Hi all! I am a physician and at my practice we often have trainees. This includes medical students, residents, and fellows. Sometimes clinic can get busy, leaving little time for lunch. Whenever I am staffing clinic, I used to always buy everyone lunch. This includes the office staff, students, and residents/fellows. I typically just get a consensus of what everyone wants for that day (majority rules) and I give the student my credit card and ask them to pick up the food. The students love this because it’s free lunch and it gives them a break from clinic. People are typically appreciative of this and I thought everything was fine.
Not too long ago, I was in clinic and the people wanted chic fil A. It’s no secret that the owners of chic fil a has views that some (including myself) would find questionable. I consider myself to be very liberal and disagree with almost everything their leadership supports. However I am also a realist, and know that life is not so black and white. If you boycott every company that does something you disagree with, you might as well live out in the woods. Plus, chic fil a is freaking delicious. So as usual, I gave my card to the students, told them to take some time for themselves and to just bring back the lunch for people. I didn’t think anything of it.
Soon after, I get an email from the students’ affairs office saying that I am accused of bigotry and making students feel uncomfortable, and that I need to meet immediately to discuss my academic status. I went to the meeting and they told me that a student was offended when I "pushed my views" on others. I was taken completely aback. I asked for clarification regarding which views they felt like I pushed. They told me that it was because I tried to push "inappropriate" rhetorics by "forcing" the student to go to a place they had moral oppositions to. I also asked for clarification, and received confirmation that it WASN’T because I was asking the students to pick up the food (which I guess some would consider hazing since they’re the lowest on the training hierarchy), but it was solely because the food choice was chic fil a. I essentially told them to kick rocks and left since I knew that my subspecialty was niche, and they needed our group more than we needed them. Luckily no administrative action was taken, and I was just told to "be more considerate".
This whole encounter left a sour taste in my mouth and I realized that I needed to protect myself as I don’t want to be reported. So now, I just ask my resident to grab lunch and I specifically mention that lunch is only for the graduate trainees (residents/fellows) and office staff. I tell the students they can bring or buy their own lunch. Apparently some students got upset about this and complained to other people while on another rotation. Medicine is small, and this got back to me and now I’m wondering if my new policy is too harsh and if I’m the asshole for excluding students from when I buy lunch.
NTA – you have to consider yourself and your practice first.
Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with telling the students exactly what happened — another student complained to the university because they didn’t like the group’s choice of Chick-Fil-A, and you were called on the carpet and told to “be more considerate”. Tell them that, since another incident would probably result in negative professional consequences, you have to remove that possibilty.
There’s no reason not to put the blame where it belongs, and that isn’t you.