn’t have one (and there are all kinds of reasons that might be the case), that is not going to benefit your candidacy.

    2. Going to Dublin*

      Agreed. Though I welcome the OP to my European country where you can get a kick out of being called up at the doctors office as „DR XY“. And within the university, people in admin roles will call you doctor. Which are all bullshit hierarchies, and make certain people feel less than. Though I must say I really enjoy being called DR in the gastro ward, where there is actually a resident consultant with my last name.

    3. Higher-ed Jessica*

      Do you have friends? Have them do it! My kid brother got his PhD several years ago and we’re probably never gonna stop calling him Dr. Lastname.

      1. Lore*

        When I got my master’s a million years ago, my brother’s best friend took to calling me Master Lore. Then he got two master’s degrees himself a few years later so of course I had to call him Master Master Brian.

      2. quill*

        My brother graduated his PhD this week and my mom is making her facebook friends call him Dr.

    4. BlueberryGirl*

      First off: Congrats to LW3! It’s a big deal. Great work!

      Secondly: Heidi, Alison, and everyone else who’s saying “don’t do this” are really on point. If you ask to be called “Dr.” during the interview, it will likely come across as “a bit much.” Intros are a bit of a test to see if someone can let go of the title and just be a good colleague, and it’s not a test you want to fail.

      I’ve been part of committees where candidates insisted on being addressed as “Dr.” in interviews, and unfortunately, none of them made it to the next round. People did notice and they did comment on it when discussing the candidates.

      So, I would strongly advise against it.

    5. WeirdChemist*

      Yep! When I was in grad school, the professors all went by their first names to each other and to their grad students (iirc they went by Dr/Prof Lastname to their undergrad students).

      Inevitably, a new faculty member would join and try to insist that their grad students call them Dr. On one hand, I get the impulse to want extra respect while you’re in a position of trying to establish yourself (plus the fact that you damn well earned that degree!) But in practice, it came off as wildly out of touch and overly formal in a department that had a reputation for being fairly congenial.

      Since I’ve gotten my PhD, I’ve rarely been called Dr professionally. I do insist my siblings call me Dr when they’re being annoying though lmao

      1. Jay (no, the other one)*

        I’m an MD. I trained in a fairly informal environment and called almost all the attendings by their first names. Then I moved here and everything was more formal; residents called attendings Dr. Lastname and I was directly told by my boss not to tell trainees they could call me by my first name. I’d been there about three years when we hired one of our residents to join our group. He started coming to planning meetings a few months before he graduated and I said something about no longer standing on ceremony and calling us by our first names. One of my partners said “He can call me by my first name on July 1st, after he graduates.” Oy.

        1. Constance Lloyd*

          I worked at a country club in high school and college. One member insisted on being called Dr. LastName- a dentist. This is fine! It’s his title and he earned it! But as a funny cultural quirk, the several members who were surgeons and oncologists insisted on being addressed by their first name, and *they* viewed this dentist as being a bit precious about it all.

          1. Dust Bunny*

            On of my aunts is a dentist (practicing dentist, teaches dentistry, has written chapters and edited textbooks on dentistry, etc.). Most of the other doctors in our family are academic Ph.D.s My grandparents were snobs who considered dentistry to be too close to manual labor. When one of the other siblings got a Ph.D. in [academic subject], my grandmother commented–“Now we have two doctors in the family! Oh, and [Aunt].”

            So maybe your dentist got some similar shade and feels he needs to stand his ground.

        2. HannahS*

          In my rather stodgy institution, we have a weird, amorphous custom where junior residents (i.e. doctors) call attendings “doctor” and are in turn addressed by first name. As you become more senior you start calling attendings by their first names (but no one tells you what that point is?) and, infuriatingly, despite being in a subspecialty program where half of us ARE attendings, our program director insists on being addressed as “doctor” and calls all of our supervisors “doctor” while still calling all of us residents and fellows by first name.

          There’s nothing quite like being an MD, being in a meeting full of MDs and being called “Hannah” while everyone else is “Dr. Able, Dr. Baker, Dr. Charlie.” To me, the title is important for patients (because they want to know who the doctor is.) But I guess my PD feel really strongly about upholding that hierarchy, even for those of us who are already attendings and work independently on weekends. Bah.

      2. Antilles*

        When I was an undergrad and grad student, we always called the professors Dr. Lastname when we were talking to them and simply “Lastname” when we were talking about them (e.g., “what did you think of Fox’s exam?”).
        But the professors *always* referred to each other by their first name, even in front of students. Even the ones who absolutely hated each other’s guts still used first names, albeit with an ice-cold tone and accompanying death stare.

        1. JustaTech*

          Interestingly at my undergrad we called all the of the professors “Professor Lastname” when talking to them and “Lastname” amongst ourselves – only one professor went by “Doctor” – no one knew why (or really cared) – we guessed it was because his wife was an MD and this was a family thing?

    6. Lilo*

      My spouse has an engineering PhD, as do many of his colleagues, and it tends to only get used in ultra specific contexts, like conferences and speeches, but not in day to day with colleagues.

      My Dad’s a retired MD and it’s used more socially for MDs but less than it used to be when I wad a kid.

      1. Daughter of Ada and Grace*

        My brother also has an engineering PhD, and works in industry rather than academia. He said the only time he leaned on being called “Dr.” was early in his career when he was working abroad – basically using the credential to counteract his youth.

        These days, he’s got PhD in his signature block, but I’m pretty sure he’s prouder of the P.E. (Professional Engineer) after his name.

      2. Annony*

        I have a PhD and generally get called by my first name in all contexts. If we are using titles it is Dr. and not Ms. or Mrs. and I will ask that my correct title be used but I would never asked to be called Dr. when everyone is going by first names.

      3. Disappointed with the Staff*

        Ditto. It’s never come up at work because it’s kind of irrelevant after 30-ish years of experience. I’ve taken days off work a couple of times to speak at conferences (paid!) but no-one at work has mentioned the title if they’ve even looked at the conference.

        It’s easy to miss at most conferences, it’ll be on the first slide somewhere and that’s about it. Think “using {tool} to test embedded system firmware” as the title then (by Dr Bob Smith from FooBar Corporation) in smaller text. I’m there as a major part of the {tool} team, not because of the company or doctorate. And within the team I’ve got an even less formal name than the one I use here :)

    7. I didn't say banana*

      Yep, agree. When I got my phd, I got a kick out of adding the title to things that no one would notice – journal subscriptions, my renewed car insurance, Amazon orders etc. And my email signature, of course. That has to be enough because asking anyone, especially other doctors, to call me Doctor, is weird.

      1. Dr. Cease and D6*

        Yeah, exactly. In a context where everyone you’re talking to is also a PhD, there’s no point in using Dr. and almost nobody does it.
        I did discover, after my PhD, that fewer online portals than I would have wanted have a drop-down menu option for ‘Dr.’. I thought I could have more fun with this than it seems I actually can!

        1. Coverage Associate*

          I have had the opposite experience. As a JD, I learned early in my career never to use “doctor,” but when I encountered a drop down menu that didn’t have “Ms,” I chose “Dr” over “Mrs” or “Miss.” Mail from that institution now comes addressed to a mix of “Dr” and Ms.” (It’s in Oklahoma, but kind of a counter cultural organization.)

    8. RIP Pillowfort*

      I think framing it as “work colleagues don’t call each other Dr.” might help OP too.

      I actually interact with a lot of engineering PhD’s for work (both as co-workers and as employees of consultants) and I’ve literally never called them Dr. Lastname. I call them all by their first names because we’re not in a student/teacher dynamic. It’s a co-worker type culture even if I don’t know them super well.

      1. Kivrin*

        I use my phd Dr on online things that insist upon an honorific because I don’t like gendered honorifics. I never use it otherwise. But I got a new credit card recently that included the Dr on the name embossing but mispelled my actual name. I called and they said “your name is too long” and I had to have a series of conversations asking why they had retained the honorific but arbitrarily omitted letters from my name. Took an hour of my time to get it sorted.

        1. Hroethvitnir*

          What even. I haven’t finished my PhD, but having a non-gendered honorific is a very nice encouragement to get there, haha. Not interested in being addressed that way, but my culture is very informal anyway.

      2. Annony*

        It does depend. I interviewed somewhere that was super formal. Everyone was referred to by title and last name. The admin was Ms. Lastname and all the MDs and PhDs were Dr. Lastname to each other. They were all warm and welcoming but very formal.

    9. umami*

      Yeah, it’s a bit weird to want people who would be your peers or superiors to call you Dr. I prefer my first name, but I realize people default to calling me Dr. LastName because my first name is hard to pronounce. IOW, there will be plenty of people who will call you Dr. when it is appropriate, but an interview is not the place to insist upon it.

    10. Scarlet Begonias*

      The principal of my kid’s elementary school had a doctorate in education and insisted on being called Dr. Whathername.

      She was a pompous jerk.

      1. Amy*

        That’s pretty common in education though.

        If everyone else goes by first names, it might have been weird.

        But if she would otherwise have gone by Mrs Whathername, many educators are going to prefer Dr if they have their Ed.D or PhD.

        1. Bumblebee*

          Agreed. It’s incredibly rude to call an educator who has a doctorate “Mrs.” or “Mr.”, which is why so many of us were upset when the right decided to make Dr. Jill Biden an issue.

      2. Coverage Associate*

        At my secondary school, and I later served on the board, it was so helpful when one of the principals earned his PhD because his father had also been principal and was still involved in the administration, so now there was Mr Smith and Dr Smith.

      3. Parakeet*

        At my workplace (where a significant minority of people have a master’s but not many have a doctorate other than some with a JD), I never bothered to put “PhD” in my email signature. Then we had an interim CEO with a doctorate who we called “Dr. Firstname” after a Black woman co-worker gave people a talking-to about the importance of recognizing Black women’s achievements (the CEO was also a Black woman). Fair enough, but it didn’t sit right with me that only the CEO would get an honorific. So I started putting “PhD” in my email signature. I actually find that it helps when I have to communicate with people in other sectors who assume, often unconsciously, that people in my sector don’t have a lot of hard skills lol. I don’t make anyone call me Dr. Parakeet though, I just have the PhD in my sig.

        I had a friend in college whose last name was Pepper, who went on to get a PhD. And you know, if he wants to be addressed as Dr. Pepper…he had to put up with enough jokes from us in college, and I’m sure he got at least as many in grad school. I’ll give him special leeway.

    11. Academic spouse*

      Agreed. My husband is a professor, and even his students call him by his first name. Same for all his colleagues, even tenured full professors. It is just a cultural thing, it does not in any way diminish the achievement of a PhD. Practically no one in his area ever uses Dr except in formal writing. It would come across really oddly to ask for that and really make me wonder if the candidate is either naive/out-of-touch (best case) or a real pain to work with!

    12. Anny*

      My doctorate is many years old. It really depends on the context. My rule is that if others are Dr. Whatever, I’m Dr. Anny. If others are Firstname,then I am Firstname.

      1. dr if youre nasty*

        that’s my approach! if I’m on a panel or featured in a documentary or something, I ask the chair or director or whoever to treat me however they’re treating all of us. But I’m typically going to introduce myself with just my first name.

    13. Mynona*

      +1 – don’t use Dr. if no one else does. Also–this is field-specific advice (humanities)–maybe don’t talk about it (recent defense, dissertation research) much in an interview? It makes you seem less experienced than you actually are, given your years as an adjunct. Some hiring committee members may hold the fact that it took you so long to get your PhD against you. You’re now in a world where everyone has a PhD, no one discusses it, and if you do, you will seem out of touch.

      1. Krakatoa!*

        Such a great point that I didn’t even consider! LW has double digits years of work experience in the higher ed teaching environment, making too big a deal of their recent (amazing!) accomplishment really might undermine what they bring to the table.

        LW you have the ability to present yourself as a standout candidate because you can hit the ground running and have a lot of experience.

        Also maybe this is just a me thing, but I would feel a bit alienated if I were interviewing someone and they said this, like it was potentially adversarial until we were officially coworkers. I have a PhD so I don’t think it would be alienating because of a status difference, it would be alienating because it’s calling attention to something unrelated to the subject at hand.

        Congrats LW if you see this and good luck!

    14. Formerly Ella Vader*

      I agree with this, and with Alison’s response. When the committee members introduce themselves as Ali, Barb, and Constance, and ask if you prefer Donald or Don, it’s best to go with that and give a version of your given name. (It’s fine to say “I’m Bud, nice to meet you” or “actually I go by my middle name which is Demetrios” – but in a first Zoom interview situation it’s also fine to accept whatever they suggest, and wait til later in the process to make a correction, unless you think it might complicate reference-checking or something.)

