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

1. My interviewer called all the other applicants “pricks”

I’m currently finishing my PhD and looking to move outside of academia. Recently, I saw an ad for a paid internship for a small nonprofit, and I applied on the last day they were accepting applications. I thought it would be good to have some recent, relevant experience on my resume before I started searching for a full-time job in a few months. The head of the charity got back to me and said that they had already finished interviewing all their applicants, but that he liked my resume and asked if I could come in the next day for an interview. I agreed.

During the interview, he told me all of their other applicants for the position were “pricks” (we are in the UK), he called everyone involved with our town’s university “pricks,” and at one point drew a diagram of the employee structure in the charity, wrote in the name of their previous intern, and labeled her as “prick,” which he circled twice. I was speechless, and just tried to answer questions calmly and politely until I could get out of there.

At the end of the interview, I asked one question to be polite. He asked me why I could only come up with one question, and I stated that I was sure I could always find more questions if I had a minute. He then told me I had 60 seconds, looked at his watch, and refused to speak or make eye contact with me until the minute was up. I asked another question and then ended the interview.

When I got home, he emailed me with a written assessment that he wanted me to do. I already knew I didn’t want to work with him, so I replied that I was sorry, but I had reconsidered and thought it was best I focus on my doctorate and not start an internship right now.

Professional circles are small in our town. I’m worried that this may affect my chances for future full-time positions, if he tells people that I wasted his time and let him delay their hiring process, only to then change my mind. Obviously, that’s not what happened, but how do I explain that without badmouthing him and seeming unprofessional myself? I’m also worried if he spreads this that I will miss out on chances for interviews. Is there anything I could have done to handle this situation differently?

You gave a perfectly reasonable explanation for withdrawing. Normally I’d say it’s unlikely that he would go out of his way to badmouth you over it, but then again, this is someone who inexplicably called a bunch of near-strangers “pricks” to another near-stranger and refused to make eye contact with you while he timed your response to a question … so we can’t really apply reasonable standards of behavior to him.

But I promise you that in a small professional circle, someone who behaves this oddly has already been outed as ridiculous. He’s calling everyone he comes into contact with a prick! People know about him.

2. I brought my baby to a grad school talk

I have a 16-month-old child. I’m also a grad student who’s expected to attend my department functions as often as possible. Due to tight finances, we haven’t got daycare until next semester and so I’ve brought my baby twice to talks on campus. The first time went great because she slept. The second time less well, which is why I’m writing. Obviously I don’t want to disturb other audience members, and so I took the baby to the back of the room and did everything within my power to keep her quiet. She made cooing noises and giggles and eventually I got her settled with her bottle, after taking her out once. She must have disturbed my advisor, however, because she asked me to take the baby out again, which I immediately did, leaving her stroller and my purse behind. I hoped to stay and meet the professor giving the talk, but when the baby got fussier and I felt frustrated that I was missing the talk (relevant to my research), I asked one of my friends to grab the stroller and I left.

I honestly don’t know if there’s anything I could have done differently and I don’t know if it’s worth bringing up with my advisor. She’s normally supportive, has kids of her own, and I understand that babies are disruptive. Despite feeling hurt, I do get that academic talks aren’t ideal for babies. My question is just what I should have done. Not taking her wasn’t an option today, and normally she is really quiet.

If she’s normally really quiet and it went well the other time you did it and you had no other options, I can see why you tried it again. But it’s possible that your threshold for baby noise is higher than other people’s. Some people won’t be bothered by a baby cooing and giggling, and others will find it really distracting in a context where babies aren’t normally expected. So to the question of what you should have done, the answer might be: be faster to take her outside (like as soon as she starts making noise; don’t wait to see if you can quiet her inside). Or it might be that you really can’t bring your baby to some/all of these functions — but that’s something I don’t know from here.

It might be worth talking with your advisor, explaining your situation, and asking if she thinks you’d be better off skipping functions when you don’t have child care. If you do that, though, you’ve got to be okay with hearing “yes,” so you’d want to go into the conversation prepared for that possibility. If you’d rather not risk that, you could also try talking to a couple of people in your program whose judgment you trust and seeing what their take is.

