Do You Know Any Adults Who Expect You to Call Them Mr./Mrs.?

In My Humble Opinion
81

In my line of work I always refer to people I don’t know as Mr/Ms/Dr Lastname, at least initially. 99% of the people I deal with appreciate the formality at first and then ask me to refer to them by their first names (which I am happy to oblige).

School teachers are usually first names except when children are around, in which case it’s Mr/Ms/Mrs Lastname.

And personally, I don’t like being called “Sir”. I don’t have a Knighthood, I’m not a military officer, and I’ve always found the term to carry connotations of slight sarcasm or that American “fake service” culture which I’m not fond of either.

82

The service isn’t necessarily fake. When I am in a restaurant, the waiter calls me “Sir”, and I call him “Sir”. Mutual respect.

When I worked as a door-to-door salesman, we were taught to get the [del]sucker’s[/del] customer’s first name, and work it into the conversation as often as possible. If he thinks you are his friend, you can screw him out of more money. Since then, I tend to be suspicious of people who demand instant intimacy. They are usually pursuing their interests more than mine.

83

Absolutely! You have articulated another problem I have with “Sir” that goes beyond my initial antipathy toward it for age-related reasons.

See below for an optional rant on “fake service” culture.**

Which is why this instruction, which you also encounter during customer service calls (though they often use the “Mr. _____” format), has exactly the opposite effect on me than what is intended.

I already know my name; repeating it at the start of every single sentence does nothing but annoy me.

** I know some clerks/cashiers may be sincere when they say “Have a nice day,” but for most, it’s about the most automatic and meaningless sentence one can utter. A smile and a simple “thank you” will suffice for me.

This goes for “How are you?” as well. Once again, “Hi” and a smile is much more natural and sincere.

At our small company, we recently fired our receptionist, and the decision was made to go with an answering service rather than replacing her. Our phone number forwards to the service, then their people call us on our individual cell phones and ask if we want to talk to the caller. If we say “Yes,” the call is patched through to our cell.

One of the people there insists on asking me “How are you?” at the beginning of every call. The person calling me has already waited longer than he/she would if we had a receptionist here answering the call and putting it through directly. Why on earth would I want the answering service to extend that time with this meaningless nicety?

Sorry for the hijack, but the term “fake service culture” really resonated with me!

84

I always referred to the parents of my friends by their first name, even when in elementary school. In retrospect, it may have appeared disrespectful initially or to casual observers, I’m not really sure…

I blame it on my mom. She was only 20 years older than me (and when I was a teenager, she only looked about 10 years older). She always insisted that my friends call her by her first name, Joy. She is only 17 years older than my sister and always wanted to be seen as a “cool” mom and she would hang out with my sister and her friends a lot. She was often mistaken for our sister and she loved it…

When I hit my early teens, several of my classmates had a “thing” for her and it freaked me out!!! I never allowed another male friend to meet her until I was out of high school. :smack:

85

Huh, in my experience if they don’t call me “sir” beforehand, they certainly do afterwards! :smiley:

86

Why aren’t the smile and the thank you as fake as the “Have a nice day!”? Both, to me, seem identical: little rituals we go through to acknowledge that we see each other as people.

87

The second paragraph relates to a name issue I have: excessive use of a persons first name in a non-personal relationship (so not a family member or actual friend). It definitely feels like a power play or display of dominance, especially when the name is only known because of a nametag or similar. It’s like a “I know YOUR name but you don’t know mine”, or “you bet your ass I know your name, so remember that I can identify you in a complaint {subtext: therefore you better kiss my ass}.”

Note: by excessive, I mean someone who steps up to pay at a register and is all, “hi, John, how are you doing? That’s great, John, I’m doing fantastic, too. John, I was wondering about the sales flyer for this week. I think this coupon should work for all sizes, don’t you think, John?”

88

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see a four-word sentence that’s repeated by rote with exactly the same inflection to every single customer who came before me and will come after me as a great validation that he/she who utters it sees me as an individual person.

On the other hand, no two people smile exactly alike. And now I think of it, I’m more likely to be saying “thank you” (and meaning it — I can’t imagine NOT saying it to someone who’s helped me) than the clerk is.

Yes, smiles and “thank you”'s could be fake. But my theory is, the more you avoid clichéd phrases that EVERYONE utters, the greater the chance is you’re genuine.