      Don’t assume that everyone you meet in an interview process has a doctorate – there could be some longtime members of teaching faculty who do not, or they could be including some other members of the community in the process. Besides all the other reasons why you asking them to use your title in the interview would be a bad idea, it would land particularly badly in that case.

      Of course you should have your educational background laid out clearly in your CV and cover letter. And you can make a compelling story out of having taught and contributed to departments as adjunct faculty for a generation, and fitting in your own graduate study at the same time because of … (your passion for the material, your goal to contribute to the science, your interest in becoming a regular member of the academic community including committee work and student mentoring, etc). Probably they are interviewing lots of people with new doctorates – your point of differentiation is that you already have years of adjunct-faculty experience.

      If you’re selected to move on in the hiring process, pay attention to clues about the department culture in how they use names. You may find that members of clerical staff who contact you to make your travel arrangements address you first as Dr – or they may use first names too. If you get to meet with graduate students as part of an interview visit, listen to how they refer to their advisors or the department chair. If it all sounds too informal for you, think hard about whether you would be unhappy enough that you would turn down an offer. Or about whether that’s something you’d be prepared to work through.

      Also, I don’t think anyone’s mentioned this yet, but if you’re female, you might be judged more harshly for insisting on your title(s) than a male colleague would be — and at the same time, it might be more important for you to use it/them, to reinforce in everyone’s mind that you deserve the same status and respect as your colleagues. I’m not qualified to comment on whether being a member of another marginalized community might escalate this, but I speculate it might. In any case, be aware that your years of outsider status in academic hierarchies might make you super-attuned to hints that you’re being treated differently. (When I say “title(s)” and “it/them”, I mean not just whether you are called Doctor, but also whether you are called Professor. )

    15. Nesprin*

      The only time I insist on being Dr. Nesprin is when my colleagues get the honorific and I do not.

      1. bleh*

        My colleague did that thing In Writing; Dr. Male suggested __, Dr. Male asked for ___, and Bleh claimed ___. It was telling, so I do insist on Dr. or Professor when someone wants to Mrs. me or titles my male colleagues. But normally, first name is great.

        1. SometimesCharlotte*

          I work in academia and if the faculty member doesn’t have a doctorate or I don’t know, I default to Professor LastName.

          In one case, I had to write an email to a student referencing two faculty, one without a PhD who goes by his first name with his students and one with who does not use her first name with students. Because I didn’t want to do Dr. X and Firstname or Dr. X and Mr. Y, I just said Professors X and Y because that covered it.

          Personally, I absolutely hate people who insist colleagues call them Dr. while not offering the same level of respect in return. We are generally a casual, first name basis bunch – except for the highest level of administration – but I was in a meeting with a PhD from off campus who immediately greeted us all by our first names while insisting we call him Dr. and yeah… if that had a been a job interview, I would have voted against him being hired.

    16. Not A Raccoon Keeper*

      Fully agree! I work in a medical faculty where all leadership is either a MD, PhD, or both. Internally, everyone is first name always (to the point I had to train an MD out of calling everyone Dr., because it didn’t fit the office culture despite it being his usual in the hospital culture). In medium-formal environments, MDs get called Dr and PhDs don’t. Externally, everyone gets the Dr. treatment, but only in press, official documents, and at events.

      OP should be hugely proud of their PhD, but should reinforce that pride like everyone eles by making their friends and family call them Dr. Goodname, not their potential new bosses :)

    17. Anon in the academy*

      I am a recently-ish minted PhD, and I have done my fair share of interviews for academic positions. I am joining the chorus of voices urging you not to ask potential future colleagues to call you Dr. Lastname. Nothing will make you sound more like a grad student than trying to flex the PhD like that. Have the confidence to let yourself be treated like a peer in the interview.

    18. Teej*

      Nothing alienates people faster than to be told that someone have a “higher status”, whether it may be earned or not.

      There was a person who insists on naming their slack name with the absolute full title, not even just a Dr. FirstName LastName, but the whole thing – Dr. FirstName LastName PhD [blah blah blah]….

      And that person then went out to try to “manage” an AI project that went sideways very quickly, and was brutalized by quite a few co-workers.

      The whole point of the PhD is to brag about it with a diploma, just like people brag with their trophies. But do not, and I emphasize this, do not do this in a social environment. I don’t name myself Teej LastName, Two-Time Winner of [major sporting tournament] – no matter how I feel justified on achieving this success. Nor do I brag about my education, or even my intermediate badges. They’re all out there if anyone cares to look, but I’m Teej. You’re Bob. Let’s work together to succeed in this project. Your doctorate will not be helping you much just as my master degree and sporting trophies will be helping me much for this job.

      Of course, this is different if you’re dealing with non-experts and you just have to pull out your credentials. Feel free to do that (and watch them ignore you anyway).

    19. Good Wilhelmina Hunting*

      I work in a university where everyone goes by their first names. But it really doesn’t sit right with me that some publications have a policy of reserving “Dr” for physicians (which where I live usually means a double bachelors, rather than a doctoral degree), while PhDs, who have had to contribute original knowledge, get Mr or Ms. Ugh. It seems part of a wider mission creep, not satisfied with co-opting an academic title for themselves, some medicos have encouraged the idea that they should have exclusive use of it.

  4. Flames on the Side of My Face*

    I’ve had some recent confusion with #5. I’ve held multiple roles at my current company, which are listed on my resume with the year range. The applications, though, only ask for place of employment with one position space, so I’ve been putting my most recent title with the full date range of employment at the company. Am I doing this wrong? Am I incorrectly indicating I was a Teapot Manager for 7 years instead of a Teapot Manager for 3, a Senior Teapot Design Specialist for 3, and a Teapot Design Newbie for 1?

    1. Required*

      I would likely put “Teapot Manager” for 3 years. If the application allows you to add more employment history besides the most recent, I would break it out by position and date range for the position instead of the same company. Being a manager for 3 years is quite different than 7.

      1. Aspiring Chicken Lady*

        I’d look at it differently … if you’ve describe the whole range of experience and skills in your resume for the 7 years (maybe with a bullet that said “other roles include Sr Teapot Design Specialist, and Teapot Design Intern – or “Sr TDS 3yrs, TD Intern 1 yr”), then that’s the career arc there and the information that you were a successful employee for 7 yrs. Roles overlap the actual titles, often.

        1. Required*

          On a resume, it’s fine to do what you’re recommending. For an online application, I would say it’s not because online applications are looking for categorization of experience, not necessarily if you were a successful employee at one company. It’s likely that a substantial number of hiring managers would be put off by someone putting in the application that they have 7 years of managerial experience when their resume contradicts that information at only 3 years (or however many if there really was some overlap).

    2. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

      Can you just list the positions separately, so that they all have the same employer name but the position names are different?

      1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

        That’s what I was thinking. I don’t see anything wrong with listing the same employer multiple times when you have had multiple roles with different duties for each at the same place.

  5. Dr Old & Tired*

    LW3 – My PhD was conferred in 2003, so it’s been old enough to drink in a bar for several years in my own country, and even for a couple of years in the US! I understand that it’s exciting for you to have it now because you’ve only just gotten it, but you’ll get over that. In academia every person and their dog has a PhD so it’s not something that makes you stand out, and it’s as Alison says – go with what other people are doing. If people are introducing themselves with their title, then you do that too. If they’re introducing themselves with their first names, then you do that too. Having said that, there is a huge issue in academia and medicine of men being introduced as Dr So-and-so and women with the same qualification being introduced by their first name, and that’s where I’d make an exception to the advice above if you are a female-presenting person – if the men around you are being called Dr then you should make sure that you are as well.

    1. Lapsed historian*

      Yes, all of this, though my PhD isn’t quite that old. But feel free to change your email signature to “So and So, PhD” as soon as your diploma is awarded, LW3, you’ve earned it! It is a significant achievement, even if it’s par for the course in academia.

      1. Dr Old & Tired*

        Yes, Lapsed historian is right, it is an achievement for sure – put it in your email signature, and use your title at conferences.

        In terms of use of the title in real life, when I first got mine I was given advice from a friend who’d had her PhD for 10 years at that point, and she said: if you want something from them, use it; if they want something from you, don’t use it. So that’s why it goes on my mortgage applications but not on anything where I think they might use it as an excuse to charge me more. It’s turned out to be very useful advice!

    2. Slow Gin Lizz*

      This question reminds me of the scene in a fairly early episode of Big Bang Theory where the head of the dept is addressing the four main cast members and they’re all acknowledging each other: “Dr. Cooper, Dr. Koothrappali…” etc and then the dept head says, “*Mr.* Wolowitz” to the one person without a PhD. (Emphasis on Mr., of course.) It always makes me laugh.

  6. Pyjamas*

    If the spiders are bothering you that much, maybe have your house treated by an exterminator. I know spiders are good insects but it sounds like maybe a whole bunch have moved inside

    1. ecnaseener*

      Where do you get the idea that a whole bunch of spiders are inside?! LW says a bug has come inside “occasionally” and that it’s happened during a meeting exactly once.

      1. What name did I use last time?*

        Maybe this is a good spot for my comment. LW, I wonder if your phobia is expressing itself in this worry that another spider will appear when you’re on a more important call. It has happened just once, and wasn’t a big deal on that call — you’re investing emotional energy and planning for a fairly unlikely event.
        I hope this comes across kindly. I often catch myself having emotions about something that hasn’t happened and realize I’m just caught up in a story I’m telling myself about a hypothetical.

        1. Observer*

          LW, I wonder if your phobia is expressing itself in this worry that another spider will appear when you’re on a more important call

          That’s a really good point.

          LW, I know that treating phobias is not so simple. But it sounds to me like you might just be into territory where it could become a real problem for you. Perhaps working on getting that level of anxiety around it down would be worth the effort.

        2. Mad Scientist*

          As someone who also has a phobia (a different one, but still one that can and has come up occasionally at work), yes, fear of the fear is almost definitely a factor here!

        3. OP1*

          This came across very kindly, thank you. Totally a fair point to think about, I have a lot of anxiety in general so you are right that I need to reality check how much energy I’m spending thinking about this. In this case, a spider had just run across my desk while I was not in a work call (and successfully deployed the cats), I had the thought, “Huh, what would I do if this happened while I was in an important meeting?”, sent the question to Alison, and then forgot about it. It was more of a “hmm, I should have a plan for just in case this happens, I will think about this for 5 minutes,” kind of deal. I’ve honestly spent exponentially more time reading the comments than I even spent thinking about the original question, haha. But I appreciate the kindness and concern very much!

      2. Emmy Noether*

        In my experience, the number of spiders greatly varies with the location of the space.

        I used to live in a house built sort of into a hill, so my room was on the ground floor opening onto the garden, with a basement space further back on the same floor dug into the hillside. LOTS of spiders. Now I’m in a seventh floor apartment overlooking a street and there are hardly any.

        An exterminator isn’t going to do much long term for the first kind of living space. Spiders aren’t really an infestation like ants or wasps, they come in from the outside individually.

    2. Festively Dressed Earl*

      Exterminators are iffy when you’ve got pets. I was thinking that LW 1 should have a spray water bottle handy mixed with spider repellent essential oils like peppermint, citrus, eucalyptus, or cinnamon, then give their work area a good spritz before settling into work for the day. A half-water half-vinegar spray would also work, but maybe save that for times when LW can stay away and let the smell dissipate. Cedar wood accessories in their work space might also help.

  7. NforKnowledge*

    #3 Academia tends to not give a rats behind about titles, especially the Dr title that all faculty have! Look for other places in your life to be called Dr Lastname. But honestly, if you don’t insist on it in some way, in my experience I’ve almost never been called Dr over the last decade

    1. Professor Moriarty*

      I think lots of places have got less formal with time. I cannot think of a time in my adult life where I would ever call someone Mr or Mrs or Ms so and so. Once I was out of high school, even in uni my lecturers were mostly just referrred to by their surname with no honorific. But that also means I’d never call someone Dr so and so.

      1. fhqwhgads*

        Yeah. I went to a university where everyone uses first names. It would be so so so so out of touch for a candidate to expect to be called “professor so-and-so” let alone “Dr. so-and-so”. Neither colleagues nor students would do it there. I know that’s not true at every school. But it’s a know-your-audience situation. Plenty of places it’s not the done thing and the LW would out themselves as bad cultural fit immediately.

      2. RC*

        I always think of the detail that in Breaking Bad, Jesse called Walter “Mr White” throughout the entire series (who, come to think of it, had a doctorate, right?). That definitely felt true to life of how those high school-based dynamics are ingrained.

      3. UKDancer*

        I think the only person I call “Mr” is my dentist, because he’s been my dentist for 30 years and he was Mr Jones when I started seeing him as a teenager and it’s stuck.

        I had a singing teacher as an adult who wanted to be called Miss Felicity which made me laugh a lot inwardly as it felt very pretentious but I did that for the time I was studying with her.

