First Name Basis.....Workplace Ramble
Jan. 5th, 2008 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xakaraEvening Lovelies,
There are many points throughout the night that wonderful blog rambles come to mind that never make it here because I'm too tired when I get home. But as I've obligated myself to blogging daily this year, you're stuck with the rambles you've been spared until now.
Okay, of the nine hours I'm at work on average, I spend the first half hour and the last half hour with co-workers. That leave 8 hours encapsulated in my own world and the many "interesting" citizens who move through it. It wasn't until this morning that I realized how different my 8 hrs are from the time everyone else spends there.
For those of you reading this as the very first entry, two things: 1) I look younger than I am, I sound younger than many, and I'm not quite 5'4 which adds to it all. So now you have some background. 2) Where you been?
So, looking and sounding young, and spending most of my night looking up at all the men who come in over the course of the shift, (along with older women, women of color, and women from the south), I've long since become habituated to all the terms of endearment that I hear. I realized the depth of this habituation, (and my vastly different concept of familiarity) after one of my co-workers came in and was genuinely surprised at how I'm addressed by most of my customers.
My nights and early mornings are a litany of; sweetheart, sweety, darling, dear, deary, love, luv, (yes, I'm distinguishing between them), baby girl, and baby. Now the last one is the only one that bothers me. Every time I hear it the only thing that comes to mind is: "I'm not your baby, I don't know you, go somewhere". But I deal and go on. The other ones however, I prefer.
My co-worker's reply to one of my customers was: "Sweetheart? He doesn't know you. Who is he calling sweetheart?". I completely got that. But it doesn't bother me. Both sides of my family are from the south and calling someone by anything but their name is very common to me. I expect it from people 1)who are older than me, 2)who think they're older than me, 3)who are feeling affectionate toward me, or 4)who simply want something to call me. Reading my name tag and using my name on a familiar basis like we hang out regularly, however, is outright irritating.
You don't know me. We are not friends. We aren't even acquaintances because we haven't been properly introduced and I don't know your name in turn. So my name is more personal than any endearment someone decideds to use because they think they're talking to some young girl. Much of the time I don't wear my tag to avoid those folks who would use my name otherwise.
Now I've had a few folks introduce themselves and that's an entirely different situation. We are now on a first name basis and all is right with the world. There are, of course, those who have introduced themselves, read my name tag, and still call me sweetheart. But that's okay too. We've been introduced and that's all that matters.
On the other side of this are those people who use their credit cards regularly and expect me to know their names. WHY would you want some stranger staring closely enough at your credit card and ID information to be able to memorize your name out of the 200 people they see every night? If you want to be know, introduce yourself or wear your own name tag and we can all be friends. :)
Uh oh, I've run out of my allotted time and didn't even get to go into the customers who seem personally offended when I'm not working an expected shift. I can go more into that tomorrow perhaps. Combine it with the benign stalker thread to sum all that up nicely.
Til then.
Workplace Ramble (Names) Done
~X
For those of you reading this as the very first entry, two things: 1) I look younger than I am, I sound younger than many, and I'm not quite 5'4 which adds to it all. So now you have some background. 2) Where you been?
So, looking and sounding young, and spending most of my night looking up at all the men who come in over the course of the shift, (along with older women, women of color, and women from the south), I've long since become habituated to all the terms of endearment that I hear. I realized the depth of this habituation, (and my vastly different concept of familiarity) after one of my co-workers came in and was genuinely surprised at how I'm addressed by most of my customers.
My nights and early mornings are a litany of; sweetheart, sweety, darling, dear, deary, love, luv, (yes, I'm distinguishing between them), baby girl, and baby. Now the last one is the only one that bothers me. Every time I hear it the only thing that comes to mind is: "I'm not your baby, I don't know you, go somewhere". But I deal and go on. The other ones however, I prefer.
My co-worker's reply to one of my customers was: "Sweetheart? He doesn't know you. Who is he calling sweetheart?". I completely got that. But it doesn't bother me. Both sides of my family are from the south and calling someone by anything but their name is very common to me. I expect it from people 1)who are older than me, 2)who think they're older than me, 3)who are feeling affectionate toward me, or 4)who simply want something to call me. Reading my name tag and using my name on a familiar basis like we hang out regularly, however, is outright irritating.
You don't know me. We are not friends. We aren't even acquaintances because we haven't been properly introduced and I don't know your name in turn. So my name is more personal than any endearment someone decideds to use because they think they're talking to some young girl. Much of the time I don't wear my tag to avoid those folks who would use my name otherwise.
Now I've had a few folks introduce themselves and that's an entirely different situation. We are now on a first name basis and all is right with the world. There are, of course, those who have introduced themselves, read my name tag, and still call me sweetheart. But that's okay too. We've been introduced and that's all that matters.
On the other side of this are those people who use their credit cards regularly and expect me to know their names. WHY would you want some stranger staring closely enough at your credit card and ID information to be able to memorize your name out of the 200 people they see every night? If you want to be know, introduce yourself or wear your own name tag and we can all be friends. :)
Uh oh, I've run out of my allotted time and didn't even get to go into the customers who seem personally offended when I'm not working an expected shift. I can go more into that tomorrow perhaps. Combine it with the benign stalker thread to sum all that up nicely.
Til then.
Workplace Ramble (Names) Done
~X
