I Pit people who use nicknames at work!

Wanna trade? Try keeping roughly 160,000 people sorted out. When they’re hired, they tell HR that their name is Jonathan R. Williams, so their LAN ID is set up as jonathan.r.williams@thisplace.com.

Now, what happens when they decide they prefer using their middle name? Who the hell is Dick Williams? If you want to be known as “Dick” then tell HR so they can have your entry changed to reflect that!

Just an observation based on several years of ID administration - I’ve noticed that people from India can play really fast and loose with their names and call themselves something seemingly unrelated. You haven’t lived until you’ve sorted out that “Nik” is somehow derived out of Sudheendranath. Call yourself Hazelnut Coffee for all I care, just let HR in on the secret so we’ll know who you really are, OK?

So that’s why I didn’t get my bonus check. :smack:

(bolding mine)

Jodi, how dare you give the OP a hard time. I mean, if her corporate entity wanted to actually pay people their bonuses, don’t you think they’d have hired someone to call the departmental cost center heads and ask who the employee formerly known as ‘Prince’ is…? I mean, that would be their actual job. (swilling coffee and posting on the side not withstanding) And if they didn’t like it, I hear Kinkos has a special on resumes.

There are some of us that were named with a multi-generational name. My first and last names go back 6 generations. My son has the same first and last names. The difference is the middle names.

My dad went by his first name. I didn’t, because I’m not an “Eli, Junior”. My son goes by his middle name, because it was one of my favorite names, and I gave it to him.

If my employer can’t cope with that, then they have a poor HR systems design.

If I can’t remember that my name is really “Eliphalet Smythe-Jones Brackett”, rather than “Daisy Fower-Smitty”; then I’m an idiot.

Eli “Daisy Flower-Smitty”

There’s a difference between calling you something – a nickname – and using that nickname in a legal transaction involving money, the IRS, the state tax agencies, the check processing service, and a host of other entities. Which, if you aren’t aware, rather firmly insist on legal names only, please (and yes, they also insist on ID numbers, but the name is there as a cross-check.)

Perhaps I was too vague. Perhaps you’re deliberatly misinterpreting. But here’s the deal, as plain as I can make it: you’re free to do whatever the hell you want. I am not ABLE to accomodate your wish to be known as ‘Sky’ (or whatever you want this week), when it comes to the funds I handle. If you don’t like it, that’s too bad – see options (a) or (b) in my previous post on how you can solve the problem. It’s not that I don’t want to get you your money; it’s that I don’t have the ability to keep track of people who choose to make their lives more difficult, and I’m rather tired of them bitching about it.

Turn it around, Jodi: is it MY job to remember YOUR nickname? Why? YOU’RE the one making both our lives more difficult, here.

Hey, yeah, no big deal, I have plenty of time to chat with every yahoo who thinks they’re a special snowflake. :rolleyes:

See, I didn’t say you HAVE to change your name. I pointed out that the only available options are to change it or to use their real one. I don’t give a shit what you call yourself as long as I can reliably identify you. But if I were to try to maintain a list of nicknames, even for only the repeat offenders, I’d run out of time to get other things done. I’ve TRIED it, for chrissakes.

If it were only 3 people, do you think I’d be ranting about it? Those were an example, sweetie.

Oooh, you’re SUCH a REBEL! :rolleyes: If you think that this sort of issue is worth ‘bucking the system’ over, then I doubt anything I say would get through to you. Think about it, brainiac: the company already HAS all your personal information. The only person you’re hurting here… is you! Well, wow! Good for you. Personally, I’d prefer my self-flagellation to have some, I dunno, more useful purpose.

I’m annoyed and ticked off enough to rant. Why? Because I hate stupidity and I hate inefficiency and when one leads to the other I hate it even more. You might have a point if there were privacy issues at stake or something like that. There aren’t. This is stupidity, plain and simple.

