This Is Not Professional Appearance

Dear Miss Manners: I need advice about nose rings.

I am very willing to have people decorate themselves however they wish, but this has an unusual wrinkle. I am a physician in a large community hospital that has an arrangement with a university hospital whereby their resident physicians (doctors in training) spend many months at our facility for education and experience. Of course, this requires them to care for our patients along with us.

While my patients and I have come to expect casual attire and earrings (regardless of gender), a recent young man has presented our first nose ring. He is bright and capable, but this strikes many patients and some staff as less than the professional image that our hospital strives to project. I should add that he does not appear to belong to an ethnic or religious group that is associated with body jewelry. His university has not done anything, and so far, neither have we.

Are nose rings now accepted professional attire? If not, should this be discussed with him and if so, by whom?

Gentle Reader: No, nose rings are not professional attire among physicians, or Miss Manners would insist that you have one installed. Unlike you, she is not willing to allow people to decorate themselves however they wish and pretend that their choices have no symbolic effect on others.

In this case, the nose ring - and by the way, that “casual attire” - affects the patients. They don’t say anything because they don’t have the authority and anyway, they don’t feel up to arguing.

But Miss Manners assures you that the very idea of being treated by someone who is casual about his profession scares the daylights out of them.

Teaching professionalism is part of what your hospital is supposed to be doing. Miss Manners suggests that you and other staff members include training on how to project professionalism symbolically.

Dear Miss Manners: I recently asked out an attractive young lady I see at the gym about twice a month and she declined, explaining she already had a boyfriend. Since then, she has continued to be friendly toward me, going so far as to initiate conversation. Is it appropriate for me to ask her out again?

How do you rate the gym as a place to meet, in comparison to the bar, the newspaper, the church, etc.

Gentle Reader: Better than the bar, a lot better than the bar exam, where everybody is so twitchy, but worse than the church.

What do you mean by the newspaper? Do you work in a newsroom? Miss Manners grew up in a newsroom, so she knows that everybody there is too busy working hard to think about romance.

Miss Manners is not in the business of evaluating pick-up places. But she can tell you that to people who are respectable or prudent or both, the appearance of accountability is essential.

Note that hedge about appearances. The fact is that your bartender may know you better and see you more regularly than your minister. But attending church gives one the appearance of having ties to the community, which, in turn, suggests that you may not be an ax murderer or everybody would have heard.

The gym, with its aura of health and suggestion of regular attendance, would be regarded by most people as a reasonably safe place to strike up an acquaintance.

Strike up, but not hit over the head. No matter what the setting, refusing to take no for an answer is annoying.

If you believe that circumstances have changed in this lady’s life, ask her. She told you frankly that she had a boyfriend, so you may ask her - once - whether she still has a boyfriend.