Dear Sars,

I have what may seem like a silly question, but I and most of my friends are
only a year out of college and we’ve never had to deal with such job-related
puzzles before.

I have a job I really like and great coworkers and bosses who like and
respect me and my work.However, one of our competitors is hiring for a
position I’d really love to be in.If I don’t get it, I want to be able to
continue at my current job with no weirdness.How do I ask my boss if he’d
be willing to be a reference for me at the interview with the other company?

Thanks,
Aspiring to More Than “Administrative Assistant”

Dear Aspiring,

Job-hunt etiquette pretty much requires that you let your references know you’ve listed them as such, so you’ll either have to tell your boss that you’ve put him as a reference — thereby telling him that you’re looking elsewhere — or you’ll have to leave him off your c.v.

Unless you have a fairly close relationship with your boss, “no weirdness” isn’t on the menu here, especially not if you want to go to work for the competition and then “settle” for staying on where you are if you don’t get the gig.So, you can skip putting him down at all, and explain to the politics of the situation to the HR person, or you can sack up and tell your boss that, as much as you like it where you are, you think you need to try for the other position and you hope he’ll support you — and either live with any awkwardness if it doesn’t work out, or quit.

You can’t have it both ways, though, I’m afraid.

Here’s the scenario…I am the team manager and player on a woman’s forty- to fifty-something soccer team. We are very fortunate to have a great coach who also
coaches high school and club teams. For the past two weeks I’ve noticed a
change in him. I hate to assume anything so I approached him regarding his
behavior. In confidentiality, he told me that he just found out that one of
our players has been having an affair with his best friend for the past
year. He was in complete shock when he found out because the parties
involved (three families) spend evenings, go on trips and are very close.

The woman on our team is the best player and well respected by everyone. She
has missed the last two games mainly to avoid our coach and the entire
situation, but has told the team members that she had family obligations.
Our coach has been forced to lie to all of us in her absence and feels this
is wrong. He is now teetering on resigning (he’s coached the team for six
years), to avoid this person who has hurt and betrayed him, his wife, and
the other two families.

This woman told our coach that the affair is over and she is back with her
husband. She wants to continue playing, and feels our coach should get over
it. He’s having a difficult time doing that. I don’t want to lose him as a
coach or lose her as a player. Shouldn’t this stay off the field?

Any advice would be wonderful!

Thanks,
Jwatt

Dear J,

Yes, it should stay off the field.Of course, it’s not that simple, and one of them should probably go, but if one of them is going to go, that one should go already — stop dragging the team into the drama, quit, and let everyone else make the necessary adjustments to his or her absence.

Yeah, she’s a good player, but wanting the coach to just “get over it” is pretty obtuse of her.The situation is of her making, not his, and to my mind, she can either brazen through the awkwardness, or she can quit — but if I were her, I’d at least take a season off and let things settle down.

But if she’s unwilling to do that, and the coach can’t get past it, he needs to quit.The point isn’t who “gets” the team — the point is that they both need to realize that nobody else particularly wants to deal with this soap opera, and either they can find a way to work together on the team, or one of them leaves.

Dear Sarah,

I am a college student, living on campus, in the middle of a bout of
extremely painful depression.Although I am getting help, medications and
therapy cannot do much for the daily pain, misery, and general
why-the-hell-am-I-alive-why-can’t-I-be-dead.What would help, enormously,
are friends.However, my friends have apparently decided that they do not
want anything to do with me.Although they know perfectly well I am going
through hell, they do not so much as ask me how I am.It would really,
really help if they could just listen, just let me cry; they do not have to
have all the answers, they just have to be there.

Why, then, are they treating me so oddly?Depression is not a disorder you
can catch.These are genuinely wonderful, caring people.If I had mono or
a broken leg they’d know just what to do — chicken soup, a few videos — but
it seems like they are avoiding me since I dropped the bombshell, so to
speak.If I try to bring up what happened to me, or how frustrated I am
with the mental health system at our university (which is causing me HUGE
problems in my life right now) they’ll change the subject as soon as
possible.They have explained to me that they are busy; they have their own
lives, their own problems, and they just don’t “have time to care about
anyone else.”But how much time would it take to IM me or ring my cell?I
ended up in the hospital the other night, and though they were all aware,
not one contacted me to offer their support.

You might ask why I do not dump them, but these are the only friends I have
at the moment, and it is essential to my health that I continue to be with
people and force myself to have some semblance of a life, no matter how much
pain I’m in.I understand I’m not good company; I’m constantly in tears,
few things are funny now and I wince when they talk so casually of death, as
in, “I’ll kill her for doing such and such.”But why is depression such a —
a pariah of an illness?Why is it that I’m having to make up excuses to my
professors as to why I miss class, because even my doctors admit I should
tell them I had a stomach bug?Why can’t I say, “The reason I wasn’t in
class was because I was crying so hard, it would distract the rest of the
pupils”?I’m tired of this!I am working my very hardest to get well, but
it is not easy to do without community support.Do you have any advice?Do
you know why people treat those with mental illnesses so badly?

I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell

Dear Unwell,

Have you told your friends what you need?Have you asked them to call you now and then?Did you ask any of them to come to the hospital?Yes, depression is an awkward illness to manage, for its sufferers and for its sufferers’ friends both, but it’s like grief, in that people often won’t know what to do, and will then do nothing, and you might have to make it more clear that you need support, and what you mean by “support.”

Honestly, I think you might consider taking time off from school until you feel better.If it’s this hard for you to manage classes and your social life, maybe you should focus on getting well for a while instead of trying to juggle these other things that tend to overwhelm you — because here’s the thing about the stigma of mental illness: a lot of it is self-perpetuating.I think you probably don’t want to take a semester off, or a year or whatever, because that means the depression beat you and you couldn’t cope, but if you can think of it in a different way — that you’re taking the time you need for yourself, to do what needs doing to make your life better and get things under control, that you have the strength to admit that you’re not perfect and you need help — it won’t seem so stigmatic and shameful.

This is, to my mind, the worst and most painful part of depression and mental illness.People don’t want to admit that they’re having a hard time, because there’s so much shame surrounding it, and it just exacerbates the existing symptoms and makes you feel weak and alone — but dealing with a problem doesn’t make you weak, and Lord knows you’re not alone.

You said yourself that you’re doing your damnedest to get well, so concentrate on that and try to remember that millions of people are doing the same thing right now.If you can’t make it to class, you can’t — you’ll get there some other day, or next year.If you’re no fun right now, you’re not — life isn’t a game show, and you’ll be fun soon, once you’ve gotten over this hump.But don’t add to your burden by beating yourself up for having to carry it.You can carry it, you will get to put it down one day, and you shouldn’t have to worry about other people’s hang-ups about it, so — don’t.Focus on you.That’s what’s important.

All right, now. I’m writing you because Kenny Loggins is
on. Kenny fucking Loggins, man, that’s where I draw the
line.

I just landed a sweet job working for a small agency that
employs roughly 100 people. So far, the work is
interesting, people seem to like me and to respect what I
do, my boss seems like a good guy, et cetera. Thing is, we’re
all working on the same floor in one of those abominable
“open concept” layouts. I admit I don’t feel as caged in
as I would in a cubicle, but at least partitions offer
some sort of sound-proofing against soft rock. 1980s soft
rock, mind you.

Yep, you guessed it. The guy across the pseudo-hallway
from me listens to some fucking adult-contempo bullshit
station that plays all the songs I loathed when they first
came out and haven’t learned to like since. I mean, if
we’re being encouraged to wear unscented deodorant for the
sake of our co-workers who are “sensitive to perfumes,”
why the hell aren’t we being encouraged to buy some $5
earphones for the sake of our co-workers who are
“sensitive to bad taste”?

I admit I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to these things,
but this shit really disturbs me and it’s keeping me from
performing my duties as well as it should, because it
makes me physically tense to hear that kind of music. Do I
subject everyone to Sarah Vaughn? No. When I listen to
music, I use my fucking earphones, and I refuse to wear my
earphones eight hours a day for the sake of blocking out REO
Speedwagon. If I don’t want to hear music, I don’t want to
hear music, full stop.

Since being introduced to this guy across the “hallway” on
my first day, I’ve never spoken to him because I’ve never
had a reason to do so. I’d feel weird walking up to him
after three weeks just to say, “Hey, buddy, could you cut
out the Journey, please? Some of us are trying to work
around here.” Buying him a pair of earphones sounds mighty
Ann-Landerish. I’ve considered complaining to my superior,
but Easy Listening Guy and I don’t have the same boss, and
I don’t want this thing to bounce around the whole office
before it gets to him.

I do have the capacity to be a total bitch about this
(especially if Billy Ocean is on), but I’d rather handle
this as an adult, especially because I’m still new here.
What would Sars do?

Uptown Girl About to Kick Some Downtown Man’s Ass,
oh-whoa-oo-whoa

Dear Girl,

Good grief.Do adults not make reasonable requests where you’re from?Just walk across the hall and nicely ask him to please turn it down because it’s distracting you, for God’s sake.

Hi,

I have an etiquette question for those of us moving in a world of global
travel and e-communication.A very good friend of mine — probably my
best friend in this city, but someone I’ve only known for about eight months
— is about to head off for a fun-filled summer in South Asia.He’s
lived there for about a year and a half in two different stints in the
recent past and is really psyched to be going back, seeing all his
friends, and doing some research.He’ll be busy, certainly, and, more
to the point, will only have the opportunity to check email about once
a week or so.I, on the other hand, will be gallivanting around the U.S.,
staying busy but also spending a lot of time hanging out with friends
and with easy access to public libraries and various locations where I
can steal wireless access.

This guy has been a really important part of
my life; we regularly spend 8-10 hours a day together on the weekends,
and it’s a rare weekday that goes by without us at least spending a few
hours over lunch or dinner just talking, and we often drop each other
random IMs over the course of the day when something funny or
interesting happens.He’s the first person I think of when I come up
with a stupid pun or read an interesting news story, and, from the
random times he emails or talks to me, I think it’s somewhat
reciprocal, although his girlfriend, who lives in another city, gets her
own particular place in his mental pantheon.

My etiquette question, then, is about how often it’s appropriate or fair
to email him.I know from experience that when you’re checking email
often, random messages can be appreciated, but then can also take up
huge chunks of space when you’re trying to sift through and prioritize.
I’m sure with only limited access, most of his attention will be focused
on staying in touch with his girlfriend, and I don’t want to be a pain
(and, as this question illustrates, I do have a bit of a hard time
staying succinct and on topic).On the other hand, I have a hard time
knowing what I’ll do with all my funny stories and pointless anecdotes
if I don’t have him to share them with.My reasoning skills tell me to
just keep up a one-to-one ratio of emails, and so let him dictate the
pace of things, but it just seems to strange and pre-meditated.Any
advice on balancing “friend who misses you” with “don’t want to flood
your in-box”?

Thanks,
He should just get g-mail so it’s not an issue

Dear Issue,

Man, you g-mail people…it’s like a cult.Anyway, I’d just save up all your observations and anecdotes and put them in a Word file or something; at the end of the week, sift through, cull the good ones, and send them off.Yeah, it’s a little canned, but you have to adjust to the circumstances, and I think that’s a good compromise.Think of it as, like, a weekly journal to keep him up to date, and try to hit the highlights.

Or tell him to get g-mail, which does in fact rock.

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