Like others have mentioned, I never wore my nametag at work. Some customers became over-familiar, and I don’t like that. My first name was provided on all sales paperwork, but only so the customer knew who to ask for if they had to call in with a query.
I think Sir, Madam, Mr, Miss, Mrs, Ms and Surname are acceptable when addressing customers. First names are not, and I would feel incredibly uncomfortable if my boss forced me to use them.
One problem I have is that my surname is very unusual. There are only about 20 people in the country who share the name, all related to me. NOBODY else can pronounce it right, which is embarassing for them, and annoying for me when I have to keep repeating and spelling it.
The worst case I ever came across was when I bought a Kirby vacuum cleaner from the local distributor. Their sales manager, a total slimeball, started every sentence with “Kirk, my friend…” That made me grit my teeth every single time.
I was going to start a thread about this the other way round - if you’re working as a cashier would you want people to use your name read off your nametag?
I guessed no, and it seems I was very right.
I’m always tempted to wear a big badge that says ‘I don’t have, and don’t want, a reward card’ or ‘My preferred form of address is so-and-so’
It makes me very uncomfortable when anyone pays undue attention to me to begin with, and being addressed by name just makes it 10 times worse.
I used to work in a grocery store, and we were supposed to address people by name there. In 3 1/2 years, I never did. It seemed way too familiar. Much more important to be friendly, efficient and available than to do something that management insisted on, but was stupidstupidstupid. They never noticed that I didn’t follow the rule, either. Lucky.
** AntaresJB**, you might not want to show your supervisor this thread without taking out your post up there about only pretending to follow the rules.
Disconcerting, yes. But there are some good reasons to call people by their first name. Some names are unisex, my own among them. And, yes, I have been addressed as Mr. Cartwright by people who didn’t know that I’m a woman. So, in an environment where proper identification is essential, like in a health-care setting, it’s not entirely unreasonable or inappropriate to call someone by their first name.
My guess is that this policy is some misguided attempt to recapture some sort of small-town “simpler times”, warm and fuzzy atmosphere, reminiscent of a time when kids played helmetless in the street while Mom was hiding in the house to avoid offending the Laws of Decency with her big, pregnant belly (and having a cigarette to ease Pregnancy Constipation) and Dad was off on the golf course, having his 17th martini before jumping beltless into the family Olds and driving home to ignore the kids.
You know, a time when everybody knew everybody else; Mr. Pope, the green grocer, was right next door to Mr. Fleming, the butcher, whose wife was secretly getting it on with Jeb Jr., the automechanic who used to be Hometown High’s star quarterback before he got run over by Mr. Beasley, coming home on a bender again…
Makes you feel chock full of innocence and goodness, don’t it?
Seriously, though, count me in the camp of folks who feel weird and patronized by cashiers who call me by name. I do listen for it, however, because at MY local grocery store the policy is that if you’re not called by your name when making a non-cash transaction, they have to give you $5 (yeah, I know, how lame is that, but hey-- five bucks is five bucks, so if I have to live with the policy, I can at least try to profit from it).
I don’t like it because I don’t go by the name on my credit card, mostly because I’m too lazy and busy to have gone down to the city courthouse to do the paperwork for changing it. But still, I don’t use that name, and it sounds really bizarre when someone says it out loud to me, especially someone I don’t know.
At work I have to wear a name tag with my first name on it. It was annoying when I was younger when people would say “Thanks, Jin” or whatever as they were leaving. It felt vaguely creepy and I didn’t like it. These days though, so many more people know me from my website and otherwise, that I’m mostly oblivious to it. So when people call me Jin, I don’t automatically assume that I am personally acquainted with them. I still want a nametag that says Ms. Wicked, though, but they won’t let me have one. :mad:
The thing that REALLY urks me is either when a customer or an employee calls me sweetheart, dear, sugar, or some other pet name. I don’t like it as a customer because it’s really rude, and I don’t like it when I’m the employee because it puts me in a bad position where I can’t say anything to them about it without fear of getting in trouble if they go to my manager and bitch.
I usually call my customers at work by Ms./Mr. Lastname (never Mrs.), but we have workorders with that information on it, and I have to call them back to let them know when their order is complete or if I have a question. I also make sure they know my name because it’s easier if they have a problem to just call back and ask for me since I usually know what’s going on.
