“I’m Bob, and I’ll be your server today.”
“Hi, Bob. I’m Neil, and I’ll be your customer today.”
When I first got my Safeway club card I mispelled my first name and scrambled my last name so I could tell which junk mail was coming from them.
The funny part is that I live in the same small/medium size town where I was born and went to school with some of the people that work there. Their reading my name causes a WTF look and a laugh. It’s our inside joke.
Even when I had an easy last name, it was incomprehensibly butchered by anyone other than family or friends. Now that my last name is extremely difficult to pronounce, I always get people saying, “Thank you so much, Mrs… Um, I’m sorry. How do you pronounce that?”
Then follows the inevitable questioning - “Oh, that’s so pretty. What nationality is that name?” Indian. “Oh, how did you wind up with that? Are you from India?” No. My husband is. “Oh. Great people. I love Indians. So polite.” Are you freaking kidding me?
If my son is there, it often gets worse. “Is that where you got your son? Or are you babysitting?” Excuse me? “Your son - did you adopt him from India?” No, I got him from the supermarket. He was on sale and I needed the labor. Oh, wait - that’s not true. I carried him for nine months and bore him the usual way. “What’s his name?” Gah! Can I go to my room now?
Given that it took me three years to pronounce my own last name, I hardly expect anyone else to do so unless they’re family (and most of the familiy on my side can’t do it anyway), much less someone I’ve never met or will ever see again. And the amount of intrusive questioning my name seems to engender makes me hate the practice of calling the customer by name.
I’m pasting this into an email I’m sending to my fiancee, who will be facing the same questions sometime in the next ten years (Indian genes being all dominant-like).