I insist my staff calls patients from the waiting room in the same manner. I find it very disrespectful for my 30 year old nurse to call a 85 year old patient “Mary”. However, I find it equally disrespectful for my 30 year old nurse to call an 18 year old patient Suzie. Miss Smith is appropriate.
That’s interesting. I tend to address any male over 21 as sir. If a gentleman is holding a door for me, I always respond, “thank you sir”. I can’t imagine why that would be insulting. I didn’t particularly like going from Miss to Ma’am but there really isn’t a distinction for gentleman.
The doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.
William Osler
Well, in this case it would be “the doctor who treats himself probably can’t do a very good job from the confines of his prison cell”.
“Sir” is what you call grown-ups. Where (honest question) did you get the idea it was only for old guys?
I’ll answer your specific question momentarily. But first:
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“Sir” is what certain authoritarian fathers demand that their sons address them as. Speaking strictly for myself, I find that ethos offensive and not conducive to warm family relations. I called my father “Dad.”
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“Sir” is a form of military address. I understand it for this purpose, and have great respect those who serve in the military. But I never did, so it was never a part of my lexicon.
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“Sir” is used to address members of the aristocracy (and those who have been knighted — honorifically today, but for real in the past). While this is a part of others’ history, as an American, it’s not a part of mine. (And though you can make a case for him earning the honor, I find it really silly when someone speaks of “Sir Paul McCartney.”)
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I grant that “Sir” is used for more general purposes in American culture…but all of the above get in the way of my appreciation of the term.
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Most importantly, it’s true that I’m now in my seventh decade of life. (Count carefully…this means that I’m in my 60s!) However, I have always said that — while I do a very convincing impression of being a “grown-up,” and faithfully discharge all the duties and responsibilities inherent in that term — inside I’m still about in my early 20s or so. I attribute this mainly to a lifelong infatuation with rock ‘n’ roll. And whenever I strap on a guitar, which is still quite frequently, the illusion is easy for me to maintain, even though my appearance (and certain physical realities) belie it.
So I don’t particularly like being reminded that I’m a “grown-up” — particularly one old enough to be called “sir.” I’ve rarely used that term in my life, but when I have, it’s always been for someone considerably older than myself.
Thank you, that was interesting.
I still consider people in their 20s grown-ups, and therefore I call them “Sir” when I don’t know their name. (And I never called my father “Sir,” and I don’t have any particular use for aristocracy or the military, so that probably explains why I don’t have the same baggage with the term.)
I’m “friends” with the father of someone I went to school with. When I first called Mr. “lastname”, he told me to call him by his 1st name.
I’m newly 36, and am still not used to be addressed as “sir”.
Growing up in Georgia during the 80s and 90s, all school employees (including bus drivers, custodians, lunchroom workers) were almost always as Mr./Mrs./Miss + Last Name. In church, we referred to most adults as Mr./Mrs. +first name.
As an adult (39), I am still in contact with my two favorite high school teacher and my high school librarian. I still call my former teacher Mrs. + Last Name because she is now in her early 80s and I’m not sure I’d be comfortable calling her by her first name. The former librarian is 60, the same age as my mom, and we have a much closer friendship as adults than we did when I was in school. It took me a while, but I finally started calling her by her first name a few years ago.
I have a cousin whose wife is a psychopath and she called my aunt and uncle Mr. & Mrs. Hardin right up until their death. She had been married to their son for 30 years and knew how uncomfortable it made them to address them so formally, so she persisted.
Dr. Destiny, Doctor Light, Dr. Phosphorus, Doctor Sivana…
I think that ended after the Bates started having children.
I don’t think I’ve met any adults who wanted to be Miss/Mrs./Mr. anything since I left high school. It was the expected form of address in all the schools I attended K-12, and used both when talking to teachers, and when talking about them with others. It was fairly rare for me to even know what their first names were. I just sort of assumed that they had some.
I went to a four-year state university, and as far as I can recall, I called everyone with a PhD “Doctor Lastname”. The instructors who didn’t have a PhD varied on what they wanted. Most of them would accept Ms./Mr. Lastname as an option; the graduate instructors invariably wanted first names only. Some of the PhDs indicated they were fine with being on a first name basis in class, but I could never make myself do that – they had a doctorate, so Doctor it was. I had some difficulty with one instructor who insisted on having us use his first name, until I realized he had gotten his degree in the self-same department where he was teaching, and that every time someone called him Mr. Lastname in the hallway, it still made him whip around to see what professor wanted to talk to him about his grades. 
Spending enough time with PhDs outside of class that they started asking me to use their given names was my first big clue that, inexplicably enough, other people thought I was a grown-up. I still have days where I’m not 100% sure I’m a grown-up, and I’m in my 30s now; having this happen when I was in my twenties and hanging around a university campus was surreal and mildly terrifying.
I sometimes call my best friend’s mother “Mrs. [last initial]”, but more often refer to her in conversation as “your mother, the Meat Fairy” – the friend and I shared an apartment once, years ago, and every time her parents came to visit they would sort of casually abandon a few large roasts in our freezer, just in case we were starving and had forgotten to mention it. Our kitchen tended to be stocked with bricks of ramen, food-service-grade jasmine tea, canned soup, store brand frozen vegetables… and a fully-seasoned rack of lamb, wedged in beside five pounds of discount chicken breasts. They once used a similar tactic to get my best friend to keep a crockpot that they had been attempting to give her for the entire time we had known each other, which at that point was seven or eight years.
I am 70 and a gentleman and I certainly expect people I barely know to initially address me as Mister - altho I do immediately put a stop to the use of “sir.”
I personally think there’s a difference between the “sir” which means I don’t know your name and the “sir” that is used for deference. There’s more emphasis on the word “sir” in for the latter use. Plus the former is only used when absolutely necessary, while the latter is peppered throughout your speech.
The big problem is that I can’t think of an adult way to address an unidentified male other than “sir.” “Mate,” “dude,” “man,” etc. are more adolescent and informal.
I’ve noticed that most (not all) physicians pretty much insist on being addressed as Dr. Whatever. Sometimes this is annoying, because they’re usually addressing me by my first name. That’s just rude, and I see it as an attempt to establish dominance. I won’t do it.
I knew (slightly) a woman in her mid to late twenties once who insisted on the Mrs. She was a very junior associate at a big law firm. She’d had an affair with a very ranking partner, who left his wife (or got kicked out by his wife – I have no idea which) and married her. She always insisted on the “Mrs. X.” Her secretary had to answer the phone “Mrs. X’s office,” and address her as Mrs. X, as did all support staff. I don’t think she could insist that her fellow lawyers address her like that, but overall she wanted to make damn sure everyone knew she’d snagged the big fish.
At my insistence, the wife routinely address me as “Mister, Sir.”
I work for the Australian Government. Pretty much everyone in the workplace is referred to by their first name unless you are talking to a Minister.
I did a lot of work with teenagers in an outdoors group and they all addressed me by my first name, my dad was often out on camps as well and he was referred to as Mr. Pope.
The teachers varied - the male tearchers were always Mr. (surname) to the kids while the female teachers seemed to be more informal Miss (firstname) or occasionally a nickname or shortening of their surname eg Miss. K or Miss VP
My dad’s firstname is Colin (goes by Col) and he was always amused when he went to the US that he was often addressed as ‘Colonel’.
In many social hierarchies, superiors address subordinates by first name. Your desire to be egalitarian can easily be interpreted as an attempt to assert dominance.
I hate it when a cute female calls me “Sir”. It’s a sure sign that she’s not thinking of me as a sex object. :mad: