"Notice that she didn't say anything about her family," complained a member of the search committee. "I wouldn't trust someone who can't talk about her feelings - or who's not willing to be open with us."
He preferred the candidate who told the committee how he had dealt with his wife's leaving him (illustrating his progress from destructive anger to acceptance to finding someone wonderful), his son's learning disability and his daughter's depression.The decision was between that candidate and the one who said she used to go to pieces when men treated her badly but has learned to love herself and is now closer to her children. As it was put by one of the people in charge of finding the best person for the job - which had to do with handling money rather than emotions - "You can just tell from the way she talked about it that she's an honest, caring person."
Maybe yes, maybe no, muses cynical Miss Manners.
Miss Manners would not dream of suggesting that job seekers might tailor their histories to fit what potential employers want to hear. But word certainly has gotten around that in the upper reaches of the job market, the successful candidate tells personal stories, preferably featuring a confession of some frailty now conquered.
Why this works, Miss Manners is not exactly sure. A fair-minded employer would overlook problems, especially past problems, in favor of compensating strengths. The puzzling part is how these got to be considered positive assets.
It was odd enough, Miss Manners thought, when the willingness to confide in strangers (other than those in the healing professions) was taken to be a sign of recovering emotional health. It was odder still when it became a sign of character - and reluctance to do so an indication of wiliness, if not deceit.
If you want to hire someone to paint your house, you will probably not be reassured by a candidate's bringing up a drinking problem, no matter how far in the past. When interviewing baby sitters, you are not likely to be encouraged by being made privy to a candidate's bad luck with romance.
So why would anyone actively seek an executive who brings private concerns into a job interview? Either these are irrelevant to the job, in which case there is no point in bringing them up, or they are relevant, in which case a prospective employer, however sympathetic, would have to ask how they might impinge on the job.
The response that has been made to Miss Manners is roughly as follows:
1. Personnel problems are an inevitable part of any high-ranking job, and nowadays it's hard to know where the latest emotional land mines might be. We have people who were behaving well by yesterday's standards who have failed to recognize danger signals and gotten us into serious trouble.
So the safest person is one who is sensitive - who understands where all this is coming from. A history of problems shows familiarity with them. Someone who has been hurt and worked it through is less likely to hurt others, or be oblivious to their feelings.
2. You can't check everything about a person, and lots of organizations have been taken in by smooth types who have lied about themselves. If we uncover something bad we haven't heard about, we assume that we've been deliberately misled. But if we hear it from the candidate, it's different. We would take that as evidence of willingness to come clean. When the person confesses the worst, you don't worry so much about being hit with unpleasant surprises.
3. Personal problems - addictions, family disputes and such - may not be more common than they used to be, but people are more likely to allow them to intrude on job performance. If you know what they are up front, you can chose the ones you are willing to deal with.
In the face of these arguments, Miss Manners' preference for privacy seems like a fastidious old prejudice. Even the British royal family has abandoned the concept of the stiff upper lip in favor of the quivering lip.
So rather than blabber about dignity, she will confine herself to the issue of how such personal talk should be interpreted when weighing candidates for jobs.
If the job is one where loyalty to the company and discretion about its plans are important, is it wise to hire someone who freely discusses family matters and sensitive matters that involve other people? What happens when someone who believes in telling all is trusted with the problems of employees, who may want them kept confidential?
If private lives are part of the employment record, people feel forced to discuss them, although the ratio of candor to canniness in presenting job qualifications is probably no differently applied here than it is to explanations of why these candidates are leaving their present jobs.
But doesn't this go against everything we have learned since the bad old days when single women were asked if they planned to get married (on the assumption that they would then quit), married women were asked if they planned to have children (on the assumption that they would then quit), mothers were asked how they cared for their children (on the assumption that they would neglect the job) and older women weren't asked anything because it was just assumed they were cranky and bitter?
If we knew that mistakes immunized people against making further mistakes, it might be reasonable to trust the person with the blemished record. But since we don't, it doesn't seem fair to penalize the clean record.
And finally, do we really want to work that hard to discourage professionalism?
Dear Miss Manners: A friend maintains that it is perfectly acceptable to dip a chip, take a bite, reverse the chip and dip again. He says that this is not double dipping.
I say it is, even with the reverse of the chip, and not proper. Who is correct? We have a lobster riding on this.
Gentle Reader: It's worth a lobster, because this happens to be a highly complex argument.
You are dealing only with the surface etiquette rule, which indeed states that one should not dip the same chip a second time. Meanwhile, your friend is dealing only with the manners principle that prompted the rule, stating that one should not put what has been in one's mouth back into a communal dish.
A true mastery of politeness consists of being able to reconcile the two.
Tell your friend to break his chip in half before doing any dipping. He can then get just as much dip on his chip without dipping the same chip (or chip portion) a second time.
Both of you should thus be able to enjoy your chips and dip, just as Miss Manners promises to enjoy the lobster you owe her.