This isn’t a case of the HR system being unable to cope. We can cope with whatever wierd conglomeration of name appears on your ID (and believe me, we have some interesting ones!). What we CANNOT do is match (for example), ‘Daisy Smith’ with ‘Eli D. Smith’. One is what your nickname, the other is your actual name. You supplied your legal name when you were hired. That’s what we recorded. Then you went and used ‘Daisy’ everywhere. How am I to know that Daisy is Eli? There’s no connection.

Then, if you’re one of the people I’ve been dealing with all day, you get pissed at me for not knowing that you go by your great-aunts nickname because you were named after her - Dolores, everyone called her Daisy, and that’s the D. in your name. Geez!

That right there makes it their problem. I assume that whatever form they are filling out to get these payments from you has the employee ID marked as a required field?

  1. He, not she, thanks. (Just so’s you know.)

  2. My job is to get people their bonuses, among other things. That doesn’t prevent me from getting irritated at people who won’t solve their own problems, no?

  3. Wow, you’re clever. :rolleyes:

Sofaspud, I believe we have a failure to communicate on your part. Specifically, in what way are the idiots using their nicknames such that it inconveniences you?

Are they filling out forms with the wrong name so that they aren’t getting credited properly? Are they are filling out some kind of form (in my office it would be something like a travel reimbursement request) and listing the name as “Petunia Lastname” instead of using the “Joanne Lastname” listed on the system record. If this is the case, then yes, that could be a pain in the ass and I’m behind your pitting.

If this is not the case: what Jodi said.

As a ‘Nickname’ user I must say ‘Fuck you’ to the OP.
I’ve not used my real name in many years and so I’m personally offended by your rant.

Let me point out the flaws:
You clearly work for a large company. (2000 people plus). The people who decide where this money goes, the money thats causing you to post, are your customers.
Therefore you have terms of service that apply to your customers. If not, why not ?
Even my customers are told what to expect and we have 10% of the staff you do.

So why don’t you tell the customers their info is inaccurate?

Your corporate system is at fault here not the people. There are no laws stopping people using what ever name they choose and you’re being paid to sort it out.

But I do have to agree with your point that if you explain to people one month they should not come back with the same question the next month unless they’re daft. However they can come back and say “Have you sorted it out yet?” from what you’ve said.

I always go by a nickname. Frankly, it’s never been a problem, and occasionally I will forget and put it on official correspondence. More frequently, bosses will do this in my place, but somehow, people manage to work it out. I do have an extremely uncommon last name, which helps, but really it sounds like the problem isn’t people’s nicknames - it’s communication with your client.

Actually, the only person who ever really threw a stink was someone setting up email mailboxes. I literally had to repeatedly insist that they use my nickname. A few years after that, somehow it got synched up with HR and started showing up on my paychecks. Didn’t seem to cause any problems, and this was a huge company.

Sorry. You have the wrong target for your ire.

The folks are out there doing exactly what humans have always done and you (or your incompetent superiors) have permitted a total moron to implement a system that does not actually use the tools that society has provided. The fact that the system does not rely on either a governmentally assigned code or an HR assigned code to identify the humans across multiple systems is just dumb. The typical employee knows that they must provide legal name and SSN (or other national equivalent) to get paid, regardless of who they “really” are and they make the (rather natural) assumption that the various systems with which they interact will accommodate them. The fact that the bonus tracking system was not set up to include the ID code is simply an error on the part of its designers and the idiot users that accepted it. It would not surprise me, at all, to discover that most of the people about whom you are complaining (a) have their bank accounts in their nicknames, figuring that the SSN will tie the numbers together for the taxing authorities and (b) actually asked where they were supposed to record their SSN when they filled out their first bonus form and, upon being told that they did not need to provide it, figured that the local HR department was going to add their SSN or clock number before processing.

(The system is utterly idiotic, to begin with, given that in a company of more than a hundred people there is going to be a fair chance that some people share even their formal names: “Sr.” and “Jr.” with no placeon the form to add it to the name field; Mary Smith marries a guy named Jones whose mother, also named Mary, works at the same location.)

