When I drove into VA for Barbecue, and a certain pretty waitress called me that, it really, really didn’t bother me at all.
Guy chiming in:
I generally think it’s quaint. If I’m in a diner or casual restaurant and I get called ‘hon’ or something of the ilk, it immediately makes me feel more at home.
I do find it a little funny though when women who seem to be fairly young (say, 18-30) say it. It seems much more affected when someone who very well may be younger than me (25) calls me ‘hon’.
I just knew I would arrive too late in this thread to be the first to invoke Baltimore.
Hi Ginger! I’m from Glen Burnie (but don’t hold that against me).
Well, i’m not from Baltimore, but it’s where i live right now, and as Ginger says, “Hon” is standard fare around here, so you’d better get used to it.
One thing that is hard to convey in writing is the peculiarly Baltimore way of pronouncing it. Watch a John Waters film like Pecker or A Dirty Shame if you want to see it in action. I’m sure there are probably episdoes of Homicide where it crops up, too.
After moving to the Deep South, I have been called ‘shug’, ‘baby’, ‘sweetie’, ‘sweetheart’, ‘honey’, ‘hon’, ‘Mister Mike’, ‘Big Mike’, ‘Big M’, ‘Boss’, ‘Chief’. It hasn’t bothered me. In fact I get a kick out of it. I’m hoping Southern woman tells me to ‘kiss my grits’.
I guess I’ll have to be careful. I have been successfull in not picking up the accent, but I have picked up this particular habit
It used to slightly irk me and it was something I would never do it. Then I moved in with ** laurelann ** and she says all the time. Ignore what she says about doing it sometimes. It’s all the time. I now do it a lot, but only with people I know. Never at work, unless I’m dealing with a lost three-year-old. Then it’s “Honey, what happened to your mom or dad?”
I’m a cook. I’ve noticed that waitresses everywhere like to call their regular customers “hon” and “sweetie”. Unfortunately, I recently worked with a waitress who continually addressed me by those cutesy names every time she picked up her food from the kitchen. Drove me nuts! It wasn’t so much that I didn’t like the nicknames - is was more that I didn’t feel that this woman knew me well enough to be calling me “sweetie”. I don’t mind it so much from a waitress I’ve worked with for a while, though. For the most part, though, I really prefer to be called by my name, not a cute nickname.
Of course, if there is the slightest chance that I might get laid, the woman can call me just about anything she wants 
Thirded: If it bothers you, don’t move to Baltimore. “Hey Hon” is a
There’s a Cafe Hon here (with attached “Hon Bar”), and a little street fair every year called the “Hon Fest”.
The typical Baltimore “hon” is also a kind of stereotype, probably most predominently portrayed in John Water’s Hairspray.
Click here for starters. Google “baltimore hon” for more.
Also, my dad calls almost all women “gals”. If you can believe it, he really doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s not sexist. . .I just don’t think he realized that everyone else stopped doing that in 1960.
It’s sorta like ‘hawn’. And it surprised me the first few times I heard it. Now when I’m interacting with the ladies at the Giant with the big blonde hair and the black eyebrows, I expect it.
Funny how things work.
I’m from Paraguay, and have been living in the US for 17 years.
Having said that, in English any pet name used to refer to me I don’t care, I mean, in a respectful manner, obviously, haha.
But in Spanish, oh, man, call me señora (ma’am) and makes me instantly MAD 
So go figure 🤷🏻♀️
looks at user name, looks at last two sentences of post and laughs Yanno, there’s a Han Solo/Lonestar reference right there. I started getting called sir when I was about your age, when I wasn’t in uniform. It hasn’t ever gotten any less jarring in the intervening decades.
How interesting that you responded to a 14 year old thread…
I take it Queen Bruin was a necromancer who has since disappeared with flash & a whiff of sulfur?
I hate being called hon. I don’t offer that level of familiarity to anyone I don’t share a roof with, and I certainly don’t invite it. Therefore I see it as a machination to get me to drop my guard. Only an enemy asks you to drop your guard, so I preemptively throat punch “Hon” wielders. And I avoid Texas because I’d have to murder everyone in the damned state for calling me Hon.
I just tell them to call me by my first name instead.
Regards,
Attila D.
Since this thread has been resurrected…
In general I don’t hate it, although I do find it mildly annoying. But I do make one exception: In my thread a few months ago about businesses that have been there “forever” I mentioned Pancake Circus, an old diner that looks like it literally hasn’t changed at all since it opened in 1970. When I go there I actually kind of like it when the waitress greets me with “What’ll ya have, hon?” That just makes it feel like a more authentic old school diner experience. Actually, I heard that waitress passed away last year (pretty sure that was her anyway) :(. Apparently she’d worked there “forever”, too.
Just last week I was at my doctor’s office, and his nurse called me Hon.
A couple of days later I got my car worked on, and the service tech called me Champ.
I’ll take Hon.
wha-uuuuh whoops!:o
Doesn’t bother me one way or another.
When I was in high school, there was this one lunch lady who called EVERYBODY hon. It was always “Thanks hon!” So you kind of got used to it.
When the sassy broad at the BK drive thru says it in her condescending tone when asking for my name I give the name Hilda
I’m a guy and I like it when older women in the service industry call me sugar or baby.