        Everyone else in my life, including the chap I know with a long hereditary title is first name terms.

        1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

          In America, dentists are called “Dr. Suchandsuch,” because the degree thay qualifies them for that work is a doctoral degree. I never realized it was different in the UK!

    2. Generic Username*

      Legend has it there are colleges/universities where the faculty refer to each other as “Professor” rather than “Doctor” because it is assumed someone has a doctorate if they’re on faculty and if the don’t, why embarrass them?

  8. Prof*

    LW 3! Congratulations on the degree. I can’t speak for every country/language, but in all academic contexts I’ve been in, even the most stuffy and title-obsessed, when you get your doctorate you stop addressing others as Dr. Before the doctorate you would call someone Dr So-and-so, and when you’ve earned your own degree, you switch to calling them Ms. So-and-so. (Of course in most places these days you’d just use first names, but if you don’t, this is the etiquette.)

    If a Dr. would call someone else Dr., that would be understood as mocking and sarcastic. So do not insist on it!

  9. Wildreed*

    #1 obviously the most prudent thing to do is to keep your cats with you at all times while you are working, so they can protect you. My cat also watches my screen, looking for spelling errors, I assume.

    1. TPS reporter*

      I just witnessed two spiders wrestling in my kitchen. all three of my cats were completely uninterested. they prefer flys or silverfish (the most horrific of insects).

    2. honeygrim*

      One of my cats is the WORST micromanager. If she hears me talking in a meeting, she assumes she has to run in and stand in front of my webcam to make sure everyone knows that I’m being closely supervised.

      1. Juicebox Hero*

        They just can’t stand you paying attention to someone other than them. I’ve never worked from home, but during the lockdowns I had zoom calls with friends and family. Every time, as soon as I started talking, there’d be a cat on the keyboard and cat butt aimed directly at the camera.

        1. Elizabeth West*

          LOL and then when you want to pet or cuddle them, they’re like, “Who the hell are you?”

      2. MigraineMonth*

        I love my cat dearly, but I’ve been trying to find a way to break it to him that he’s actually a terrible pair programmer. He won’t explain what he’s doing, his comments are gibberish, and I’m starting to suspect he doesn’t even have a solid grasp of object-oriented programming. Not to mention he tends to lie down on the keyboard when it’s my turn.

        3. LW1/OP1*

          When the situation that prompted this question occurred, I deployed the cats and my fat one sat on my computer keyboard and deleted a whole bunch of code (nothing that the ‘undo’ button couldn’t solve, thankfully). The thin one once posted a bunch of gibberish on slack. They’re terrible engineers.

        4. Parakeet*

          Mmm, if you can find an excuse to write your code in Perl, nobody would be able to tell which parts were written the cat anyway.

  10. Work for Catfood*

    I may be missing something with #4 but I don’t get the sense that LW was being misgendered as a slap in the face but as a fairly common HR/Admin issue with hundreds of current and past staff names flowing through your brain, and if you see a male name, you assume the person is male. Totally not what you should be doing, but it happens.

    As an Admin manager, when I brought on new team members, the first thing I’d do is run through the list of staff whose names would suggest they were one gender when they were another. Most of our staff were in other communities and you had to memorize these details just from the names.

    The HR person should not feel chapped at all by your correction; they should welcome it.

    1. Opaline*

      If the HR person is aware they’re non-binary, it could also be a backfired attempted to avoid misgendering them. For some reason, people sometimes treat female terms as more gendered than male ones.

      It wouldn’t be the first time someone has tried to avoid misgendering with ‘Ms’, but settled on ‘Mr’ as a default instead (the same way language uses ‘postman’ or ‘mankind’ as a default, even though ‘man’ is a gendered term). Ask me how I know…

      1. Flor*

        Totally random and off-topic, but “mankind” doesn’t derive from the gendered term “man” – it derives from the gender neutral term “man”. In Old English, “man” meant, well, a human. You had wereman for male humans and wifman for female humans (hence “werewolf”; I’ve always thought therefore that female werewolves ought to be wifwolves, though I’m unclear where this leaves non-binary humans who shift into wolves).

        Wifman, of course, evolved into woman, but thanks to patriarchy, wereman faded into obscurity as the name for all humanity came to refer to the default gender. So mankind is kind of a funny term in that it didn’t *start* as a gendered term, but thanks to a thousand years of patriarchy it has continued to be used to refer to all humanity while also being understood by most people to be gendered.

        To the point of the letter, though, I wonder why the HR person didn’t simply use LW’s first name. I don’t think I’ve *ever* had an honorific used in the workplace. If someone is referring to me to another person they use my forename, maybe both forename and surname if needed.

        2. Nightengale*

          I’m a pediatrician and use Mr/Ms/Dr when talking to my patient’s parents unless asked to use their first names. Although I don’t stop using first names for my patients when they turn 18 or 21 so I guess I am not consistent there.

          Our staff call me doctor and I really wish I could get them to use my first name though. . .

        3. JustaTech*

          Very interesting.
          To you second point – I have exactly one coworker who uses honorifics in the workplace – in emails and in meetings and it is very weird (and frankly annoying).
          While I know what I should do is say “please call me Firstname” – particularly since my academic title of “Master” is 1000000% not acceptable to use as a title – I’ve found myself correcting this person in email to say “Oh, it’s Dr Lastname1, not Ms Lastname1” about other coworkers. Like, if he’s going to insist on using titles then he darn well needs to use the right ones!

      2. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

        I use “letter carrier” and “humanity”, but then, I was exposed to Ms. Magazine starting before puberty, plus I write for a living and I actively look for better ways to express things.

        > For some reason, people sometimes treat female terms as more gendered than male ones.

        Yup. Because (at least to most English speakers), men are people and women are female people. Or as Kate Bornstein put it in her play “Hidden: A Gender”, men have a penis, while women have … no penis.

    2. LW4*

      Hi! LW4 here! I know it wasn’t a slap in the face, more so an issue of HR just reading the name in my email signature and basing assumptions off of that. Generally, I don’t care what people call me (just don’t call me late for dinner!), but it was more that I’d already called and spoken to the candidate that was emailed and don’t sound like a sir.

      This does happen often, especially with people I’ve never spoken to in person. I was more concerned about the awkwardness the candidate may have experienced hearing from a feminine voice but an email referring to me as a male.

      1. No name*

        If I were the candidate I would probably just assume that HR doesn’t know all of the company’s employees, which sounds like is true here (and not abnormal). I like the “quick correction not a Mr.” suggestion, and you could add a friendly “Candidate, I go by X” or “feel free to call me X” so that it’s not just about how not to address you, but how you would like to be addressed.

        1. Observer*

          If I were the candidate I would probably just assume that HR doesn’t know all of the company’s employees

          Yup. Or someone made a typo. It happens.

          Assuming you keep your correction low key and matter of fact, it’s hard to imagine that a reasonable HR person is going to get bent out of shape.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        On the other hand, some men do have feminine-sounding voices and vice-versa, so the candidate might assume they guessed incorrectly.

        If you’d like the candidate to know you’re not a “Mr”, go ahead and let them know. If it doesn’t bother you, you have no obligation to set the record straight.

  11. Dr. Noether (call me Emmy)*

    The way I said “Noooooooo!” out loud and ran to the comments upon reading #3!

    I may or may not have signed emails to my advisors and some friends and family “Dr. Emmy” upon receiving my title. They took it in the spirit of fun and pride I intended. A job interview with strangers is not the place for that. It will make you seem stuck up, difficult, and oblivious to norms. I don’t think I’m exaggerating in saying it may well take you out of the running for the job.

    1. Not that kind of Doctor*

      I am a physical therapist and in my office 10 of 12 of us have doctorates. In my organization, we are actively discouraged from presenting ourselves as “Dr” for inane reasons. 1) so our non-doctor colleagues don’t “feel bad” and 2) “because it can be confusing to patients…” Seriously? Did anyone ever thing Dr. Dentist or Dr. Vet was going to renew their blood pressure meds for them? Yet we still are required to sign all of our documentation with our DPT credentials. It stings.

      1. UKDancer*

        I’ve never called my physio by their title, I mean I don’t know what qualifications they had, but the first one introduced himself by a nickname for his first name (think Bobby for Robert) and the second one by her first name. So I’d never expect to call them anything else.

        Dentists in the UK don’t tend to have doctorates (at least mine doesn’t) but he’s been my dentist so long I’ve always called him Mr Jones and he’s always called me Ms UKDancer.

    3. Prof Ma'am*

      I’ve been on hiring committees and it’s a bit much to say it’ll take OP out of the running for the job. So much time is spent reviewing applications, debating the candidates, all before deciding who gets a zoom interview. If OP interviews strongly and this is the only thing that signals a culture mismatch, I’d get over it.

      That being said, I think this is more forgiving for someone who has had little professional experience in academia, beyond being a graduate student. They are used to calling faculty Dr and might have a hard time seeing the interviewers as potential peers. OP has been in academia for 25 years. Certainly, by now they know how faculty interact with one another.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        I admit that I have only hired in industry, where “bristly and difficult to work with” may be more of a blocker to hiring than in academia…

        Adressing other people more formally than required reads as a culture mismatch and isn’t a big deal. Insisting on a very formal form of address for oneself that is clearly out of step with the norms one has just been informed of reads not as a culture thing, but as a personality thing.

  12. Plants*

    #1 would it be feasible to do a bit of a check of the room before any important calls? I know it wouldn’t be pleasant, and maybe you do this already, but if not, that could ensure you’d hopefully find any creepy crawlies that are present before they startle you on a call. Also if it’s available to you, therapy can really help with phobias.

    1. Ellie*

      Yes… I do a quick check of the interior of my car before I drive off alone anywhere now, because of a spider incident that occurred about 10 years ago. There’s no shame in taking a few minutes to put yourself at ease if you need it.

      Do know though that spider phobias are incredibly common, and most people are not going to hold it against you if you have to go afk to deal with something like that. You can always exaggerate the size of the spider. You could also say that the doorbell just rang… I’ve used that one before when I actually just needed a toilet break.

  13. Irish Teacher.*

    LW2, I think if managing people was that miserable, few would want to do it, even with the better pay. It is, for example, very hard to get principals, at least in Ireland, even though it pays better than teaching. So yeah, I would expect management in private companies to be the same if it were something most people did not enjoy.

    I suspect however that the assumption everybody must want it could be a contributing factor. If people who aren’t suited to management feel they should be aiming to advance because it’s what everybody else seems to want and they fear that not being management will make people think they weren’t good enough at their jobs to be promoted, it is likely you will end up with people in management who hate it. Not because managing is inherently miserable but because everybody is different and it may be miserable for them.

    I know as a teacher, there are people who talk about teaching in similar terms. I think these are often secondary teachers who love their subject and wanted a job where they could talk about it but aren’t really interested in working with teens.

    Some of them will tell you that teaching is getting more and more difficult, kids today are so badly behaved, parents don’t respect teachers… At least in my experience in Ireland, this isn’t true at all, but I think some of these teachers expected they’d be teaching kids who loved the subject as they did.

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      I was writing this on the train to work and reached my destination so had to rush the last paragraph or two. In case it’s not clear, my point is that fdifferent people have different experiences and different skill sets, aptitudes and preferences so I wouldn’t put too much store on other people’s experiences if yours is very different.

      Especially as those with negative experiences are often more likely to talk about them and once those kind of complaints start, people with good experiences often don’t feel comfortable saying, “actually, I find management fairly easy/rewarding/enjoyable” as it feels like boasting or like it might make those struggling feel inadequate.

      And honestly, if some of those complaining had problems with their reports and their own managers, it’s quite possible one of two things is going on, either they work in a very dysfunctional company (and perhaps the problems with their managers are leading to the problems with their reports, like they aren’t being given the tools and support they need to manage effectively) or quite frankly, the problem is them. When somebody has difficulty with everybody, it can be that they are the issue.

      (I also messed up the italics in the above comment.)

      1. DJ Abbott*

        I’ve often seen reference on this site that people who are good at their jobs are promoted into management even though they won’t necessarily be good at managing, and often do not get any training as managers. Of course, it causes problems!
        It’s often the only way to get a significant raise in money or status, too. So people who need the money will take a position as manager, or because it’s the only way to move up. It’s not a good system, and it needs to be changed.
        Being principal of a school is not for everyone! I think it’s good that the people around you are thoughtful about whether or not they would be able to do a good job and be happy with it.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I’ve seen both of these.

          I worked at a company that prided itself in having software developers manage other software developers, which resulted in a management structure largely made up of ex-developers who were grumpy because they had to deal with people instead of code. I had multiple coworkers get promoted to management and then request demotion after they’d “done their time.”

