The Workologist: You Didn’t Get the Job? Maybe It’s a Good Thing

Dear Workologist:

Someone at a big company that I worked for some years ago recently approached me via e-mail, asking if I would be interested in rejoining. I was. “Fantastic,” this manager replied, and a few days later we spoke over the phone. He sounded pleased, asked me to submit my résumé online to get things rolling, and said human resources would be in touch.

I did not hear from H.R. A week later, I e-mailed the manager who had reached out — and received no response. Another two weeks went by. I called him and left a voice mail message. Late that night, I received a standard rejection e-mail. The job listing had been removed from the company Web site.

I was shocked and hurt that I had not had the courtesy of a phone call or personal e-mail from this manager. I left him another voice mail, asking what had happened and that he consider me in the future. Again: No response.

What should I have done? Does it make sense to try to contact this manager for future work? I don’t want to stalk him. Name Withheld

You certainly have every right to feel bewildered and insulted. But maybe you should also feel relieved.

It’s easy to conjecture all kinds of explanations here, but keep in mind that some of the most plausible actually have nothing to do with you. Maybe this manager lost some kind of internal political struggle about the new position. Maybe he stepped on H.R.’s toes. Maybe he didn’t know that an internal candidate had the gig locked up. Maybe the process always takes months, but no one bothered to tell you. Who knows?

But frankly, no matter what the explanation, it’s lame that he ended a conversation he started with a full-on vanishing act. That’s why your best course might be simply to be pleased you avoided working for this guy, and let the whole thing go. Plenty of companies have strict policies about avoiding communication that could open a can of litigation, but too many managers use that as an excuse to dummy up. You want to work for someone better than that.

Should you wish to resolve the mystery here — which I would understand — you could give that manager one last shot. But do so in a way that removes short-term job-seeking from the conversation. This may sound disingenuous (mostly because it is) but you could try a note that has two themes: Thanks for thinking of me, and would you consider an informal, off-the-record phone call about what went awry here? Indicate that your interest is purely for future reference, not about rehashing this incident. What you really want to do is find out whether H.R. somehow found you objectionable, and for what (possibly misguided) reason.

If the conversation is framed as carrying zero threat to this manager, maybe he’ll be helpful. And perhaps the chat will go so swimmingly that you’ll want to keep in touch about other opportunities. But based on your experience, I’m sorry to say that I think that’s a long shot.

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Dear Workologist:

I work as an administrator for a medical practice. I earn a decent salary, but not what I think I deserve — and about $6,000 a year less than the other administrator. We are connected to an academic institution, and her salary is mostly covered by the college. But she asked the practice to add 10 percent to that figure, and she got it.

The thing is, she does nothing, basically. She has snowed the entire department and my chairman. She is lazy, not smart, makes personal calls all day long, and doesn’t even have a college education. Yet she earns more than I do.

I just can’t get past it. I am incredibly dedicated, work very hard, manage a staff, run the finances and billing for the department, work with the billing service. My question is, what do I do to make my boss realize he has been completely taken for a ride? How can I get more money? I deserve at least as much as this other administrator.

L.R.H.

Long ago, H. L. Mencken defined wealth as “any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.” Decades later, people with advanced academic degrees came to a not-dissimilar conclusion about the intersection of human psychology, money, and “positional concerns,” by way of a study finding that a surprising number of people would choose to earn $50,000 in a situation in which their peers made $25,000, rather than a $100,000 in a context where $200,000 was typical.

The rationality there can be debated, but I bring it up because any argument you make to your boss needs to set up properly. Right now you are essentially saying: “My fellow administrator is incompetent — so you should give me a raise!” That is not persuasive.

If you believe you should make more money, you need to construct a case that’s tied to you, your abilities, your accomplishments and your worth. Energies devoted to tearing down your colleague are high-risk (you might come across as spiteful, or nuts) with no clear rewards (a co-worker’s faults say nothing about your merits).

In other words, don’t become so caught up in your “positional” concerns that you veer off into a mission that’s less about what you deserve, and more about some abstract pecking order. Ask yourself: Would you rather get a $6,000 raise (tied with your colleague, but making more money than you are currently) or stand pat and see your colleague’s salary reduced by $7,000 (you’d be Menckenesquely ahead, but not bring home a single extra dime). The answer should guide your actions.

If your real objective is to snag a higher salary, perhaps the lesson to take from your co-worker is that she, somehow, persuaded your bosses to give her more money. Maybe you should ask her for advice.

Send your workplace conundrums to workologist@nytimes.com, including your name and contact information (even if you want it withheld for publication). The Workologist is a guy with well-intentioned opinions, not a professional career adviser. Letters may be edited.

