Holy shit, what if Jane Smith interviews at your company and you already HAVE a Jane Smith? I guess they’d just show her the door. How on earth would that problem possibly be overcome?
“Janey’s gotta gun…” :eek: 
Try harder. In case you hadn’t got the hint of my earlier post, the only way to do this is memorising them. Yes, it’s possible. No, it’s not easy. Yes, it’s evidently part of your job. No, perhaps it’s not a part of the job you expected or planned for. Get on with it.
What’s with the “but”? Those two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
You’re right. At least one of my buts was unnecessary. I have a but problem.
I think the OP is mistaken in blaming the bearers of nicknames for the simple reason that nicknames are bestowed on people by others. Very, very few people give themselves nicknames, and those who do are usually blowhard wankers (we had one guy, Jim, who insisted on being “Jimbo” to the point of sticking "Jimbo’s whatever on items in Dymo tape. Nobody called him Jimbo).
Anyway, I like nicknames, especially the classics like:
Bluey (a redhead)
(useless as) Titzener (bull)
Taillight (a bit dim)
Avachat
Wodza (paggada) (surname Sigsworth)
Open an Excel worksheet
on Row 1, set column A to the value “Nickname” then set column B to the value “Legal Name”
Left Click Row 1 (highlighting the whole row)
Left Click Data to see the drop-down
Scroll down to Filter and Left Click
Scroll Right to AutoFilter and Select it
Save the worksheet.
Enter any newly discovered nickname in column A under the heading “Nickname”
After investigating,
Enter the legal name in column B under the heading “Legal Name”
Save the worksheet.
Any time a nickname shows up, Left Click on the drop-down arrow on the right side of the cell containing “Nickname,” then click on “(Custom…)” and enter the nickname in the search field, specifying “equals” or “begins with” or “contains” (depending on how your nicknames tend to arrive). Then compare the legal names to the last name on the bonus request. If the nickname is new, enter it in Column A and (when you have figured out the Legal Name) add that to Column B. (Be sure to use the same row.)
Save the worksheet.
(If you want to get fancy, add their employee ID, phone, office, etc. in columns C, D, E, etc.)
While this may appear to be too much work, it would certainly seem to be much easier than researching the same employees every month.
If this is seriously “too much work,” you might want to write a nasty letter to the CEO for buying such incredibly stupid software and attach it to your letter of resignation.
(If you find an employee with the nickname “Nickname,” you have my permission to go yell at them for several minutes.)
Haaa! That cracked me up right out loud! That tickled me to pieces, and I am not sure why.
If you have 40 different “Mike” 's working for you and they all share the same email address, then you have more problems than just a poorly configured ERP system… :smack:
Very first thing I thought of. I miss Jim’s old hair. 
Anyway.
I knew a girl who demanded to be called Angel. Angel was not her name. Not her middle name, nor her nickname. But she wanted it to be. She was also a huge bitch, so I actually got away with not calling her anything at all. The initial conversations were still annoying, though.
So you admit you have the ID number. So what’s the problem again?
Let’s go with the former.
I don’t know what you mean by “accommodate.” I assume your employee Mitzi knows that to the IRS she will ever be Jean Millicent Fasbender and that’s the name that will be on her checks, so other than making sure YOU know she’s Mitzi, what precise accommodation does she want? To the contrary, it seems YOU expect Mitzi to accommodate your corporate master by either being known by Jean (her mother’s name, a name she loathes) or actually legally changing her name to Mitzi.
Jean Millicent’s use of Mitzi is not your problem. If there is an inconvenience attached, it naturally should attach to her. So “bitching” at you would certainly be out of order, and a civil response that you can’t keep track of everyone who goes by a nickname would certainly be reasonable. But she is hardly “stupid” to use the name she’s been known by since forever, the name she prefers, the names by which customers know her. And she has no obligation to change her name, for God’s sake, to satisfy your slavish devotion to the hive mind.