          I’m currently working for an organization that had a hard ceiling for individual contributor salary, and my current boss only went into management for better pay. The first thing he did in management was to raise that ceiling for individual contributor salary so no one else would have to go management if they didn’t want to.

        2. Elle kaye*

          And even if you ARE good at it, it doesn’t mean you WANT to do it, which is something that seems to confuse those in leadership who can’t foresee that people don’t always want the same ath they themselves took. And over time, even if you do a great job with your team, you may find yourself totally worn down, crushed, burnt out, and those feelings can show up in places where they don’t have a direct impact on your team (such as conferences/trainings). But this is based on my own experience of seeing the management train get treated as The One Way by far too many organizations.

      2. Great Frogs of Literature*

        The point about people who are happy not speaking up once the complaining starts is a really good one. Certainly in that situation I’d be either thinking, “Well, I had one unpleasant situation, but it wasn’t THAT bad, even if it was more work than being an individual contributor,” or also wondering if I’d somehow lucked out.

    2. Marion Ravenwood*

      I would add that also sometimes to get paid more/make progress in your career, you *have* to become a manager, even if it’s nothing something you want to do or have the skill set for. But I agree that there is a persistent idea in a lot of workplaces that everyone has to be super-ambitious and I suspect that feeds into people becoming managers because they think they should, not because they want to or they’re actually good at it.

    3. Skippy*

      Some people are really gifted managers! It is highly dependent on having good employees, so good hiring and luck have a lot to do with your experiences, and same with a functioning company (being a manager in a struggling company is agony).

    4. learnedthehardway*

      For LW2 – another reason many managers may find managing people difficult can be because while they are officially managers, they don’t officially have hiring/firing authority and/or can’t enforce consequences.

      My DH has developed several people to manager level, but has had other direct reports that were awful employees. In every case of the awfuls, it was because someone more senior in the company was protecting them and he couldn’t terminate them, or because his own manager was unable to grow a backbone.

      Could be the other people in the training are dealing with similar issues – always a good idea to make sure that company leadership will support your decisions about the team, before taking a management role.

      1. Middle Aged Lady*

        I have fond memories of mentoring a few employees, but mostly management was very frustrating to me. I, too, had little authority to do anything about poor performers, and none of us were being paid enough. I had a lot of other duties besides that I had to squeeze in somehow. When I finally got a job where I could make decent money without having anyone to supervise, I was amazed at how easy it was to get things done without hiring/training/managing/planning for/mentoring others, and how much more I enjoyed going to work each day.

      2. Buffy will save us*

        This is my conundrum. I do have some say in hiring but we’re in a freeze so I don’t really right now. And we’re union, so firing someone is VERY difficult to near impossible. Even when I had a staff member that straight up stopped coming to work it took MONTHS to get him off the books. That means I have a lot of staff who are doing the bare minimum, at best, because they know it will be difficult to make a case to fire them. I love the service my department provides and the pension that should be there for me in 12 years. It’s what keeps me hanging on.

        1. Middle Aged Lady*

          This! And then you have to manage the firing process, sometimes do some of the extra work they aren’t handling, and manage the feelings of the other employees who are doing their jobs while seeing others get away with not doing theirs.

    5. Ellis Bell*

      This is exactly the comparison with teaching I made when I read the letter! It reminded me so much of the moaner’s corner in secondary school staff rooms. Very frightening to hear all that as a new teacher, but simultaneously you look at them think “Why do you stay in the job?!” The most rewarding part of teaching is essentially knowing how to get the best out of people; how to appreciate different personalities, and when to be a stickler and when to flex. Like all soft skills it is so very often ignored in favour of hard skills. This leads to a situation where the manager/teacher isn’t trained in the most important people skills, and is often hired or promoted on the basis of their academic or technical skills.

    6. Hroethvitnir*

      Yes! Re: management, it’s a deep resentment I have after decades in the workforce that is primarily directed at capitalism. (The relationship with unhealthy hierarchies is less direct, but people who are deeply unsuited to leadership becoming managers for money is very direct. I guess there’s a big sprinkling of classism too in the people who expect to be managers and see themselves as inherently superior people.)

      Management is important and is a skill. It’s also the only way to make a living wage in a lot of industries. It’s also still regarded as a position of general superiority regardless of competence by too many people.

      In many industries, science being peak for this, individual contributors moving to management have no training and little to no support. OTOH, what I have observed of management training seems to be largely utter bollocks. (One of the worst, micromanaging while also absent, bullying, incompetent where I really think he *was* competent but was so afraid of being wrong incompetence was the net result, absolutely gushed about the reductive rubbish he learned on management courses. Tbf I doubt he could implement good training either.)

      My partner is a manager: he’s great as the direct manager: managing day-to-day work, supporting people and getting in and helping out. He’s awful at organising and managing workflow from start to finish, addressing complex behavioural issues that impact morale, and despises the reporting and paperwork side of it (outside of directly actionable things from reports). He asked his boss (national director), who paid lip service to supporting him when he started, for help when he was struggling. Was basically told *shrug*.

      My new boss started at a terrible time for a number of reasons, and we get on super well, so it works fine for me. But I don’t actually think she’s capable of managing the ridiculously complicated rostering system we have. Yet 50% of her time is taken up by meetings of which many could have been an email.

      It drives me up the wall. Management (broadly) is over-lauded yet under-supported, and it’s awful both for humans living their lives and for efficiency. Because I do enjoy efficiency, allowing for humans to be human.

      (I’m also currently really frustrated with the us-vs-them attitudes from some of my coworkers, despite the overall positive relationship we have with one another and on-site managers. It’s all so broken.)

      ABSOLUTELY similar with teachers. I have had incredibly sweet teachers who make you more confused than you started – and the two teachers who were wildly talented/skilled were life changing (physics and calculus respectively. Incredible at conveying concepts). I’ve also had teachers (who like me) bully kids into thinking they’re incapable of a subject. -_-

      That’s a very different social backdrop, but even more social impact. :(

      /rant

  14. Emmy Noether*

    One note on #4: if you use just Alison’s wording of “Quick correction, I’m not a Mr.!”, expect that people will then use Ms. and she/her. (People do still tend to assume binary.) Now, you sound like you would actually be ok with that. But if you would prefer that if you go to the trouble of correcting somebody, they don’t then get it wrong in a different way, you’ll probably have to include your pronouns in the correction.

    Source: I’m a woman with an unusual name who frequently gets misgendered due to working in a male-dominated field and having a doctorate (to tie it in to the other letter), and I do sometimes correct people.

  15. Not Australian*

    I have a friend who earned a doctorate late in life and I always address letters to her as “Dr J Lastname” because I figure she absolutely earned that respect, but it makes no difference whatsoever when we’re meeting in person. I think it’s really just a question of using the title in appropriate settings, and if it was any other honorific it would be the same. (Does make me wonder, though, how the new Pope’s brother addresses him when they’re in private!!!)

    1. Dust Bunny*

      I have social friends whom I also occasionally encounter in a professional setting (they’re medical doctors and I work for a medical-adjacent library). If I see them at the grocery store they’re John and Betty; if I see them at a medical-school social they are Dr. and Dr. Lastname.

    2. JustaTech*

      I took tremendous pleasure/amusement in carefully using all of my friends’ academic titles when addressing my wedding invitations – when else am I going to have a reason to call them all “Doctor”?

  16. Greyhound*

    LW3: Australia is known for being fairly informal (not always, we have our share of formality obsessed types), but asking to be addressed as dr in an academic setting would come over as arrogant, out of touch and deeply deeply weird. I know it’s disappointing (I slept with my brand new PhD under my arm for a week so I totally get it) but don’t do it.

    It’s totally the opposite in Malaysia, where I taught for a few years) – even colleagues who know you well will address you as dr, especially if you are more senior. It took me a while to work out they weren’t being unfriendly. Culture matters but it sounds like you’re probably in the US.

    1. 40 Years in the Hole*

      Going to cross the streams here: Australia is also fairly well known for being the country with the biggest, most badass spiders.

      1. Greyhound*

        We have some goodies. No shade on people who have phobias and I guess we’re more used to them but people often put them outside rather than killing them – they eat flies and cockroaches and mosquitoes and other things, and really can’t help the number of legs they have or the unfortunate ways they move. I know people who get their house sprayed once a year though.

        1. Scout Finch*

          No shade to spider non-fans. I get it.

          But I love spiders as long as they stay in their lane. I don’t let the pest control people spray outside because I detest flies, cockroaches & mosquitos (who kill many more people than spiders every year) & spiders gotta eat. :-)

          I also love the bright spiders that weave intricate webs in my carport.

          1. Anne Shirley Blythe*

            This!^ I perceive spiders as performing a service–catching bugs–and it makes me far less concerned when encountering them in my house. And I have nothing but admiration/kinship for a creature who stores snacks for late use.

        2. Elizabeth West*

          I know huntsman spiders are harmless to humans, but nope nope nope nope-ity nope nope noooo.

        3. Watry*

          I have a spider phobia, and I promise we know this. It doesn’t help the phobia, though.

          1. MigraineMonth*

            CONTENT WARNING: Spider bites, venomous spiders

            I have a friend who survived being bitten by a brown recluse spider when she was young and has arachnophobia. I said her fear of spiders seemed reasonable to me, since one tried to kill her. She said that the two were unrelated: she’s always been arachnophobic and the phobia is, by definition, irrational.

  17. Itsy bitsy*

    L1 I have the OPPOSITE problem in that I am a rep for field guides including spider books, so when I’m giving presentations I have to be like… Ok headsup people the next slide has a spider, does anyone have a phobia before I jumpscare you?

    2. umami*

      Thank you for doing that! I had to skip a lot of the comments above because I simply cannot be reading about horrible spider encounters lol

    3. MigraineMonth*

      I once worked at a company with an… eclectic decorating style, which inexplicably included a number of large spider statues (and a hallway with dozens of rubber snakes hanging from the ceiling).

      I’d be curious about how they’d handle accommodation requests, except given the culture I’m pretty sure they’d just bully anyone who requested accommodation out of the company.

  18. Helvetica*

    LW#1 – as a fellow sufferer of spiders, I have to say that I could not close the door between me and the spider and continue a meeting because then the spider would be unobserved and could go into hiding and I would have to live knowing there is a spider somewhere in that room. At the same time, taking several minutes away from presentation is also not good, of course. I’ve just learned to stomach killing them which is probably the easiest and faster than getting your cat involved, although also unpleasant.

    1. Wednesday wishes*

      My thoughts exactly! You can’t let it wander into the unknown so it might then show up in your bedroom late at night!

    2. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

      I have a horrible phobia of house centipedes and the only thing that’s worked for me is removing my glasses/contacts and then killing them with a swiffer. If I can barely see them (just enough to identify where they are, not enough to identify their shape) and remain at least 3 feet away, I can survive the experience without crying.

    4. betsyohs*

      I agree about the closed door! I have finally worked up to where I can trap most spiders under a glass. I don’t live alone, but one time when my husband was out of town for the week, I 100% left that spider under a glass for 2 days until a friend came over and I could ask her to take it out.

    5. TGIF*

      I am not scared per se, and luckily I have a wife who’s very knowledgeable about spiders and the ones that have showed up in the house are all harmless. I would be scared if it was a brown recluse or a widow spider though! But we just kind of live with them and when my wife sees one she captures it and takes it outside.

  19. Lady Lessa*

    I can appreciate those who have spider fears, because I have a similar one to wasps. One time, one got into the lab, and I was panicked .

    It’s also a good thing that we don’t carpool. I have one living in my driver’s side (outside) mirror. Makes nice webs and catches bugs. In fact I missed having one, when the mirror was lost due to a deer collision.

  20. FloralWraith*

    LW3, I work in professional services at a UK university. I do not refer to any of my academic colleagues with Dr/Professor unless I’m doing my job (social media posts, web stories). I would say no one does here in emails or informally, it would be weird! We even have people with Lord/Lady/Baroness in their titles…and we all just use their first names.

    Prestige-wise, this is a title that you’re using more for external engagement, it’s not for in-person communication.

    1. BethDH*

      This is a really good way to summarize it! Where the “external” line is drawn will change from place to place, and in my experience goes with the situation rather than the person addressing you.

    2. UKDancer*

      Yes that’s my experience of UK academia as a student. We all used first names with everyone including the chancellor (who had the imposing name of Sir Shridath Ramphal but who was known to everyone as Sonny by choice). The ethos was very much that we all shared the journey of learning together as equals. I don’t know if that’s typical of the UK but it’s how it felt.

      The only person who had his titles in full was the German lecturer who was Professor Doctor Doctor Schmidt. He insisted and we all rolled our eyes slightly but did as he wished. He was slightly eccentric even by the standards of Russell group academics!

