How’s the tummizzle, my nizzle? Got an itchizzle in the stichizzles? Just a ghetto version of Ubbi-Dubbi.
Morphine or not, I’d slug that nurse. Generally speaking, if the patient is old enough to sign their own consent form, they ought to be addressed as Mr. / Ms unless the patient says “Oh, just call me Sally” When you’re in the hospital, wearing a gown that’s not large enough to cover anything and unable to get to the bathroom without help, you’re a bit low on dignity. Addressing patients politely helps maintain a tiny sliver, at least.
And the “Hey dudes, want some wine?” guy? Otherwise impeccable service or not, I’d tell him quite simply and politely that if I wanted to be called “Dude” I’d have gone to the truckstop on I-5 and not a fine restaurant such as this one where I’m paying more for a bottle of wine than I paid to fill my car with gas.
I call all animals buddy, especially strangers. Stray dog comes up wagging it’s tail: “Hey buddy… do you have a home?” I wouldn’t ever call a stranger or aquaintance ‘Buddy’ unless I was being sarcastic. “Hey buddy, you wanna stop stealing my car?”
As for “you guys” I don’t have a problem with it if I’m in a bar and grill or a cheaper chain like an Applebee’s. If I’m spending money for a dining experience, though, you better call me ma’am. If you call me sir, you’re not getting a tip. What good are DDD breasts if you still get called sir?
When I was an interpreter in Immigration Court, I had to address the judge as Your Honor. Fine by me, except in return I would have been preferred not to be addressed as “Hon,” particularly in front of a full courtroom (and the particular judges I might not have minded calling me “hon” were never the ones who addressed me that way.) Same for attorneys, both private bar and INS: I have a first name and a last name, and if I address you as Mr. Lastname, please give me the courtesy of calling me Ms. Lastname in return. After all, it’s not like you don’t know my name; you see me nearly every day, and the judge has already stated my name for the record.
It could have been worse, though, I suppose. Apparently one judge who had retired by the time I began working there was half-senile and could never remember the interpreters’ names, so he literally called one of them “Tutti-Frutti.” In court. On the record, with the tape recorder going.
Ugh. That’s terrible.
I have a co-worker who constantly refers to me and the other under-30 person in our office as “missy” or “lady.” I hate that. Then again, this is the same woman who can’t walk past the work table in the middle of our office without clicking her fingernails and jingling her bracelets on it. She needs to die.
My ex-husband does this! I always tried to get him to break the habit, but he didn’t see anything wrong with it. I thought it sounded rather condescending, myself.
Those swear words have multiple uses. Just ask Monty Python (warning: mp3 file).
Personally, i think being called by my first name would be far prefereable to being called “girlfriend.” Actually, as a general principle, i prefer to be called by my first name than being called Mr. mhendo.
Hm. The black people haven’t yet told this ultracool and eternally hip mulatto what the next buzzword is. A little help, please.
Oh, and the next time someone calls you a nickname you don’t like, if you say something along the lines of, “Wow, my ex-boyfriend’s hooker used to call people that,” they might stop.
I always seem to get called “Chief”. I have NO idea why. While I do have a very, very, very, very small couple of drops of Iroquois blood in me, I don’t look at all Native American. Considering that I’m half-Italian, you’d think they’d call me “Duce” instead…
I’m so square - it never occurred to me to talk to black people like I’m cool and pretending to be down with the hood (I can barely type that, let alone say it); I just talk to them like they’re people. Seems to be working well so far. Of course, this is Western Canada, where I saw my first black person at 12 years old.
At a job I once had, a long time ago, I had a boss, who didn’t like to be called “dude”. Why, because he’d say “That’s not my name.” OK, fair enough, But he would call me, and other employees “tiger” from time to time. Now tiger annoyed me, but at the time, I didn’t have the backbone to say “Please don’t call me that, it’s not my name.”
Also, I’ve never liked “big guy”. Now I’m not short, nor am I large, I’m about average size, so if somebody calls me that, and thankfully that hasn’t happened for a long time, it’s not any kind of joke about my size. But when I have encountered it, it’s usually done by somebody who’s being condescending.
Oh, and this thread reminded me something I saw when the place I work at now, use to have a cafeteria. On the board where the specials are usually written down, one day instead the server had written down something like “I have a name, and it’s not honey, sweetie, darling, or hey you. It’s (I forget now) please use it.”
Yeah, yeah, now I’ll see jokes about her name being “I forget now”