Well, since you have access to their ID numbers but yet cannot reconcile that a check made out to employee ID number 123 should go to the employee with ID number 123, I guess that makes you a special education snowflake.
Then I guess you’ll just have to live with a situation in which you personally lack the skill to track alternate names and your company as a whole stupidly also lacks a system to track alternate names – or even to track employees by ID numbers or social security numbers, like every other employer in the States. What kills me – astonishes me – is that your solution, rather than you learn a skill or your employer upgrade its system, is that the EMPLOYEE change their name. I’ve heard of the exhaltation of the corporate before, but really that about takes the cake. And “going by their legal name” if that is NOT what they prefer and currently go by is also changing their name, BTW.
Well, I don’t know the number at which your ability to cope fails. And don’t condescend to me, pookie.
If by “get through to me” you mean “make me agree with you,” you are correct.
Yeah, well, to each their own. If it’s worth dear old Jean Millicent’s time to walk down to your office every month until you grok that she is Mitzi, then her self-flagellation is NOYB – provided she doesn’t attempt to give you a rasher of shit for something that I’ve already admitted is largely her problem.
It is NOT stupid to be referred to by the name you prefer, have built a reputation on, and that your customers are familiar with. And the “inefficiency” argument is bullshit. If you want to maximize efficiency, just issue them all ID numbers and dispense with names altogether – that should fully satisfy your bean-counter’s brain.
No. Sales person is entering his OWN name into the customers system. Hence, my ire is directed at the one person who can most easily solve the problem, the sales person.
To address the majority of everyone else: of COURSE I know this isn’t the way to design a database system; no, I wasn’t the one who did so; yes, I’m aware the PROPER solution is to fix the goddamn system; no, I can’t do that; and fuck you if you can’t accept the fact that some things aren’t as we’d like them to be and there’s no way to change.
Well, the last one may not be quite true. I’m in the process of trying to change the system. But since it is not a system we control, there’s a whole hell of a lot of resistance and inertia getting it fixed.
So, pardon me if I’m a bit ticked off at people who can’t get it through their head that they are causing the problem, that there’s several things THEY can do to fix it but not a goddamn thing that I can, and who repeatedly get pissed at me because THEY caused the issue in the first place.
Ah, reminds me of my old cow-orker office manager.
She found a new worker in the office had the same first name and a similar surname. So, in an email, she asked the new worker (my girlfriend) if she had a middle name she could use instead to avoid any confusion. “Cheeky fecker” thought my girlfriend and dutifully ignored the request.
What made this story so nice, was that cow-orker was already using her own middle name, as she didn’t like the first name her parents gave her 
In this case, I’ll cut you a bit more slack, as asking John Smith not to call himself Bud when applying for a bonus is not completely unreasonable. I do think you’re placing a disproportionate amount of blame on the salespeople, though. Just because the other cause of the problem (poor database/interface design and HR’s inability to link a common-use name with a legal name) are entrenched and hard to fix doesn’t transfer all blame to the people you might be able to browbeat into avoiding the pitfalls of a poorly-designed system.
Jesus, I’m totally with Sofaspud on this one. If I know my bonus gets paid based on what the customer puts in that field, I will say “Hey, I know you know me as TroubleAgain, but when you fill in that field, can you please put Firstname Lastname so I’ll be sure to be paid?” How effin’ hard is that?
He has no control over the system. He has no control over the customer or the sales person. He is getting bitched out by the sales person like it’s his fault. After the first time a sales person doesn’t get paid and he gives his speech about nicknames, it’s the stupid idiot sales person who can’t be bothered to tell the customer his real name that is at fault. Like their name or hate it, it’s still at least partly their responsibility to make sure they get paid!
On edit, I see that they’re putting in their own name, which makes it even more stupid to keep putting in a nickname.
You shall henceforth be known as Koko!
I have a legal first name, two legal middle names, and a legal last name. Even the gov’mint can’t decide what they think my name is. My e-mail address at work does not follow the usual pattern because that created an obscenity.