  21. Wednesday wishes*

    LW#4 it doesn’t matter what pronouns you use- they got it wrong. If someone who uses she/her had been called he/him they would have corrected it without question, without thinking so much about it- its simply wrong. Don’t feel that just because you use they/them that somehow you don’t have as much standing (or that it is somehow being picky) to say something!

    1. ChaoticNeutral*

      Was coming to the comments with this same sentiment! I am a she/her with a gender neutral name, but work in a male-dominated field. I get referred to as a “Mr” over email every once in a while by folks who have not met me in person yet. All it takes is a casual “And by the way, I am actually a Ms. Lastname” at the end of the email.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        The same thing happens to me, even though my name isn’t even gender neutral, just rare (and people don’t bother looking it up before defaulting to male).

        To tie in the other letter, somebody once responded to my correction by telling me that they had only one field for a title, and since it was filled in “Dr.” for me, they had no way of noting my gender in the system. (… and so instead of using something neutral, she defaulted to male).

        1. Freya*

          My sister (at the time still using Dr Birthname) and her husband (Mr Husbandname) once found out when they got to the overseas medical conference that my sister was attending that they’d been booked into things like the dinner and the accommodation as Dr and Mrs Birthname. Apparently in the systems being used for the conference, doctors were assumed to be male.

    2. Pink Geek*

      I’m a cis woman in a male dominated field and I’ve been mis gendered once or twice. It was awkward to correct the speakers but they took it well both times.

      It sounds like this is harder for you because you’ve had to work to arrive at a name and pronouns you feel comfortable with and then some more to use them. The HR person doesn’t have your backstory (it sounds like they just have your name?) and should accept a casual correction from you the same way they would from me.

  22. EngineeringFun*

    Yeah. There was a doctor in our mechanical engineering department who made us all call her doctor. Everyone thought it was off and complained about it.As a female mechanical engineering PhD 2016 I would love for everyone to call me doctor but most do not.

  23. Xantar*

    Well now I want to have one of my meetings interrupted by a moose peering in the window.

    2. Productivity Pigeon*

      I did see a cow wandering into the neighbor’s garden at our summer house once! We ended up calling the police because there are lots of cows around and we had no idea who it belonged to!

    3. GoryDetails*

      I thought the same!

      Where I live it’s *technically* possible, though the moose rarely wander into town from their usual habitats. I did have a ‘possum peer through the back window one night, though; it had climbed onto the porch rail, and I glanced out to see its toothy grin. Now that was startling!

    5. AFac*

      A møøse?

      I did have a wild turkey attack my window once, but this was pre-zoom and thus not during a meeting.

    6. TGIF*

      Seriously! If I actually had a moose peering in the window something would be way wrong here!

    7. Elizabeth West*

      I would be very alarmed, as I’m on the third floor at home (and the fifth floor at the office)!

    8. Guacamole Bob*

      That line in AAM’s answer brought back a great memory of the time my child, who was maybe 4 or 5, looked out the dining room window to see a large antlered deer in our backyard and said with great excitement “oh look, a moose!”.

      It was somewhat surprising in that our backyard is fenced, it was relatively close to the window, and it had a larger rack of antlers than many of the deer we see around our neighborhood (of which there are many). It was not, however, a moose.

    9. Peanut Hamper*

      The Canadian Tourism Board would like to send you several brochures and pamphlets.

      (Because yes, a moose in your driveway can be reason why you were late to work or missed a uni class. Do not mess with moose/mooses/meese. They can be very dangerous!)

  24. Lilo*

    As someone who has to write a lot of emails, I desperately hope a non binary honorific catches on socially. Unfortunately my workplace banned pronouns in signature blocks, so we’re regressing badly.

    1. Productivity Pigeon*

      This is one of the occasions where it’s nice to live in a country (Sweden) that doesn’t use honorifics or titles! (Though trans people face the same old difficulties with regards to pronouns, unfortunately.)

      We used to be incredibly formal up until 1967ish, but we spoke in third person.
      ”Would the Chairman like more coffee?”, ”Would Miss Petersson please take down this dictation?” ”Is Aunt Lena well today?” which was obviously incredibly clunky.

      But in 1967, a man called Bror Rexed became the director of the Swedish National Board of Health and launched what is known as the ”Du-reform” (Du is the informal second person pronoun, just like in German.) by urging every employee to ”Call me Bror.”

      Ironically, ”bror” means brother which added to the charm.

      So now we only use first names, with a few exceptions. The royal family is still addressed in third person with titles ”What did the Crown Princess think of her trip to Svalbard?”.

      I did a high school exchange year in the US and it took me months and months to call the neighbors ”Miss Diane” and ”Mr Gary” because I just defaulted to first names… :)

      1. Celeste*

        The Du-reform is so interesting! I learn such interesting things on this site.

        I grew up in the southwestern part of the U.S. where we called most adults Mr. Lastname, etc. Using first names with a Mr or Miss was something I only heard in movies.

      2. Hroethvitnir*

        Thank you for this! When I studied in Sweden, one of our lecturers proudly told us about this, but I could never remember their name.

        I’m from Aotearoa, that is mostly very casual (certainly in academia), and I really appreciated Sweden being similar. I also really enjoyed a generally non-judgemental vibe. I need to go back to trying to learn svenska (ja pratar lite lite svenska).

    3. Silver Robin*

      I have been seeing Mx. And not just online, but actually as a drop down choice in various places – sometimes job applications, or in a government official’s “contact us” page. A dictionary or two have picked it up, Grammarly has an explanation of when to use it along with other honorifics, and The Knot (wedding website) also has an explained. Seems to be catching on.

      Pronounced like “Mix” if I recall correctly.

      1. LW4*

        I’ve heard of Mx. too but am generally not a fan since it’s still not widely accepted here in the states, and more than one person has just butchered it beyond belief. (it is pronounced like “mix”, yep!)

        Since I don’t have a title like nurse, doctor, honorable, reverend, etc., I usually just prefer to go by my name. We have a diverse crowd working here from places where “Mr.” and “Ms.” are signs of respect, so I understand why some people prefer to address others as Mr. or Ms. so-and-so.

        I love going by my name since I picked it out myself! So to me, that’s the most respectful thing you can call me : )

        1. Fran*

          Love it- “go by my name since I picked it out myself” so true! I also just use “they” in most emails to individuals anyways as I never ever want to assume and sometimes with some names, I can’t tell. Names are not always “gendered” so I like addressing a person by their name or using they. Just commenting though to say I love your last two lines

      2. zap*

        Yup, Mx has been an option for a while now. I’ll add that not everyone loves Mx and urge folks not to assume that nonbinary people want to be called that. I was just having a discussion with the nonbinary person I supervise. They hate it and would prefer no honorific. I’m technically a Ms and honestly, I prefer none as well.

        1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

          Also hate-on for honorifics here. I am married, but since my last name and my husband’s don’t match “Mrs.” is technically incorrect. “Ms.” isn’t terrible, but I have a double-barreled last name and I don’t know how but people mispronounce it all the time, or even worse only use half of it (which IRKS), so y’all, just call me by my first name please.

    4. TGIF*

      Why on earth would they ban that? is it because of the ridiculous political times we are in?

      1. Lilo*

        I mean, I also have to send 5 things I did in the last week, so that should explain some things.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          :-(

          I’m so sorry. Sending you strength & appreciation for the important work you do.

          1. RC*

            The pronoun thing (like everything they’re doing) is asinine for the usual fascist reasons, but it’s a turducken of stupidity because… I mean, ask any Sam, or Taylor, or Chris, or anyone with a name that’s not obviously gendered in the dominant culture… pronouns: they’re useful for multiple reasons actually!

  25. Moira Rose*

    OP1: you could seek medical treatment for your phobia. The use of beta blockers for phobias is dang near a miracle cure and to my knowledge only requires one session with a professional.

    1. Anonymous Koala*

      I had a similar debilitating fear of spiders (I once opened a door in a moving vehicle on I-95 in a panic to try and get away from one) and I was absolutely gobsmacked when, 48 hours after starting anti-anxiety meds, my phobia literally disappeared. It was like magic. I didn’t even notice until there was a spider on my phone one day and I squished it with a napkin without thinking about it.
      This isn’t the right place to give medical advice, but I had no idea that medication could treat phobias and if it’s news to you too, OP, it might be worth asking a doctor for help.

      1. Judy*

        But not a great idea from a medical standpoint to stay on antianxiety meds long-term for any reason, never mind for a spider phobia (and trust me, I have one too).

      2. LW1/OP1*

        Anonymous Koala and Moira Rose, that’s so interesting! I’m on a cocktail of meds (including anxiety ones) for unrelated mental health reasons, I just never really thought about medication as a treatment for phobias. In my head I’ve compartmentalized it as a separate thing from anxiety, even though I technically know that phobias are on the anxiety spectrum, just because it like… feels different than my other anxiety issues I guess? In any case, I’m so glad you guys found relief and thank you for sharing.

        And Anonymous Koala- I also once had a spider surprise me on the I-94… while I was driving. It’s a miracle I was already about to get on the exit ramp and that I managed to pull into a parking lot before jumping out of the car (shrieking like a banshee the entire time, of course). It was less of a miracle that the parking lot happened to be that of a police station. Anyway, you have my sympathies, and I’m glad you survived the spider attack!!

  26. Xtine*

    I am also terrified of spiders. I have found the best method to kill them is a swifter mop. It allows me to do it from a distance.

    1. Beany*

      I’m not particularly afraid of spiders, but crickets freak me out, and centipedes/millipedes/more-legs-than-I-can-count-creatures are worse.

      But much as I dislike them, I dislike killing them more. Not necessarily because it’s cruel, but because there’s now a squishy multi-legged mess to deal with. I try to capture them under a glass and release them outside instead.

      1. Juicebox Hero*

        That’s why the swiffer is a good idea. You can squish it, wipe up the mess, and take the cleaning pad off the mop and toss it.

    2. Spiders are icky*

      I recommend the vacuum cleaner. With all the extension wands and crevice tool attached. They get smashed into the filtration system, so they won’t be climbing back out or something. This has been my tried and true for years whenever my husband is not home.

  27. Anna3*

    #3: I earned my phd degree over fifteen years ago, and I work in academia. At the department we all address each other with our first names. In interviews, we may introduce each other with our full names, but proceed addressing each other and the candidate with our first names. We might humor a job candidate and call them Dr. X during the interview, but that would not end with a job offer. We will make occasional jokes about Dr. X, on occassions we encounter another self-important person.

    1. Anna Banana*

      I recall being fresh out of graduate school and finding it awkward to address stellar academics with amazing accomplishments by Joe or Jane, when it seemed more appropriate to address them with Dr Jane Amazing, or Dr Joe Fabulous. It seemed wild that I am at the same level with them now, and we’re at first name basis. They had won prestigious awards, had multimillion grants, published in Nature, so I probably would have fainted, if somebody that accomplished addressed me as Dr Anna Banana.

  28. Cabbagepants*

    #3 lots of people get PhDs. You are being interview for academic positions — that is a much more meaningful sign of achievement than the letters before (or after) your name!

  29. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

    A good use of AI would be if you could activate an AI agent to cover for you while attending to the spider

    1. Rogue Slime Mold*

      This seems like the opening scene to a movie about an AI apocalypse. Possibly the spiders and AI would be in cahoots.

  30. Productivity Pigeon*

    Random info-dump about how no one in Sweden uses honorifics and titles:

    LW#3:

    This is one of the occasions where it’s nice to live in a country (Sweden) that doesn’t use honorifics or titles! (Though trans people face the same old difficulties with regards to pronouns, unfortunately.)

    —-

    We used to be incredibly formal up until 1967ish, but we spoke in third person.
    ”Would the Chairman like more coffee?”, ”Would Miss Petersson please take down this dictation?” ”Is Aunt Lena well today?” which was obviously incredibly clunky.

    You would use the informal ”du” with children, and friends, but for the longest time, you would speak in third person even with your parents!

    If I were speaking to a servant or maid, I would use third person and their first name to indicate that they were lower status than me. ”Could Edna buy some sewing pins when she goes to the store today?”

    In some occasions and places, it was customary to use ”ni”, the equivalent of the French vous and German Sie but it wasn’t the most common form of address. But it was used in translated novels and the like, and still is. A novel translated from English will use ”ni” when appropriate. In A Christmas Carol, both Scrooge and his nephew uses ”ni” with each other, since they speak formally.

    —-

    But in 1967, a man called Bror Rexed became the director of the Swedish National Board of Health and launched what is known as the ”Du-reform” (Du is the informal second person pronoun, just like in German.) by urging every employee to ”Call me Bror.”

    Now the fine thing about that, and the thing that caught people’s fancies was that ”bror” means brother in Swedish.

