Well, obviously your company policy overrides your personal sense of propriety.
Which is what this thread is about, yes?
Like I asked above; what are you basing this on? What etiquette book says the proper etiquette is to say “May I call you John?” That sounds to me like an etiquette rule that someone in the service industry made up (Confessions of a Hotel Insider | Lifehacker). Also just because there is a more reserved/polite/proper way of doing things, doesn’t mean that the more informal way is incorrect. What are name tags for then? Since when am I not allowed to speak a person’s name?
It looks like yet another case of someone trying to find a reason to be offended. There’s a lot of that going on these days.
I base it on the fact that I myself would be viscerally uncomfortable with being addressed by my first name by strangers whose names I don’t know and who I don’t care to become personal friends with. It seems that some servers share my feeling.
I think that both the OP and the servers in this thread are being unrealistic and more than a little whiny. OP, if you are not ashamed to be holding the job you are holding, it shouldn’t be a problem for people you know to see you in the required uniform while you are doing your job.
As for the rest. If I see your name displayed on your clothing, I’m going to feel free to use it without asking permission. I see nothing rude or presumptuous about that. It’s exactly the reason that it’s there.
So if the uniform changes to lavender frills and clown shoes, I shouldn’t complain, because that’s the uniform?
Changes in required workwear happen. When I took the job the uniform was one thing. Now it is something completely different and demeaning. But I just shouldn’t care because its the uniform.
:dubious:
Like uniforms and flair, the nametag exists to put customers at ease at the possible expense of the server’s dignity. Personally, I prefer to err on the side of not making waitstaff uncomfortable. But you do what you feel like, I guess. It’s not as if they can stop you.
What do you imagine the purpose of the nametag is?
I don’t like nametags either. I never wear mine, and when people ask me who I am when I’m at work, I say “I’m the manager.”
I KNOW that the nametags are supposed to make us more approachable and the workplace seem more friendly to our patrons.
Instead, it makes me FEEL like I am being forced into an intimacy with a person on an unequal level - I don’t always know their name, and I don’t want to ask for it, because I was raised with a standard of politeness that made that unacceptable.
It *also *makes me feel threatened - if a patron is a regular, they end up knowing my name naturally - I tell them it as we get to know each other. If they aren’t a regular, I think of them as a stranger, and I don’t give my name to strangers. I don’t like giving it to them when they ask for it, but at least there the threat is out in the open, and I can deal with it that way. (usually by informing the unhappy person that I’m the manager, and they can suck it.)
It ALSO makes me feel violated. Our nametags are supposed to be worn on the chest, and there is something SOOO SKEEZY about that “not-so-casual” eye-flick down to the boobs, and then back up with the nasty little half-smile "Heeey… Lassssciel. "
So, because my own personal feelings about nametags directly contradict the stated goal of wearing them (to make us more friendly and approachable) I just don’t wear mine. I find I’m MUCH more friendly and approachable when people can’t invade my personal mental space by using my name in a way I actively detest.
“May I call you John” is just an example of a way to get on a first name basis with a person. It isn’t some special etiquette. I would say “Hey there, I am really interested in this Gretch Hollowbody. Can you take it down so I can play with it a little? My name is Tom.” And then I would shake their hand. Then they would say “Definitely. My name is Jack, and let me help you anyway I can.”
Not “Hey Jack, Can you…” or “Hey Guy, Can you…” (Unless it is a car salesman 
You have several people on here agreeing with the 1st name business.
It goes both ways. If I meet the president, I wouldn’t call him Obama. If I walk into YOUR office and it has YOUR name on YOUR desk, I wouldn’t say “Hello Oscar…” It would put you off.
Wow. People are weird.
“How dare you call me by my name?”
Hey, look I get that it’s a cultural thing, but up until now I had no idea it was a cultural thing! Even as a kid I called all my parents’ friends by their first name: certainly not teachers, but pretty much everyone else. I have no issue at all with kids or strangers or customers or alien overlords calling me by my first name; it’s my name!
And here it is: Doug. I’m Doug. Call me Doug!
Hi Mr. Doug!
How do you feel about “Miss Walmart”?
I don’t work at Walmart, but I have to admit to preferring the Miss Walmart form of address to Excuse me --it makes it clearer that I’m the person being addressed, especially if the person trying to get my attention is standing behind me.
As a retail worker wearing a nametag with my first name on it, I wouldn’t call people using my name-having gotten it from the nametag–rude, but I do admit that some of the people who insist upon using my name do so very ostentatiously, or make me feel like they have misunderstood my role or the type of store they are shopping at.
Do you make room for the possibility that these feelings are unusual, as opposed to normal – that is, mathematically unusual, not shared by a large segment of society?
Which segment of society are you talking about? The segment that has to wear nametags, or the segment that doesn’t?
Exactly! If you don’t like the requirements of the job, get a different job or find a workaround that you and your superiors can live with.
It is possible to not have the nametag on the actual breast, you know. At least the way I’m configured (and I’m pretty short, with average-size bust), I can easily put a retail-type nametag above my breast and not on it.
I thought I was Doug?!
I rather suspect that those who don’t think they’d mind wearing a name tag as a retail drone would change their opinion pretty quickly after actually having to do it for a while.
Especially if they’re women.
Sure there is, if that’s what you actually do. If you’re in an area that is not food service, yet the employees look like they are, you start getting clients who treat the area like a food service, rather than perhaps a medical facility. As someone who works at an animal ER, I get a bit of a bug up my butt with the people who treat the front-desk folks like they’re waiting for fries rather than a place where there’s CPR happening behind the double-doors and their dog with the eye infection is really, really, not dying. Giving them a further misdirection by dressing the front-desk personnel like an order-taker at McD’s just doesn’t help.