Rather than ranting on a message board about the way people fill in forms, you should be sending threatening letters to the CEO demanding he fire every programmer and manager connected to the creation of the bonus system (or, if they are an outside outfit, firing them and demanding a refund or a free correction).

What tomndebb said. Rule #1 of People-management databases: “Thou shalt not use a person’s name, legal or otherwise, as a database key!”

Lifting your leg to check is not my ‘job description’. (Sucks when somebody you’d expect to do some research won’t but bitches about it instead.)

Hmmmm. So, what happy little Metrics are used to determine if you do a good job or not each year? Certainly not number if unapplied bonus payments w/i general suspense or a running percentage decrease of same from fiscal year to fiscal year; that would be somebody elses ‘own problem’ remember? From how you jumped up to take ownership of the mandatory use of a seperate and unique employee ID# on all financial documents (to maintain employee privacy over the ‘SSN’), its certainly not the introduction of innovative ideas on how to do your job more easily or based on how you improve your company’s efficiency. Maybe its based on over-all employee satisfaction. :smack:

I’d be more insulted by high-praise. But don’t waste time on me, its almost 5pm. Don’t you have somebody’s bonus check to lose…? (Hope its not Opal’s…)

You’re shitting me, right?

This is precisely a case of the HR system being unable to cope. Who the hell set up a system (or even a form to be entered into said system) where the unique identifying key for a person is their name? Did they get paid for that particular bit of incompetence?

Regardless, can’t you just change the form?

Just to be clear:

  1. Sales person John “Bud” Smith goes out and sells stuff.
  2. The customer fills out a form so Bud can get a bonus for his sales.
  3. The only identifying information on the form is Bud’s name, and relies on the customer knowing it and entering it accurately.
  4. You have no system in place to figure out “Budd Simth” is actually John Smith.
  5. In your opinion, this is all Bud’s fault for interacting with his customers using the name he actually goes by, rather than what’s on his birth certificate.

Is that right? Bud’s not typing his own name into the form or anything?

If Giraffe’s post is correct, it sounds like JohnT is spot on. I.e., “This is precisely a case of the HR system being unable to cope.” It sounds like the whole problem could be overcome by simply having unique Sales Person ID’s and requiring the sales people to use them. And if you tell your people “no SPID no payday”, you can be damned sure they WILL use their ID’s. And this is a real common setup, it really shouldn’t cause a problem.

Then it doesn’t matter what damned name is written on the sales slip.

But if my post is correct, the problem is not with salespeople not providing customers with unique identifiers, but with the system that allows customers to communicate sales information using only name to identify them. In that case, John “Bud” Smith can tattoo his unique sales number on the customer’s forehead and it won’t change the fact that HR is still going to only receive sales information on Budd Simth.

Yes, I agree. I work in IT, supporting ERP systems (including PeopleSoft, for those who care about such things), and the system design as described is… and please forgive my use of a highly technical term… horseshit.

Yes, users are infuriatingly stupid, inconsistent, and ignorant. Which makes them human. And any systems analyst worth his or her salary will design user-facing applications to deal with that reality.

Asking users to identify themselves solely by name for the purposes of issuing compensation? Completely fucking insane.

Had that been the target of your rant, I’d be right behind you.

But this, well… I have to shrug. Sorry.

Back in the days of primitive computers, the company where I worked actually invested in sales forms with the territoty ID (i.e., the code by which the salesman was identified to payroll and other departments) pre-printed on the forms handed out to the customers. For special occasions, the form had a blank box into which the salesman could write his ID.

When computers advanced to the point where the customers would send in their orders electronically, the systems were set up so that the customer entered the territory as part of the order–and where there were discrepancies, the computer had a list of territory-to-customer associations so that a default could be entered (and if one salesman was treading on another’s turf, there was a report generated showing sales by territory sent to the district offices for reconciliation).

At no time did any sales come into the company without an actual code to identify the seller.