by Rachel
Kurzius
I want to start this week by addressing a very valid
criticism brought up by a thoughtful reader last week. You may recall that a
“young male professional” had written in to tell me he was stuck in a rut --
feeling romantically lonely and generally without purpose. I wrote back
imploring him to find other activities he enjoyed and build on them as he
waited for the right woman to come along.
Do you see where I went wrong? One reader wrote back,“How
do we know he's searching for a woman? Does it matter?” My head immediately hit
my desk.
The reader was right, of course. I combed the letter from
“Spinning My Wheels” in search of any lingual hint that he was looking for
women right now. None existed. So consider this my mea culpa. I try to pride
myself on using inclusive language but I really screwed up with this one. Many
thanks to the reader who brought this to my attention.
The advice I would give myself on this one is to avoid
jumping to conclusions or making alienating generalizations, gendered or
otherwise.
After all, it would have been simple to make my response
gender-neutral. I cringe thinking of “Spinning My Wheels” seeking my counsel
and finding that I don’t understand him at all, based on an oversight.
Thankfully, this wasn’t the case. I reached out to
“Spinning My Wheels” to apologize and he told me that he is indeed interested
in women. I got lucky this time. Hopefully, there won’t be a next time.
And now, on to the advice!
Dear Rachel,
We are putting our house up for sale in the near future.
A good friend of ours is an attorney who does real estate closings. However, we
do not feel comfortable using her based on our last closing, which she handled
poorly. We would like to maintain our
friendship with her family and avoid hurting her feelings.
How can we handle this situation?
Closing the House, Not the Friendship
Dear Closing the House, Not the Friendship,
Congratulations on your upcoming move! What an exciting
time, though of course, it’s also incredibly stressful. You’re about to pack up
all your things in boxes before rearranging them in an entirely new space. The
whole thing is enough to make anyone anxious.
But then your friend comes in, stirring the
already-anxious pot with another worry. I won’t lecture you about mixing
friendship and legal matters, because you’ve clearly been through the wringer
for having done so.
I agree with your priorities here. You need to make sure
your finances and legal issues are in order. If you don’t trust your friend to
handle this situation, then you’ve got to hire someone who can do the job.
In my opinion, the less of an issue you make with your
lawyer friend about not rehiring her, the better off. If you sit her down and
try to break the news to her gently, it might come off as condescending. I
would not mention it at all, or mention it in very casual conversation. You can
say that, since your last move, your family has made a habit of not using
friends for business matters. (If possible, mention some other incident that
has occurred to pepper your speech with legitimacy.)
Your friend may find it odd that you’re not retaining her
services. But the less of a big deal you make out of it, the less of a big deal
it will be.
To quote West Side Story, play it cool. Real cool.
Good luck with your move. As a final piece of
(unsolicited) advice -- I recommend using your family’s scarves to wrap
delicate items.
All my best,
Rachel
___
Rachel Kurzius revels in giving advice, and has provided
counsel both as a columnist and a friend. She lives in Washington DC, where she
works as a news producer. Real Talk with Rachel is published on All Life is
Local and the Cleveland Park Listserv, www.cleveland-park.com,
on Wednesdays. Need advice? You can write to Rachel via http://bit.ly/realtalkwithrachel or advice @ fastmail.net.
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