    Thanks to Bror, we quickly abandoned the formal way of speaking.
    So now we only use first names, with a few exceptions. The royal family is still addressed in third person with titles ”What did the Crown Princess think of her trip to Svalbard?”.
    And the military uses last names or titles in the chain of command, and some older fashioned types will revert to third person, especially if they’re scolding someone… ;)

    I did do a consulting project at the Swedish Armed Forces and the (very few) times I spoke to a four star general, I used their first names. But I am a civilian so the rules didn’t apply to me.

    But if I met the prime minister, I would call him Ulf.

    I did a high school exchange year in the US and it took me months and months to call the neighbors ”Miss Diane” and ”Mr Gary” because I just defaulted to first names… :)

    —
    Thanks to globalization and translations, it has become a bit of a trend for young people in customer service to use ”ni” instead of ”du”, even if, as I said before, it was never the proper way to speak.

    In fact, many people (like my dad) who experienced life before and after the Du-reform really dislike being called ”ni”, since they think (and I agree) that we fought for equality and politeness isn’t in polite pronouns, it is in how we speak and what we say.

    ——

    This has been your regular, unasked-for, random info dump. Please have a lovely day.

    ;)

    1. Productivity Pigeon*

      Addendum #1:

      Some VERY old-fashioned folks will occasionally address mail to my parents to ”Director and Mrs. Productivity Pigeon.”

      I remember I once wrote to an (rather old-fashioned) etiquette expert asking if a female director and husband should be titled ”Director and Mr. Productivity Pigeon” and she was adamant this was an old-fashioned, silly way of speaking and that either ”Director Peter and Anna Ekberg”/”Director Anna and Peter Ekberg” was perfectly appropriate, but really it was quite preferable to just say ”Anna and Peter Ekberg”.

      —-

      Addendum #2:

      I just remembered that she also said the correct way is to always put the woman’s name before the man’s (when applicable) and that ”most people in Sweden” felt that was more polite.

      I’ve actually never considered that. Now I need to ask people I know if that’s what they think! Haha!

      1. Great Frogs of Literature*

        Thank you for the complimentary info dump! I find this sort of stuff fascinating.

        (Particularly the bit about putting the woman’s name first. I’ve only ever seen it done like that in the US by someone deliberately subverting the convention.)

        I also really like this bit: we fought for equality and politeness isn’t in polite pronouns, it is in how we speak and what we say.

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          My tendency (in Ireland) is to put the person I know best first, like with my sister and her fiance, I say “Sister’s name and partner’s name.” I asked my mum once how she addressed to two people and she said the same, that she puts the person she is closest to first.

      2. 40 Years in the Hole*

        We had friends of 30+ years who always insisted that even their Christmas cards be addressed to “Dr and “current military rank” Lastname. I just used their first names. You know, like normal people.

        1. Turquoisecow*

          For Christmas cards I just write Joe and Jane Smith. I did use more formal addresses (Mr or Doctor or Reverend or General or whatever) on wedding invitations, however, but I suspect I may have not put Doctor in front of a few people in Husband’s extended family who are in fact doctors. But none of them got angry about it or even said anything to me.

    3. Irish Teacher.*

      This is really interesting. Thanks for sharing.

      Ireland is generally pretty informal and it’s not uncommon for people even to speak of the taoiseach (prime minster) by first name only. And our president is generally referred to as “Michael D.” (his first name and middle inital; I guess because Michael alone is a ridiculously common name in Ireland and his surname is Higgins, so…that wouldn’t help much as that is pretty common too).

      I am not sure what I would call our president or taoiseach if I met them. “Yes, President Higgins” would just sound silly, but “yes, Michael” would sound a bit casual. I think it’s mostly that they are both a lot older than me, because I would be far more comfortable addressing Simon Harris or Leo Varadkar (recent taoisigh close to my age) as Simon or Leo.

      I think in Ireland, the informality is partly related to our independence movement – “we’re a republic now”. And our independence movement had a strong socialist element (which was…sidelined pretty quickly once independence was won). Our first parliament had Count Plunkett and Countess Markievicz sitting side by side with small farmers and such like and led by…a man who may have been a college lecturer but who grew up in a farm labourer’s cottage (and Countess Markievicz was actually a socialist who died in a public hospital ward on principle, believing that what was good enough for the ordinary people of the country should be good enough for its politicians).

    4. fhqwhgads*

      Info dump to your info dump: your experience in your exchange program is highly regional within the US. Plain ol’ first names would’ve been fine and expected in large parts of the US, unless we’re talking more than 40ish years ago. And even then, variation.

      1. Productivity Pigeon*

        This was in a Detroit suburb in Michigan, so not in the South or anything! What regions tend to be more formal?

        1. fhqwhgads*

          It’s more like varying definitions of what constitutes politeness from minors. Large parts of the south, parts of the midwest, probably some other clusters in certain other places… expect children to use an honorific with adults. Hence the expectation that you as a high school student would call a neighbor Miss FirstName or Mr FirstName. But if you’d been in your 20s at the time, you referring to the neighbors by first name alone would’ve been totally normal. Nearly everywhere is less formal now than when I was a kid. But, yeah, the south is the most obvious outlier.

    5. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

      Thank you. I am intrigued by your infodumps and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

        1. Cat*

          Since the collapse replies feature is working again, if you’re concerned about taking up too much screen real estate for people who don’t care to scroll past with them you could always use an intro then reply with a follow up as effectively a see more…

    6. Freya*

      LOL if I met my country’s (Australia) prime minister (currently Anthony Albanese), I would probably call him Albo, because I can’t remember his first name most of the time and I had to look up the spelling. And then I’d ask about some policy things that are very important to me and he would be a politician about it.

  31. Productivity Pigeon*

    LW#1:
    Ugh, I’m sorry you have to deal with this.

    I guess I’m lucky, I live in a new building in a place where there aren’t a lot of bugs, except for fruit flies in the summer.

    I guess you must live somewhere with more pests.

  32. Rogue Slime Mold*

    #2, I was struck that the examples in your third paragraph–lying to the manager, flat out refusing to do their jobs–are things that are normally fireable offenses. In a well-run office that is how those problems would resolve, after a brief “Is there some miscommunication going on here?” trouble shooting. And yet somehow in these managers’ offices they have become norms. Like their employees figured out that no one can be fired, and then Fergus decided to just opt out of writing TPS reports, and he didn’t get fired and so everyone else also started treating the office as “A place with wi fi and air conditioning where I can set up my MSM leggings display.”

    When we list businesses to whom we are loyal customers, managers we really respect, etc, often a component is that most of the time everything is good–but that one time things went wrong, they immediately stepped up and took action to fix it. The managers you met at this course either can’t take action to fix the problems, or won’t.

    1. honeygrim*

      In both my previous and current supervisory position, one of the biggest challenges I have had is dealing with direct reports who have not been managed appropriately in the past. If someone has worked in your office for 20+ years, and they have never been held accountable for a particular behavior — such as some of the ones #2 mentioned — it makes it very difficult for you as a new manager to address those behaviors effectively. That goes double if the organization doesn’t support its managers to do their work.

      The other big challenge is the level of emotional labor involved. I want my staff to be successful and to enjoy their work, so I try to set them up for success as much as possible. But sometimes it’s really stressful dealing with THEIR stress.

      I enjoy being a supervisor and have been told by direct reports in both jobs that they like having me as their supervisor, but it is definitely not an easy job, and many people aren’t cut out for it.

      1. Medium Sized Manager*

        One of my big 2025 wins is finally convincing my previously poorly managed report that I a) don’t hate her and b) want her to succeed. She navigated off of a PIP to the degree that everybody who has worked with her over the last 3 years is shocked. But, to your point, it took a lot of emotional labor and work to get to this point. Since nobody held her accountable before, me telling her that she wasn’t meeting standards was a huge blow.

        I don’t even blame her former manager – we were understaffed and have difficulty hiring & firing, so people are given wayyy too much room to just…not do things right.

  33. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

    LW2: It’s true that as you manage longer, you encounter a broader swath of management challenges – and it’s possible for that to lead to burnout. Performance problems, even when everyone is doing their best, can be draining to work through, and you will inevitably have them happen at some point in your management career. But also things like three staff members all going on parental leave at the same time can have draining effects, or managing through organizational change/upheaval, or someone on your team dealing with a personal crisis at an inconvenient time…things happen. For me the hardest moments are when something the company is doing is harming my staff, they think I should be able to fix it, but I have limited control over the thing that needs fixing (at the moment that’s layoffs, ugh).

    But it sounds like your coworkers are complaining about really basic, fundamental things that are 100% in their control to fix. If they just set and communicate expectations and hold people accountable to meeting them, they would not have these problems.

    In terms of how to make it sustainable – hiring well is truly the biggest lever you have, and it sounds like you’re doing great there. Giving direct and clear feedback early when you spot problems is also key. And – get real clear on your own sphere of control. As a manager you have a lot of power to improve things in your realm, but you can’t fix everything, and knowing (and being transparent about) where those lines are is SO important.

    1. Putting the "pro" in "procrastinate"*

      This is a great comment. My company has great resources for managers, and my own manager (who is herself excellent) tells me I done a decent job at it. Still, though, I’m burnt out on managing at the moment and considering pivoting out of it; I’ve been dealing with a string of performance problems for the last three-plus years, and it’s gotten really exhausting and demoralizing at what is also a difficult period in my non-work life (declining-parent hell). So I just can’t do it anymore. The things you say are rewarding about it, LW, I also find rewarding — helping my team grow and watching them succeed are wonderful. But they are overshadowed, at the moment, by the people who I can’t seem to get through to, who won’t grow no matter what I do, and the drain of preparing for and having difficult conversations with them about it.

  34. queueueue*

    LW #3, as a PhD who occasionally helps hire other PhDs, for the love of all that’s good do not ask them to call you “Dr.” if everyone else is going by first names. Everywhere I’ve been it would be seen as enough of a culture clash to pretty much guarantee no job offer (and probably be out of step enough to have us occasionally remind each other of “that candidate who tried to get everyone to say Dr.” during future hiring seasons)

  35. Susannah*

    New PhD: Congrats! It’s a tremendous accomplishment.
    BUT. Do you remember the Seinfeld episode, the one where Elaine was dating a conductor and he wanted everyone (including her, his date) to call him “maestro?”
    It’s a little like that. If you are teaching, yes, have your students call you “doctor.” But in social settings? No. Or in a job interview, where yes, you are both sussing each other out, but you are the one looking for a job? It’s going to look pretty snobby to ask to be called “doctor” – especially if they are doctors as well.
    Yes, your accomplishment is wonderful and should be acknowledged – but not in every setting, and not just by virtue of someone greeting you.

    1. umami*

      Heh, I actually worked with a Maestro, our organization paid half his salary (he was the philharmonic conductor). And yes, he was pretentious.

      In this case, the interviewer is giving some insight into the office culture, and LW is decidedly ignoring it so she can hear her title. This is not the place to do it! It’s going to be very cringey, and they will not see LW as someone who fits their culture.

  36. Pescadero*

    “Managing can be really miserable for people who don’t know how to do it well (or who just don’t want to do it, or who aren’t well-suited to it)…An important exception is if they’re working in environments that don’t give managers the tools and authority to do what’s needed to manage effectively … except in that situation, the solution is for them to recognize that and get out of an impossible job.”

    I think the two problems are:

    1) about 75% of managers (and thus 90%+ of all employees) – fall into one of the three categories of “don’t know how to do it well”/”just don’t want to do it”/”aren’t well-suited to it”.

    2) The great majority of jobs don’t give managers the tools and authority to do what’s needed to manage effectively – and changing jobs has a high probability of just putting you inthe same situation.

    So – LW2, you are a bit of a unicorn, and your employer/job is a bit of a unicorn.

  37. Blue Pen*

    During the times I was a manager, I never found it to be miserable, but I did find it to be a bit stifling in terms of my own professional growth. I love supporting people and cheerleading them from the sidelines, so I thought it would be an extension of that; and not that it wasn’t, but I never felt like I had any projects or assignments that were just “mine.” The majority of my work was overseeing others, and since that wasn’t something I was interested in, I moved to an independent contributor role and have been happy ever since.

    That said, the world needs good managers! If you’re someone who enjoys working with your team and helping them grow, that’s a net benefit in the world. My manager now is outstanding (going to the top of our team with our director, who is also outstanding), and it makes every difference in the world when you know someone like that has your back.

  38. Maybesocks*

    I was intimidated by my PhD advisor. He never told me what to call him, and I was too shy to ask. I called him “Excuse me, do you have time now?”

    In general we called members of the faculty Professor Lastname to their faces and Lastname when talking about them to each other. This was in the 80’s. For some reason I felt uncomfortable calling my advisor Professor Lastname. I was probably shaking whenever we talked. He was a bit odd.

    1. honeygrim*

      I had a similar situation with one professor that I just referred to by last name, because I couldn’t figure out whether he had a doctorate or not and was too embarrassed to ask. In retrospect it is obvious that he did, but I was in a field where you could be a professor with a master’s depending on the particular course.

