The thing with the name tag is, it’s not there so you know my name and can address me with it as if we’re friends or know one another. It is there so if you are unsatisfied with my service or satisfied with it, you can know who I am so you can tell it to a higher-up in the department.
I disagree with this.
If I’m upset enough about your service why would I care what your name was? If I was going to complain to management about service wouldn’t I do it right there and right then and wouldn’t management know who my server was at that particular moment without relying on a name tag?
Me: “I’m displeased with my service.”
Manager: “Who was your server?”
Me: “I don’t know. I never saw her name tag.”
Manager: “Well there’s nothing we can do about it then.”
:rolleyes:
I do not call people with nametags by their names, for all the reasons given above. I have had jobs where nametags were required, and my experiences coincide with the majority opinion above, too. I don’t see the point in trying to re-word the same thing, as it’s been stated very well by several people already. When someone unwelcome asks my name, whether it’s at a bar or a store or Jamba Juice, it’s Veronika, and no, of course that’s not my name. Suck it.
Give me your name first, and maybe I’ll give you a pass. Unless you’re a creeper anyway. Seriously, it’s universally been a dude in my experiences, and they’ve all been douchey.
I rarely address anyone by their name, it seems such an always-be-closing sales-guy thing to do. Obviously, if I’m focusing on one of my kids, I might use his name to get his attention. But mostly I look at somebody and talk to them, totally without using their name.
I’ve worked retail and wore a name tag. It didn’t bother me if people used my name, although most of them didn’t. I think I had one request to move my hair, once, so someone could see what my name was. A lot of my coworkers did the same thing–tag hidden in hair, tag partially hidden under lapel. If you really objected to someone using your name I suppose you could just not wear a tag, but then what happens when someone reports your great service and doesn’t know your name?
ETA: I didn’t mind when customers used my name but I really really REALLY HATE IT when salesmen do. I just hate it. They think I love the sound of my own name–they are wrongo wrongo. At least not when they say it.
I’d be surprised if the culture in Canada is that much different, but who knows.
Doesn’t it just feel odd to you to address somebody by their name without being introduced? It feels really weird to me, whether in a business context or social context. Even at restaurants where the waitron introduces themselves by name, it still feels overly familiar to me to call them by their first name. I don’t think there’s anything rude or offensive about it–it just feels awkward to me.
If a waiter says “Hi, I’m Jim and I’ll be serving you tonight, can I get you guys started with some drinks?” I don’t think it would be creepy, weird or in any way rude to say, “Thanks Jim, I’ll have an iced tea.”
EVEN if Jim is being “forced” by his management to introduce himself by name (and I would reckon that the vast majority of service staff who introduce themselves are doing it because of management encouragement), I still don’t think it’s rude.
And, by the same token, even if management is forcing you to wear a nametag, I don’t think you should be offended or take it as rude when a customer calls you by your name.
The two situations are identical, except in one instance you are verbally forced to give your name and the other you are visually forced to give your name.
If anyone here is actually arguing that calling your waiter by his/her name after they have introduced themselves by name to you and your table is rude, well then I hope the universe takes pity on you!
Aren’t you the guy who sent a facebook message to your anxious waiter after you went home?
Yeah, I wouldn’t ask your advice on how not to unsettle waitstaff.
I personally don’t want the damn’ customers chatting with me. I want them to finish their business and go away, so I can deal with the next customer.
And as many others have said, my name is on my nametag (which I usually only wear when higher-ups from outside the store are visiting) so that customers will know whom to compliment/complain about.
I really wonder if there’s any kind of male-female divide here. As a female, I can’t think of any instance when I wore a nametag where another woman called me by the name on the tag, unless there was some unusual and more familiar conversation happening, and even then she would (and I can only think of this happening twice) tell me her name first, before asking if she could use mine or I volunteered mine verbally even though it was on the tag.
On the other hand, as a female, I can think of many times (as in more than I can count/recall individually) a man used the name on my tag. Saying it’s offensive or rude isn’t the correct mindset though. Saying it’s doltish and/or creepy, yes, I would call it those for sure. It was also a constant battle to get it through men’s heads that just because I was being nice to them didn’t mean I liked them or wanted to date them. I really did have to tell a few that I was only being nice because it’s in my job description, and it’s what I’m paid for! Seriously, WTF?