DealBook: Shoeshines Keep Wall Street in the Black (or Maybe Brown)

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The Haggler: In Search of Romance, and Maybe a Refund

SOMEHOW, in the four-tenths of a decade that the Haggler has been aiding consumers, no one with dating-service issues has written in. Until now.

Q. I’m an attractive, successful, busy and single mother of three, and dating stinks. So I thought it couldn’t hurt to sign up with It’s Just Lunch, a widely advertised matchmaking service. But it’s been a disaster.

I paid $1,000 for a three-month membership, during which the service was to set up dates from its database, take feedback from each person after the fact and use it to refine selections for subsequent rendezvous.

My first date didn’t really count as a date because the guy never showed. I was then set up with someone else, but we had zero chemistry. After your first date, according to company policy, you have a face-to-face meeting with a staff member. I was looking forward to visiting what I assumed was I.J.L.’s Midtown offices, and drove from Westchester County to Manhattan in the middle of a workday to meet Thelma. (For some reason, you rarely learn the last names of I.J.L.’s employees.) When I arrived at the given address, it was a bar on West 40th Street.

Thelma asked me a bunch of profile questions, which I had already answered for employees who were known to me as Catherine and Jeff.

In the month that followed, little has happened, other than frustrating efforts to e-mail and call company representatives. When I finally did reach someone — Debbie — she agreed that my experience had been subpar, and in an effort to appease me, extended my membership for another month and sent me a $25 gift card. But the card had no funds loaded on it. You expect some rejection when you sign up with a dating service, but hearing “Sorry, this isn’t working” from a CVS employee — I didn’t see that coming.

I’ve asked to have my money refunded. I’ve also asked to have another date set up. So far, I have gotten nowhere.

Can you help?

L.M.

A. You can find a fair number of online complaints about It’s Just Lunch, but how surprising is that? It’s hard to imagine a business with a more high-maintenance clientele than lonely, upmarket singles.

“May you inherit a high-end dating service for U.S. professionals!” — to the Haggler’s ears, that sounds like a pretty good curse.

But It’s Just Lunch, at least in this case, seems to have taken a supremely challenging job and botched it big time. What’s troubling here is not the failed dates, though they aren’t exactly flattering given that fixing people up is what the company does. More vexing are the faulty lines of communication, which led L.M. to speak to seven different company reps over the course of two months. And those conversations usually happened after she had called or e-mailed two or three times.

Is that a failure on It’s Just Lunch’s part? No, said the company’s president, Melissa Brown, who e-mailed the Haggler from the company’s headquarters in Palm Desert, Calif. “We believe it is important to point out that our clients are not assigned to just one dating director,” she wrote, “but instead we work as a team.”

That notion is hard to square with a “Welcome to It’s Just Lunch” e-mail that L.M. received soon after she signed up with the service in May. “My name is Jeff, and I will be working with you on all of your dates from this point forward,” Jeff wrote.

Which is it, people? A team? Or Jeff? You can’t blame the customer for assuming that it was the latter.

After looking into L.M.’s file, Ms. Brown decided “there was some miscommunication that happened on our end,” which she described as “not typical” for a client.

“We strive to provide a level of service to our clients,” she wrote, “and any time this threshold is not met or exceeded, we will rectify the situation.”

The Haggler notes that Ms. Brown said nothing about a “high” level of service, or a “reasonably decent” level of service. Just a level of service. Which means that there’s no telling where the company sets the bar. You get a sense, though, from what happened next.

To rectify this situation, It’s Just Lunch e-mailed L.M. to say it would issue a refund. But not a full refund. L.M. didn’t realize it at the time — it was part of terms and conditions she apparently didn’t read — but she had signed up for a membership that provided her with three dates or three months of service, whichever came second. Because L.M. had been on one date, she would be sent a check for two-thirds of her $1,000, or precisely $666.67.

Yes, the company rounded up. Sending a check for $666.66 — hey, that would have seemed a little stinting.

Pardon the snark. But the Haggler can’t help himself, mostly since this entertainingly precise refund had a string attached. Actually, “string” is the wrong word. It was more like a whoopee cushion because it was so ridiculous.

A “refund settlement agreement” for L.M.’s signature was e-mailed to her last week, requiring that she “refrain from making any statements, public or private, written or oral, which are derogatory or critical or may discredit, malign, or disparage the releasee’s reputation or business.” Publishing such statements in a newspaper was expressly prohibited in the next sentence.

L.M. naturally refused to sign this contract, causing It’s Just Lunch to modify it to exclude e-mails she’d already sent to the Haggler. That’s a step in the right direction, though she hasn’t signed that document, either, because she reserves the right to discuss it. The Haggler understands. He, too, would think twice about setting up any single friends with It’s Just Lunch. Forget about dates. The company can’t even handle a breakup.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.