    2. inksmith*

      One of my school teachers (Mrs X) became a lecturer on the course I was studying at university (where we called everyone by their first name). I definitely couldn’t do that (she hated me in school), so whenever I needed to get her attention, I called her, “Um, excuse me (awkward wave), can I asked you something?”

  39. Geranium Now*

    #3 – I get it – earning the PhD was a huge accomplishment and OP should really be proud!

    But this is cringey and a great way to alienate people and I hope OP doesn’t do it. When I was an undergrad I worked in a university department staffed by 5-6 staff and about 40 undergrad employees. We got a new assistant director who had just earned her doctorate as an older student. At first she was friendly with everyone and we all called her by her first name. Then one day she came in and decided we were too informal with her and demanded we all call her Dr. Lastname. People did, but it changed the dynamic from friendly to stiff and uncomfortable. The same could happen here. Just… don’t do it.

    1. Lilo*

      My personal experience working in a lab as an undergrad is that the professors (who all had PhDs) were called “Professor” and the only people who got called “Doctor” were the post docs, which isn’t super high up on the ladder.

    2. Dust Bunny*

      Women in academics have a particular problem with being called by first names while men are more often called Doctor or Professor. She may have discovered that the men at her more or less same level were being addressed by honorifics and she wasn’t.

      1. Geranium Now*

        While that’s true in a lot of instances it absolutely was not what happened here. Our staff were director (woman, doctorate), asst director (woman in question here, doctorate), coordinator (woman, masters), coordinator (man, masters), admin assistant x2 (both women, both with bachelors degrees). The culture of the organization was a first-name culture and everyone went by their first names. She was there about 3 months before deciding she wanted to go by her honorific, and when she told people it just made things really uncomfortable.

        She later got fired for doing some bizarre things, so requiring everyone to call her Dr. Lastname was sort of a drop in the bucket with her.

  40. Qwerty*

    I find the response to OP2 to be really out of touch. Especially given this site has posts that revel in displays of pettiness and malicious compliance while the comment section frequently veers towards anti-management sentiment (as do most online places).

    Managers roles can be really rewarding as the OP has gotten to experience. It can also be a never ending slog of combative employees combined with pressure from upper management. The past few years have gotten really bad and most good managers I know have gone back to IC roles to restore their faith in humanity (myself included). I’ve found it to be much worse with remote companies or employees who wish they were remote, where there are people who are just looking for a fight at the first thought of a potential inconvenience or perceived slight, and others who seem to trying to turn the manager-employee relationship into a more parental one. A decade ago a poor performer just required some documenting on projects and they would usually turn around with a little coaching. Today they go into full fledged attack and start trying to get the manager or other people fired and you end up spending your days having to babysit and sleuth in order to get the proof needed that this person is not producing meaningful work. (Experienced people, high salaries, cushy autonomous roles)

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      “while the comment section frequently veers towards anti-management sentiment”

      …I find the exact opposite in these comment sections. Which makes sense, given the blog content.

      As someone with degrees and career paths in both management and HR – yeah, it’s not great every day. A lot of jobs aren’t. The IC burst is a shift where companies and individuals are learning that management isn’t the only path for advancement, and that some people are not cut out for managing. I wish we’d figure that out decades ago, but it’s a start.

      I don’t know what environments you’ve worked in, and I’m sorry they’ve been so stressful, but you are describing is not a norm most people are experiencing on the regular. If you’ve internalized that as normal to the point where you think the answer to this question is out of touch, I am deeply concerned about how your job is impacting your perspective and your health.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      Is this a cultural issue of certain companies? I think if you’re getting inappropriate pressure from above and it’s also seen as acceptable as an employee to actually be combative, then yeah there’s going to be very little you can do as a middle manager to change things. It’s also worth admitting here and now that just dealing with human issues, and human skill development, even under the best of circumstances is emotionally and intellectually draining! Very rewarding, yes, but draining. But overall I think this site simply has high standards for management skills (which includes both drawing a hard line when necessary and giving people slack) so I don’t think I could call that anti management. It just means the site doesn’t automatically side with the manager, as the micro-brewery clique manager with very poor managerial skills can attest.

  41. Marshmallows*

    I don’t know that I’ve ever actually had a manager myself that really loved managing… but even in that pool there are variations. My current manager hates managing and makes it very clear to everyone around him including his direct reports (which feels great…). But I’ve had some where I sort of knew they got forced into it and didn’t really want to manage, but they still did their best to make it a positive experience for the people they managed and it showed in their people being successful and engaged. I’ve also seen managers that truly loved their jobs! I didn’t report to them but I’ve witnessed it! The variety among managers is vast! Don’t worry about how others do it. Just keep doing your best to make the best experience for your employees and you’ll be fine!

  42. CrochetFrog*

    #2 – I was a team lead for many years and an “official” manager for about 3 years. I really enjoyed some parts of my job – coaching people, watching them flourish, bringing people together with diverse skill sets and ideas and solving problems together. The things I didn’t enjoy were the office politics coming from leadership that affected my ability to manage my team, and just my job overall. I was with my team for about 5 years before I was promoted to the manager role, and while I felt some of the politics as an individual contributor, my manager at the time really bore the brunt of it. Then I bore it when I assumed the role. And it really sucked. Leadership made it difficult to do a lot of things that my employees needed to really thrive. They also made it difficult for me to enforce consequences on people that were not meeting expectations. So I think some people who manage have a hard time not necessarily because they are bad at it (though there is plenty of that!) but because their company leadership makes it difficult to do it well.

    I left the manager job last year for an individual contributor role, and while I miss the good parts, it’s a relief to not have to deal with the politics anymore. There’s also just the emotional bandwidth needed – even with great employees, I was still pretty drained at the end of the day (I had about 8-9 direct reports). It could be someone who gets more energized by social interaction has less of an issue with that, but I would end my days not wanting to talk to anyone and just isolate in a dark room. If I had fewer direct reports, that would probably impact that as well.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      8-9 reports is a LOT. I never recommend one manager have more than 5, I think general wisdom veers closer to 7 but I find that’s high if you have things to do besides manage your team.

      But the politics are definitely exhausting – and those can exist in a lot of roles, management and non-management. But it really depends on your Leadership.

      1. CrochetFrog*

        That’s what I keep hearing. :D I was expected to do other things on top of managing the team, and then leadership at that organization was just chaotic. Constant goal post moving, lots of talk and indecisiveness, lots of “just do a quick proof of concept” that was really an entire months-long project – the last one really killed me (I worked in IT at a university). I would push back and say, hey this is too big a scope for a proof of concept, it should really go through project prioritization and make sure the business wanted it – then get told to just “do it”. So me and my team would bust our butts to get it done – then I would get scolded for ignoring the project prioritization process and wasting time on proof of concept work. :/

        I miss my team but I do not miss the organization!!

  43. Les*

    I work in a profession that sees regular contact with PhDs and, thinking back, almost the only times I hear titles is when we’re first introduced – and even then there’s a 50% chance it’s “professor.” After that initial introduction it’s generally first name only. The rare person who has demanded the title isn’t guaranteed to be insufferable, but the two or three I’ve encountered so far haven’t proven me wrong in my initial assessment.

    1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      and it goes the other way too. I published my first peer reviewed papers when I was getting my MS, but all the correspondence from the journal staff was addressed to Dr. Brown. That stuff is more formal communication, and they are erring on the side of caution.

    2. AnotherSarah*

      Yes. I am a professor and I’m pretty sure all my interviews have started by calling me “Dr. Lastname,” but then the panel introduces themselves by first name and last name (“I’m Jane Smith, I teach in x,”) and then no one really says each others’ names. If I responded to a question I might need to say “In response to Dr. Smith’s question” or “in response to Jane Smith’s question,” but I wouldn’t insist on being called Dr. I also think that all email communication began with “Dear Dr. Lastname,” but after a few emails, it goes to first names. In other words–it’s polite at first to use Dr., but even at more stuffy institutions, you’ll move to either pretending people don’t have names, or first names.

  44. Coffeemate is searching the globe*

    It sounds like OP2’s management experience is going well, but I think the answer did undersell some of the challenges of people managing in general.

    Lots of managers, myself included have gone back and forth between managing and IC roles because it can be truly difficult if you’re in the wrong environment

  45. infopubs*

    LW3: Since your new last name has positive personal implications, how about asking to be called just that when asked if you use a nickname? A little quirky, but less potentially pretentious than adding the Dr. to it. I’ve worked places where we all called one person Smith instead of Jocelyn, so Goodname would be a fine way to address you.

  46. Saxamaphone*

    #2 – Managing people can be a miserable job, but I think a lot of if goes back to overall workplace culture and leadership. Managers are sometimes (or often, in my case) not well-trained in managing; are not well-supported; and neither are the teams they manage. I have finally got a boss and grandboss who are great at mentoring me in this area without micromanaging, and I have a lot more confidence in managing an employee who has caused me years of frustration. I think it gets trickier when you are managing but also doing the job of an individual contributor (which I am) so it’s like…two separate lines of stressors. Having said all that, I have learned A LOT and do find it rewarding to see my own professional growth and the growth of my direct reports. I inherited an ultra long-term employee with a lot of struggles and am lookin forward to eventually being able to build out my own team. It is hard not to take an underperforming staff member personally.

    1. Legal Eagle*

      This x100000000. People can get thrown into management because it’s the next step up but don’t necessarily have access to mentors, training, or other resources to set them up for success or at the very least set them up to understand the responsibilities and boundaries of the job. And without those resources, management ends up being nearly impossible to enjoy or appreciate. With those resources, it can be incredibly fulfilling.

    2. Shipbuilding Techniques*

      I love this success story and it gives me hope that someday I might become a better manager too!

  47. A*

    3: The LW has been an adjunct for 25 years before earning a PhD. This means a bit of the outside looking in.

    I think they should match the title of everybody else in the room especially on job interviews where a first impression is crucial.

    I understand that the LW is in a position of not having the title for 25 years and now that they have it they don’t use it. That’s a tough one. I hope the LW knows a lot of people are cheering for them. This is an accomplishment.

  48. Nat20*

    I appreciate reading #3, both for Alison’s response and to commiserate. I’m in the middle of my PhD and I’m also looking forward to being called “Dr. LastName” just since it’ll feel like such an accomplishment.

    I also feel that even if not with interviewers, it IS a request you can pretty much always make from students (if you want to), though. In my experience so far, even schools/departments with a culture of instructors commonly letting students call them by their first name still have some people that prefer the honorifics, and it’s fine. And vice versa.

  49. mango chiffon*

    #4 – I am also nonbinary and it totally irritates me when people try to use gendered title/honorifics for me. I genuinely wish those would go away. I had someone call me “Mx.” after seeing an email with my they/them pronouns and it honestly bothered me so much. Just please call me by my name, heck you can call me by my last name alone with no honorific. I don’t like Mx. I don’t like Ms. or Miss or Mr. or any other honorific like that.

    1. LW4*

      I think I’m gonna start going by Comrade, ha! Since I can’t be doctor, reverend, nurse, judge, etc.

      “Comrade Lastname has been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty”

      (Also, an aside, but since most everything I get delivered is addressed to *masculine middle name* unless it is a legal document, sometimes I get very odd mail addressed to Mr. and Ms. Middle-Name & Legal-First-Name Lastname.)

  50. Apples and Oranges*

    Re: #2, I have to say that managing low-skill, entry level type positions is so so different than managing higher level professionals. I have done both and I wouldn’t do the first again. You do get great people but you also just get more people who are early career and don’t have the same level of professionalism. Sometimes the manager isn’t the final say in who gets hired. And there’s a ton of turnover, especially of the really good employees who don’t want to stay in those types of jobs. I was constantly managing performance problems, hiring, firing and training. It’s draining. Of course absolutely if you’re a good manager that helps the situation and some people are more cut out for that type of role than others. But overall it’s just easier to manage people who are further along in their careers and I’m sure that makes a difference in people’s perception of what managing is like.

  51. Wilbur*

    I think it’s time to get serious about training your cats to hunt spiders. Stores already sell cat toys with spiders, maybe spray some Meowijuana catnip spray on that and throw “Eye of the Tiger” on in the background. This isn’t the advice you asked for, but it is the advice you need.

  52. Anonymous Demi ISFJ*

    LW1: When I lived alone, I used to put on heels for a confidence boost before I went after the big eight-legged intruders. I don’t have a true phobia, so take with a grain of salt, but it’s worth doing something silly if it works!

  53. WhoKnows*

    OP #4, completely understand if this is not of interest or you’re not comfortable doing it, but many workplaces where they are outwardly supportive of DEI encourage putting pronouns in your email signature. That doesn’t solve your current problem but it could help for future issues.