3. Our intern wants to leave her internship early

Our intern’s internship is ending in the next few weeks, and she just asked my boss if she could leave a few weeks early. What’s worse is that she told different excuses to different people (it’s clear it’s not an emergency). My boss is furious to say the least and has told senior management privately that we will not be giving this intern a recommendation letter regardless of whether or not she stays for the full internship.

Is this too harsh? Do I warn the intern that she cannot expect a recommendation letter? I had privately told her before that taking a vacation during a short internship would probably be seen as unprofessional. For background, there were a lot of issues beforehand, and senior management had already decided we would not be extending a full-time offer.

Assuming that the issue is that the intern committed for a specific, relatively short period of time, it’s not too harsh. If the internship was, say, four months long, and she wants to leave a few weeks early, that’s a quarter of the internship. Then add in that there were already other issues, and it makes sense that your boss doesn’t plan to recommend her to others. “Furious” may be a bit much, but certainly it makes sense not to recommend her. That’s a pretty normal consequence to something like this (as long it wasn’t due to sickness or family emergency). It’s not punitive; it’s that you really can’t vouch for her to other employers.

As for whether you should warn the intern, it depends on what your role is. Are you her manager or in a mentor-type role? If so, you could definitely talk to her about why not meeting her full commitment is coming across poorly. But if you’re not, I wouldn’t do that without your boss’s okay, since your boss may have said things to you that she doesn’t expect to be shared. Your boss should definitely be having that conversation with her, though.

4. Job candidates who use inbox safeguards

I’m relatively new to the world of hiring, and I’ve recently come across a quirky email etiquette situation that I don’t know how to handle. When candidates apply for a job with us, they receive an automated message informing them their application has been received. Several times now I’ve then received an automated reply from a service they are using to keep the junk out of their inbox. The email informs me that my email was waitlisted and requests that I click a link in order to have my email delivered to the person’s inbox.

I understand why a person would want to do this for most situations, since we all receive tons of email and some companies make unsubscribing difficult, but in this case it is a potential employer attempting to reach them. Every time this has happened, I have clicked the link, but do I need to keep doing that? It’s not like I’m trying to reach them for an interview, it’s just an auto-response acknowledging we’ve received their application. I feel similarly about candidates whose voicemail boxes are full — how far does my responsibility go when getting in touch with candidates?

You do not need to keep clicking links — or in some cases, filling out forms — to get whitelisted, particularly when it’s just something like an auto-acknowledgement that an application was received. If you were trying to reach a strong candidate to schedule an interview or otherwise speak to them, then I’d take the few seconds to do it — because it doesn’t make sense to pass up a strong candidate over a few seconds of work — but not for an automated form message. (Similarly, I don’t think you’re obligated to do it for rejections either, although it’s kind to.)

And yeah, job searchers should be aware that it’s annoying to ask employers to jump through these hoops. Or anyone who you want something from, really — I’ve had strangers email me to request a favor and then when I try to respond, I’m told to fill out an entire form (contact info, reason for message, etc.) in order for the email to get past their spam gateway, and it doesn’t make the greatest impression.

5. Are employment contracts a thing?

I know this might seem like a ridiculous question but it’s something I’d never pondered until recently. In terms of your traditional, professional jobs, I’ve never heard of anyone having a contract unless they were a contractor who wasn’t planning to be there long-term and wouldn’t get benefits and paid leave. In my personal job experience, you get hired and you negotiate the terms but there’s nothing contractual but it turns out people at my husband’s job — who do the same job as he does — have contracts spelling out their raises, bonuses, and other perks for three or four years at a time. We were shocked and had no idea this was a “thing.” Our other professional friends seemed really baffled as well. I know these things might vary wildly from field to field, but my husband’s job is essentially sales. Additionally, he’s considering pursuing a different position in the company which is not sales. Is sales the only time these mystical contracts are the norm? We are really confused!

You’re right that most workers in the U.S. don’t have contracts, even salespeople (although salespeople might have written agreements spelling out a commission schedule). The vast majority of employees in the U.S. are at-will, meaning they can quit or be let go at any time without financial penalty, and neither side is locked into a period of employment. (That said, we certainly have conventions around how long you’re expected to commit to a job if you’re acting in good faith, and there can be a reputation price to pay for breaking that; see the intern in letter #3 above.)

Two times that you typically see contracts in the U.S. are for very senior-level positions or for unionized positions (where people are covered by the union contract). So people like your husband are the exception to the rule.