Because I refuse to play the automatic “How are you?” game doesn’t mean that I care any less about the well-being of the person I’m speaking with. I would just prefer to express this caring in other ways.

89

I don’t doubt that you do care. But I think it’s overly harsh to assume that the other person doesn’t care because the are choosing one arbitrary set of syllables over another.

90

In the dojo where I trained, it was customary that anyone who had attained black belt or higher rank was to be addressed as Mr. ____ or Mrs. ____ (depending on gender) and anyone of 4th degree black belt had the option of being addressed as Master ____ (regardless of gender).

When I worked in the movie theater, one of the customers told his daughter, “Tell the nice man what you want.” and I stepped away to tweak a part on the popcorn machine. I figured the nice man would take the food order; I was just a kid." :o

When I taught English in Japan, all the teachers were called Firstname-Sensei, most students were called by their given names, students older than the teacher (who was usually shortly out of college) were to be addressed as Firstname-san or Lastname-san, depending on the student’s preference, and school staff was called Lastname-san. This was when other students were around. On the rare days when we could all take a lunch break together, the formal facade would break down and we’d call each other Firstname. I called a couple of the teachers Firstname-sama and, while it’s an odd construct, they knew I knew what I was doing and appreciated the extra respect.

In the late 90’s I had a sub- whom I insisted call me “Sir” when she responded. “Master” seemed like too much of a cliche for the circumstances and she knew she wasn’t addressing a child. She made a couple mistakes, but learned quickly.:wink:

When I started teaching Tai Chi, a few new students would address me as “Master ____” and, the first time it happened, I waited a minute for the master to answer the question – before realizing she was addressing me.:smack: I quickly squashed that habit and encouraged my students to just call me by my first name. After all, there is no ranking system for Tai Chi and I’d only been practicing for 15 years by the time I started teaching. I certainly didn’t think I had mastered it back then and, 20 years later, I still see a lot more stuff to grasp, (much less master).

When I was in the publishing industry 98% of the people I dealt with were either teaching or doing Post-Doc research at some university or other. Most would insist I use Dr. ___ instead of Mr. (or Mrs. or Ms. or Professor) so I just got in the habit of calling everyone Dr. ___ and found it easier not to have to think about their job or gender. I was corrected by a couple German authors who noted that, in their system, “Professor” ranks higher than “Doctor” (and there were no PhD’s awarded in their field anyway) and they were teaching as well as performing in their fields. On the other hand, the nightly janitors seemed to enjoy, “Ummm…Dr. Sanchez, can you vacuum over there? I spilled my popcorn again.”

One of my friends related his army experience: He made the mistake of responding with “Sir” to his drill instructor and the man yelled back, “You don’t call me ‘sir’! I’m not an officer; I WORK for a living!”:eek:

–G!
Sometimes Love
Don’t Feel Like it Should
You make it…

…–John (Cougar) Mellencamp
…Hurt So Good
…American Fool

91

We used to call my college Japanese instructor Givenname-sensei. She (native Japanese) indicated that that was kind of odd, but then, she was kind of odd as well. Having done her undergrad in Illinois, she was much better at being a typical American woman than she ever was at being a traditional Japanese lady. We used to swap manga with her, and after we all graduated or aged out of her classes, we started inviting her out on our sushi/booze runs. Most of us still call her Givenname-sensei – it seems to stick no matter how many times we’ve seen her tipsy at other people’s weddings. :smiley:

92

Anyone who trains in traditional martial arts will do that as a simple matter of courtesy and respect.

93

I recently finished watching all seven seasons of “The West Wing”. What an amazing show, even if I am eight years late to the party!

But I find it interesting (and sometimes it sounds rather odd) that everyone refers to President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) as Mr. President. There are also numerous other characters that are addressed as Mr./Ms. (insert official title) on the show.

It seems as if The President’s closest staffers would refer to him as President Bartlet rather than Mr. President, but they don’t.

Is this the way that the POTUS is addressed in real life?

94

My kids and their contemporaries all still refer to the parents as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” because it’s what they were taught when they were young. Even though they’re all adults now, the name has stuck. Ditto for Aunts and Uncles.

Similarly, I still call my girlfriends’ parents, whom I’ve known since grade school, by their more formal name. I can’t help it.

Now that my children are adults, I’ll introduce fellow adults to them by their first name.