Actually, I was taught in a college business class that it’s a good idea to have people who deal with the public wear name tags precisely so customers could mention who they had been dealing with. This is also why tech support people will start their script with “Hi, I’m Jay and I’ll be helping you with your problem today.” Name tags are supposed make customers feel that the company has a human face, that of the worker.
In a great many companies, wearing a name tag is not optional. If you want to work, you wear the tag. In some places, you have to pay for a new tag if you lose or “lose” your tag, or you are written up if you show up without a tag too many times. And while the aggravation of wearing a tag might be minor, it’s still an aggravation and it’s a way for petty assholes to harass workers. When working with the public, yes, you have to put up with petty assholes and their maneuvers. It’s somewhat better than starving. Make no mistake, though…you aren’t being friendly when you call a worker by name, chances are the worker thinks that you’re being overly familiar at the very least. The worker doesn’t want a personal relationship with you. Really. And guys, most of the female workers are not being friendly to you because they want your bod. They just want to keep their jobs.
I will grant that customers need some way of identifying individual employees. Maybe some employee was exceptionally helpful, or extremely nasty. And everyone comes with a personal identifying word, called a name, and having to wear a tag with one’s name is not as dehumanizing as wearing a numbered tag…but most people who have to wear a tag don’t really want to have a personal relationship with their customers.
I don’t have to wear a tag now, but I’ve had to do it in the past. And the people who called me by name were, one and all, petty assholes of one stripe or another. Not just because they called me by name, but because of other things that they did.
I’ve had a couple of women call me by name, and not tell me their names. In every instance where a customer (male or female) called me by name, it was because s/he wanted me to bend the rules a bit. When I worked in the deli, one guy used to always ask me to undercharge him, and he implied that he was going to talk to the owner about my service. I finally started asking another worker to come over and read the scale and price chart with me (this was obviously back in the Stone Age before digital scales and printers) so that we could agree with the weight and price of the package. I always had to staple that particular customer’s bag shut, too, as he’d wander around the store and “absentmindedly” slip things into the bag before going to the checkout. Other guys would say things like “Hey Lynn, what time do you get off?” <snicker snicker> and then keep trying to pin me down as to when my shift ended. These guys clearly thought that I was working because I was trying to get picked up. I’ve seen this happen to other female workers, too, men will attempt to flirt and pick up women who have the bad luck of working in that place at that time. With women customers, they’d mostly use my name when they were trying to get me to give them a discount or something like that. One woman liked to fiddle with a Customer Comment Card while she was calling me by name and wanting me to mark down a garment that I was unpacking. Gee, I WONDER what she was implying?
No, the culture isn’t any different in Canada, at all. Everywhere I worked that had name tags (and I’m in Canada), the people wearing them felt exactly the same. In fact, there was never an employee who liked them, in any of the three places I wore them.
Does that mean that people like Leeffan will stop? No, people believe what they want to believe. That’s why people hit on the bartender all the time. They just get a little drink in them and imagine, “I think she must really like me, she keeps looking over here, and she always smiles at me!” Some people don’t want to see anything but how they want things to be, even when faced with evidence saying otherwise. There will always be people such as this. Never quite getting that they are seeing a forced behaviour, not a free action.
Again it’s not that they are mortified, servers have thicker skins than that, as a rule. It’s that they don’t care for it but have no choice but to go along. To imagine, as they’ve never mentioned not liking it, so they must be okay with it, is simple delusion. It seems there is never a shortage of people who prefer the appearance over the reality, so they run with it. Leaffan is hardly alone in this, it’s all around.
Again, it’s not a terrible sin. But it’s also not a different culture here, either.
I’ve done my fair share of retail in the past both in Canada and the U.S. and everyone hated being called by their names. It was a relatively common bitch-session topic in the breakroom. Switching nametags was common, “forgetting” them was common, and I don’t recall anyone ever saying “God, it was nice to be called by name today! I could have really used a bit of chit-chat between the woman with ninety expired coupons and the guy who wanted to pay with an out-of-state cheque but didn’t have any ID.”
