I do if there is a familiarity, like the woman at Robin’s in the morning, or someone I know from several contexts… or if they have been extremely helpful. Last week I noticed the guy at Staples, he was being incredibly helpful showing me a Blackberry Playbook, but my seven year old son was bugging to go somewhere fun. I made my son read the fellow’s name tag, his name was an unusual one, that rhymed with my son’s unusual one so that entertained my son for a few minutes. My son decided that this made the 20 something clerk his “twin”.
When I was in my early 20s my cousin and I worked at a Subway and we despised being called by name after closing time by people who had been at the bar. We swapped our name tags so that people calling our names weren’t really calling us.
I get called by name all the time, partly because I wear a name tag but I also introduce my self to clients at work. I get to know pretty personal things about them, it is only fair they know my name.
They do have an advantage over you. Your job is to serve or attend to them.
Wearing a name tag is a third-party introduction. At least, it’s not unreasonable for customers to interpret it as such. And as Lynn has pointed out, the enforced name tags are part of the same style of customer-service presentation as enforced first-person introductions. You can’t really blame customers for taking these presentations at face value.
Most of [my jobs have] the places I shop require[d] me to [wear nametags]use debit/credit cards with my name on it, and I HATE when people do this to me. I’m not saying this as an anti-social person; I enjoy most aspects of [retail work] shopping and [working with] buying stuff from people. But if I haven’t introduced myself or had a third party introduce me, you don’t have the right to use my name. It’s creepy, even when [other women do]anybody does it, and it’s very often used by domineering people who want to imply that they have some sort of [advantage over] knowledge about you. Fortunately very few people do it.
I always thought name tags were more for the benefit of others who work there, and accordingly don’t presume that it is an invitation to all and sundry to call them by name.
Invasive. However, when a service person introduces themselves, even if they have to do it (like waiters) then it’s okay, especially if you’re trying to get their specific attention. But if you haven’t introduced yourself it’s invasive and uncomfortable to get somebody’s name off a nametag. (Particularly if you then pronounce it wrong.)
Personally, I hate when customers try to call me by name. My name is very common but it is also A) spelled differently and B) a name usually used by the opposite gender. Although my parents spelled my name phonetically to avoid mispronunciation I constantly have people saying my name wrong. :smack: Just. Don’t. Thanks.
I work in customer service, and I understand exactly the point Glory was making about customers using your name in a domineering and/or patronizing way. Generally these clients have some sincere need to see themselves as superior to someone working a “menial” service job, and they seem to feel the need to “elevate” themselves socially by trying to make others seem “smaller”/less important than they are. Same type of person who tells a cop “I pay your salary!” when they get a speeding ticket. Or “Do you know who I am?!” when confronted with rules that they don’t like. Or treats servers like crap to “impress” his/her date. I don’t want these people to call me by name, and don’t wear my name tag 99% of the time. I identify myself on the phone, and am happy to give a guest my name if they need it for a complaint or a compliment, but no name tag.
That said (and this may be a geographic distinction,) I have a lot of regular clients who address me by name, but usually prefaced with “Miss.” Perfectly common form of address in the southern US: “How are you tonight, Miss Rachel? How’s that sweet baby of yours?” (Of course, I tend to be overly formal with guests/clients, and address them as Mr. or Ms. LastName until they ask me to use their first. Even then, I fall back on the Southern forms, using Mr./Ms. First Name for most people. It doesn’t come across as “stuffy” or weird around here, trust me.)
And when I address customer service people who are helping me, I tend to use Miss, Ma’am, or Sir unless they are people I encounter a lot. Even then, I call the 20-year-old cashier at the grocery store “Miss Christian,” not “Chris” or “Christian.”
(Of course, I’m a Southern woman of a certain age, so I can feasibly get away with “Dear,” “Hon,” or “Sweetie” a few times a day and no one finds it a bit odd, but that’s a totally different story. And usually because I have just completely blanked on someone’s name!)
When I was a waitress I didn’t like it, for pretty much all the stated reasons…it’s overly familiar, patronizing, a dominance move, etc. More than anything it’s just…weird.
You don’t excessively use your friends’ or family members names do you? When your friend passes you the salt at lunch do you say “Thank you, Angie.” ? When you are asking your spouse where to find something do you say “George, where are the lightbulbs?”
Using someone’s name for any reason but to distinguish who you mean in a group or to get their attention, or in a moment of passion (actually, to me, weird even then) makes you sound like you’re selling something. Thank you, Dale Carnegie.
When I was younger I used to have to wear a name tag. I didn’t like it when people addressed me by name, especially if I didn’t know the person. I.E. not a regular customer. Usually people that did call me by name did so excessively in the short amount of time I was dealing with them. I felt like saying ok I got it, you can read bravo.
Although I never made a big deal out of it. From what I gathered the name tag is their incase you get good, bad service or as a means to identify who was helping them with what. Etc.
Yes! I hate when people repeat my name several times during a short interaction, stressing it every time. When people say my name like that, it sounds more menacing than friendly.
Haha, this is about my reaction too.
I believe that the majority of people using my name really are just trying to be polite, so I am not bothered most of the time. But the people who stress and repeat my name at every opportunity do bother me.
I do have a real problem with remembering faces, though (I’m the worst person to watch movies with!), and when a customer uses my name at work (even politely), I always worry: “Is this someone I know and am not recognizing? Or are they just reading my name tag? How do I know? Ahhhh!”
Ugh, I hate it. I have to give my first and last name when I answer calls at my brokerage firm. I then have to call you by your last name. Dale Carnegie told a generation that we all like to be called by our name. He was wrong.
I wouldn’t do it. I had to wear an ID tag at my last job and the very few times someone did it to me, I didn’t like it.
I suppose, though, if I got into an animated and pleasant conversation with someone, and that person read my name and gave me theirs as a way of introduction, I wouldn’t be upset. But I don’t recall that this ever happened to me.
I don’t do it, and I don’t like it when people do it to me (I work in customer service). Not that I think they are trying to be anything but nice, usually. I don’t wear a name tag or introduce myself, but often customers ask my name and make a point of addressing me by it.