    1. LW4*

      I had had my pronouns in my email signature for a while, but I removed them because there was a time where I was doing outreach efforts and didn’t want people to get hung up on the fact that a “they/them” was contacting them for a job because despite living in 2025, apparently what’s in my pants and what I call myself matters more than your resume. I’m no longer doing outreach and have happily plopped my pronouns back in my email as of this morning.

      Will there be resistance from some people I work with? Sure! Not everyone is of like mind that people like me deserve, you know, basic human rights and respect. But I don’t care. And if I DO outreach a candidate for a job again, I’d rather they get hung up on the pronouns and decide not to work here instead of getting hired and being a menace to the other trans/nonbinary folks who work here. Just because I can deal with misgendering doesn’t mean I want my other fellow LGBTQ officemates to have to.

      1. Grimalkin*

        Just as a heads-up, from someone who’s very much in the same boat (nonbinary, first name leans masculine but I don’t use Mr. or he/him)… don’t expect pronouns in the signature to entirely prevent the problem from recurring.
        I have my pronouns (she/they) in my email signature at work, but I still get emails that refer to me as “Mr.” or use he/him pronouns for me on occasion. I’ve seen it happen to a cis (I assume) woman lawyer in our office with a unisex/masculine first name as well. People’s name gender associations are stronger than their ability to read sometimes, I guess.
        Amusingly, we also have in common that my voice definitely sounds feminine, and yet I’ve had a client that I spoke to over the phone refer to me as “Mr.” in an email still. I guess it’s good that they aren’t judging just based off the sound of my voice?

  54. fhqwhgads*

    LW4: if the HR person doesn’t suck, they’ll be mortified they misgendered you and having it pointed out may be the mortification they need to make sure they get it right for future people.
    But if your primary concern is just not confusing the candidate, then a quick reply with “Correction: I am not a Mr.” will suffice.

  55. ToTheBatmobile*

    Regarding #3? ABSOLUTELY don’t ask to be called “Doctor”. I was an adjunct (with only a MSc+) temporarily sitting in on the departmental hiring committee of my small Catholic college. Most of the full-time faculty had terminal degrees, most of the adjuncts has master’s degrees.

    We had one guy who had just finished his PhD who we were interviewing by phone for an adjunct role (hoping it would lead to tenure track, clearly), and he corrected one of the interviewers with “Actually, it’s Doctor Smith”. Literally the moment he did that? I checked the box at the end of the evaluation for marked “Do not recommend for further evaluation.” He was done.

    Yes, everybody at the table knows you’re aPhD, and yes, it is quite an accomplishment. Telling everyone about it? Bad mistake. Just don’t do it.

    2. Prof Ma'am*

      You know it’s funny, I was imaging OP saying it in a giddy/excited/immature way which, as someone who has chaired faculty hiring committees, would come off weird but not an immediate no. But when I read your example, the tone feels entitled/snarky and yeesh that would give me serious concern about the candidate…

  56. Observer*

    #4 – Misgendering

    I’m afraid of correcting the HR person due to the power imbalance

    This kind of jumped out at me. Unless your company is rather dysfunctional, HR should not automatically have so much power over candidates. Nor should a quite correction to / in the presence of an HR person be seen as a major issue.

    So I’m wondering if your workplace, despite all of its talk of “inclusion” and “values” is highly dysfunctional. Or do you generally have a tendency to overthink and / or high anxiety? (It makes me think of the letter yesterday where someone feels like they cannot initiate a conversation with people because that would be “bothering” them.)

    1. LW4*

      Hey Observer!

      It’s the high anxiety. I’m autistic and ADHD. HR is always “open-door” and does value and welcome employee feedback. I’m just afraid of being labeled a “boat rocker” (or off my rocker ha).

      If it was another co-worker who was nonbinary who was called the wrong name or pronoun, I’d be the first person piping up to correct the person (and have in the past!) But since it’s me, well, it’s different haha.

  57. Retiring Academic*

    LW2: It’s not clear to me if this was an in-house or external training session (i.e. did you all come from a variety of corporate cultures). Maybe all the other, complainy managers had been sent for training BECAUSE they were bad managers? And maybe you volunteered for it (again, not clear) BECAUSE you’re a good manager and want to be even better?

  58. CubeFarmer*

    LW #3, I get it, but I also agree with Alison’s advice.

    When I was a senior in college, the campus I was at was veeery informal. Students usually called their profs by their first name. (Looking back, I think this was an important step in viewing oneself as an adult.)

    We had a new faculty member who INSISTED on being called “Doctor.” Twenty nine years later, I remember so little about this woman other than this one interaction I had with her.

  59. Scott*

    I’ve worked with many STEM PhD folks over the years in high tech. Nobody uses honorifics informally. I do however introduce my PhD engineers as Dr. LastName when introducing them to non technical people and extended stakeholders. It empowers them and I do get a bit of a kick out of the other person’s flash of anxiety as a result. It’s the small things that make managing worthwhile :)

  60. Jo Jo Joey*

    LW1, thank you for giving us a letter about someone creepy with eight legs instead of two.

  61. Marketing Queen*

    LW1, fellow severe arachnophobe here – I also live alone and work from home. Luckily I don’t have client-facing calls, so if I see a creepy crawly I can just freak out as needed, lol. I keep a 30-year old vacuum that uses bags and has a verrrrry long attachment to handle the unwanted visitors. I put moth balls in the bag to help kill anything that doesn’t die quickly. Also, bug spray every single entry point every few months. It helps! Good luck.

  62. Ms. Whatsit*

    LW3, congrats on the Ph.D., which you’ve worked hard to earn. But I agree, don’t do it.

    HOWEVER, I think you should enjoy your title and new surname in other ways: why don’t you get some personal business cards with Name Surname, Ph.D. or Dr. Name Surname? You could order some letterhead and adjust your email signature, too. Heck I wonder if there’s a “call me doctor” bumper sticker or something. I think there are ways in which you can take pride and enjoy your accomplishment and new name that are fun and more rewarding.

  63. Thomas Merton*

    LW#1: you should designate an on-duty cat to be alert and ready to pounce on any spiders during work calls. Set up a schedule so the moggies know who is on point.

  64. Susie*

    To LW #1: Please do yourself a favor and set up routine pest control! Controlling pests before the spiders even enter your space is a good place to start, and treating for pests before you see them is key. Don’t cancel pest service if you don’t see pests! Having quarterly service usually includes spot treatments, it’s worth it.

    Also, please consider EMDR or ERP based therapy so you are handling your distress. This is a tough way to live, and you don’t have to be on edge all the time. I’m sending you big internet stranger hugs and I hope you are addressing the phobia. I loved the advice of blaming another urgent situation, no need to over share.

  66. scared of spiders too*

    OP #1 – i also have major spider fears and lived alone for a while and found that salt guns work really well! They look like nerf guns but they shoot out table salt at really fast speeds that just kind of shred up the spider (or any other bug for that matter). They aren’t super expensive and they work pretty well if you’re someone who can’t get close to scary critters. I live in a basement apartment and use mine at least once a week for basement bugs but I bought it to take care of spiders!

  67. LMH*

    For #1, you might want to look into a bug-a-salt, it’s like a water gun that shoots salt for killing bugs in your house. It might be quicker and more reliable than getting your cats to take care of things, while also letting you stay far away from the creepy crawlies.

  68. quill*

    LW #1: I suppose that is one perk of being in office: knowing which of your colleagues is the spider getter.

    (I prefer to chuck them outside while shouting “and stay out!”)

  69. Mad Scientist*

    Obsessed with the idea that the personal emergency could be a moose staring into your window. Those are the kinds of emergencies I want to have in my life, honestly.

  70. Eukomos*

    LW #3, DO NOT DO THIS. One of the important things about having a doctorate is being gracious about it. Make your students call you Dr. all you like, put it in your email signature, revel in choosing the Dr. honorific on forms, encourage your friends to start a running joke of addressing you as Dr. at parties, but do not make it an issue with colleagues. Everyone will immediately assume you have a huge head and will be a pain in the butt to deal with. It’s tough to be chill about it because we work so hard for that title and it means a lot, but people make a lot of negative assumptions about you if you get particular about it.

  71. Our Lady of Shining Eels*

    Letter Writer One – can you keep a big ugly mug on your desk? That way if a spider is present, you can quickly put the mug on top, so it’s a) contained, b) you won’t see it, and c) you know where it is until the cats come to dispatch it for you.

  72. Oh January*

    LW#4: I’m a non-binary person in a similar situation: professional job, very masculine first name (think like “Mike” or “Zach”), they/them non-binary person who is most likely to be read as a woman based on voice/the way I speak.

    I know it feels like you’re being a bother or attention seeking when you correct people. It’s such a process to overcome that socialization (for folks of any gender, but also there’s a reason people pleasing is associated with women) but you are NOT the problem. If other people act like they’re being inconvenienced by your gentle correction, that’s data about THEM, not you. Just imagine a cis man in the same situation — he’s got a unisex name and he gets introduced as Ms Lastname in an email. I can’t think of a single guy I work with who would think twice about sending back “actually I’m a man” — actually I’d say cisgender men are way more likely to OVERreact than underreact to that sitch.

    Try to frame it in your head like you are doing others a favour by correcting them — because you are. You’re preventing them from embarrassing themselves, because it IS embarrassing to refer to your colleagues by the wrong name or pronouns, whether they’re cis or trans.

  73. COHikerGirl*

    LW1: if you’re interested in overcoming the fear, tons of people find success in using online groups (there are absolutely fabulous ones on Facebook, Reddit is hit or miss). They get visual exposure through (sometimes absolutely fantastic) photography AND knowledge, which is super key to everything. It also works for snakes. Tons of people post about how they hated or were terrified of x creature but with seeing them and learning about them, they either now have a truce with it or even a new pet!

    I studied biology in college and took an entomology course. I had to create an insect collection and eventually my mom, who used to be terrified of all the things, started helping collect a few things. And recently, she came and got me, told me there was a spider in the bathroom, then walked away (it was late, she went to bed!). Before, there would have been some noise and requests to kill it. She even was willing to look at the photos I took and hear about it.

  74. judyjudyjudy*

    LW3, I agree with Allison’s take — don’t do this. Additionally, when you get your academic post, I would encourage you to also consider how you will ask others to address you, and how that might encourage a stratification of people within your university community. Will other faculty members have to call you “Dr. Z”? What about post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, or university staff? Admins? Undergraduates?

    In my experience, in both academia and industry in the US, people that insist on being called “Dr. Y” by everyone are generally pains in the rear that I dread working with. Insisting on your title will not earn your respect, but it will just cause a lot of eye-rolling behind your back.

    Also, if it matters, I have a PhD.

  75. Javert*

    LW1, are you me? I have a DEEP, DEEP phobia of insects – I have yelped more times than I care to say while on work calls. I work from home and I’ve had to text my boss and tell her I was going to be late for a meeting because when I ran an errand during lunch and came back home there was a large leaf bug on the door to my apartment (I ended up being 20 minutes late for the meeting). I once got so worked up I had to use a sick day when, after going to the restroom in the middle of the night and then bending down in the dark to pick up a piece of trash and it started crawling!

    Yes, I am in therapy because this fear is so huge.

  76. Llama Llama*

    Regarding managing people, I like managing people when I have the power to fix things when they are being problematic but hate it when I can’t. I work for a company and manage a department where I have a small team in the US and the rest much larger team work in another country. My local team is lovely to manage. The international one, grates at me because they push back at everything even when it’s specifically what the client/upper management wants. It has to be an hour conversation to make a small update when if I asked my local team, it would be a quick ping.

    1. Reading is fundamental*

      From the actual letter: “unfortunately I cannot use bug vacuums”. What would be an amazing help is if the oh so helpful commenters on this site actually read the bleeding letter. FFS.

  78. Anonymous For Now*

    For OP#3, unless their new last name is “Feelgood” they should not ask their fellow PhDs to refer to them as “Doctor”.

    I also have to wonder why someone who has to be 50ish (25 years as an adjunct prior to getting their PhD makes them at least close to 50) would even think of asking an interview panel to address them with an honorific.

  79. dieelster*

    “After 25 years as adjunct faculty, I finally completed my PhD last month and am now interviewing for academic positions.”

    I understand you’re proud of your accomplishment, lw, but I don’t understand how you’ve been in/around academia for 25 years without realizing how bad a request like this is going to make you look. You don’t ask anyone to call you Dr when you’re all peers and everyone else is using first names. And it *especially* comes across as arrogant if you request it of someone *higher* than you. Do not do this.

    I am really curious what field is hiring non-PhDs for adjunct positions, though. With the glut of PhDs on the market for the past 20 years, all the fields I’m personally familiar with hire PhDs for those roles.

Comments are closed.