If you really want to make a nice impression on the people serving you, be polite, be courteous, say “please” and “thank you,” and don’t call them by name. Jenny at Sav-on Foods doesn’t want you to call her by name.
Which is why I scan and bag my own shit.
I have to wear a nametag (heh heh, corporate overlords) and it’s really uncomfortable when people peer at my nametag and address me by name. I don’t believe anyone does this to be friendly. I’m going to change my nametag to ffffffffffffffff. I guarantee I’m already sick of my name from being paged a million times a shift.
Here’s another aspect. I have an unusual name. So everyone reads it and says “How do you pronounce that? Where are you from? What a lovely name!”
All polite sentiments, and I PROMISE YOU, I respond politely, but all of that to me = you are foreign. You have a weird name.
Let’s not even get started with my legal name, which once in a while someone will mess up and put on my nametag. I invariably cross it off and put the name I prefer to be called by. I’d rather not have my beautiful name butchered by every ignoramus I come across.
I’m perfectly fine with people going to my manager and using my name for it. I’m even fine with them using it to get my attention. What I find creepy is when you are calling me by name for no apparent reason…I am already giving you my full attention, for example.
Like it or not, names DO have power. And people like Leaffan are of course going to continue using them. I don’t get bitey or anything over it, but I do become ever so slightly wary of the person who feels free to use a stranger’s name with such impunity.
Maybe I should just get bitey.
I think the way I’d describe the use of my name by a customer who doesn’t know me, is patronizing. If you don’t know me but are talking to me as if you do, and you know my name and I do not know yours, I feel that the “relationship” is unequal and weighted toward you in a way that gives you power over me, and by addressing me by my name, it often feels condescending.
In my mind, calling someone by name is something that should only be done in a few situations. If it’s rather formal, and two people have been introduced, or if it’s casual and we’re well acquainted. In general, I make a point of avoiding calling anyone by name, other than to get their attention, as I generally feel names are really quite a personal and even intimate thing when being called or calling someone by name while talking to them.
This gets thrown completely out of balance in situations where there’s been no introduction, one person is wearing a nametag and the other is not. I get that in retail and service industries it’s normal to have a level of deferrence and all to the customer, and to that extent I’m okay with being called sir since there’s no introduction, but I feel like it’s presuming a lot from my part to then essentially reinforce the idea that they’re socially beneath me by calling them by name while they’re still expected to call me sir. And I also know that when I had a job where I wore a nametag back in high school, it was always odd to be called by name by a stranger.
So, yeah, I just don’t see the point in going “Thanks, [Name].” when I can just say “Thanks.” And then I can avoid the whole issue.
No, it’s how normal social interactions work. In general, if you don’t tell someone that someone annoys you, they have no way of knowing that it annoys you. I don’t know why people insist on trying indirect signals on such people that clearly did not understand them in the first place. Someone is not delusional because they don’t get your signals. They are just more literally minded than usual.
And when it comes to hitting on a bartender–most aren’t under the delusion that the bartender actually likes them. They don’t care. It’s part of the bartender’s job to be nice to them, and these patrons take advantage of it. If the bartender gets creeped out, they are free to stop extra interactions with said person.
As for the topic of this thread: of course using someone’s name like you are friends with them is weird. But that has nothing to do with nametags or whether you’ve been introduced. Even if you’ve been introduced, using someone’s name is odd unless it is necessary, and it almost always isn’t in situations where people wear nametags.
I wish it weren’t so odd, as it would make remembering people’s names easier.
But interactions between customers and service workers are not normal social interactions.
They use “indirect signals” because it’s the only thing they can do. Bluntly telling irritating customers to quit it will get them written up.
And I’m not buying the “they don’t get your signals” noise. Most of them get it just fine. They do it because they enjoy needling people who they know aren’t allowed to poke back. Witness Leaffan’s refusal to reconsider this offputting habit even after learning that it’s mostly not appreciated. (“Cultural differences” is a non-starter, as his fellow Canadians have pointed out.) Do you think he “didn’t get” the poll results and the explanations posted in the thread? There is obviously more at play here than a simple misunderstanding.