The sucky thing is that because my name is so odd, everyone remembers it, but it takes me several times of talking to someone before I’ll remember who they are.
I don’t mind the Safeway folks calling me “Ms. Gazer” (and it’s always “Ms.”). I would mind if they called me by my first name. I do mind that salespeople all over have been calling me “Ma’am” since I was about 15 – “Ma’am” is for women over 40, or something. (that’s probably just me, though.) What’s wrong with “Miss” when a woman is obviously a “Miss” (i.e., young, unmarried, etc.)?
The only trouble with this logic, though, is what do they call me now, when I’m married and only 24?
I think auntie em is spot-on-the-money with the suggestion that this policy is designed to simulate the small-town, everybody-knows-you, warm-fuzzy-apple-pie thing we all feel bad for having lost sometime in the last forty or fifty years. (Or thought we lost. Big cities have always been big cities.)
My local Safeway requires its cashiers to say, “Thank you, Mr./Ms. <Last Name on Computer Screen>,” at the end of the transaction if they have it (i.e., after using a debit card). Like everybody else in this thread, I also hate the practice. Maybe it’s time I said something.
Like SpoilerVirgin, I look forward to that awkward silence as the Safeway/Vons clerk attempts to butcher my last name. I appreciate the effort, but they may nail it 10% of the time. I’m sure it’s uncomfortable for them as well. I’m sure the General Manager doesn’t have to try it.
I work in retail and if my boss, the owner, ever gets it into his head that it’s a good idea to try, I shudder to think how my people are going to carry it out…they have problems with regular words.
Ohh, and Antares? You can call me by my name anytime.
[sub]…the trouble you get yourself into when you post your picture on the boards.[/sub]
I spoke to my supervisor this morning – turns out not only was this completely NOT her idea, she argured vociferously against it at the meeting. But the library director (who always kinda creeped me out to begin with…) decided it was a good idea anyways, and we should try it out. She has many of the same issues with the rule that I have. And she actually encouraged me to not do it unless I have to, since I’m so uncomfortable with it. In other words, she said that if the director or someone comes around checking, I should try my best to force it out, but otherwise, she hates it too and she doesn’t really care. Apparently a couple of the other workers complained about it, too, and she said that I probably should give her a link to this thread (I told her about it, in my stressing that NOBODY likes this policy) so she can use it as evidence for the director. So yeah, at this point I haven’t actually used anyone’s name, and I’m hoping this gets shot down quickly enough so I won’t have to. Thanks guys!
I’ll add my “hate it” to the list so your supervisors can be extra sure this is a lousy idea. I HATE being called by my first name by strangers – especially strangers who got my name off of my credit card or check or library card. It is rude to address strangers by their first names. And, from a practical perspective, I don’t use my legal first name socially so the only people who ever call me “Tamara” are those who’ve been ordered to do so by their supervisors. And then they mispronounce it 5 times out of 10. I don’t mind being called by my surname so much – at least that is polite. However, like many people, I have a difficult to pronounce last name – literally only 1 person in 20 will get it right the first time – so it’s really more of a bother than it’s worth. Just say “Ma’am.” That is polite and proper. Surely your supervisors have access to an etiquette book or two? Working in a library and all…
OK, wait a minute, this is a library, right? One of the reasons I loved working at the library is that we didn’t have to do all those weird “customer service”-type things. All we had to do was do our jobs and not be rude. We did not have to say “Have a nice day”, “Did you find everything you were looking for?”, “Would you like to checkout a book by So-and-So?” or anything like that. Just do your job and don’t be rude. I figured that it was one of the perks of working in a place where you are serving “patrons” rather than “customers”. Their tax dollars and/or tuition are going to support the place whether they come in or not, right?
So, what’s the reason for all the weird rules? I mean, you’ve basically got a monopoly here, so why put your employees (and patrons) through it? Does the library director miss working at Blockbuster or something?
Frankly, I would have been worried (had my library instituted this policy) that some weirdo whom I would call by first name would think that I was hitting on him! Believe me, I came across some weirdos in that job, and you did not want to be too friendly.
It does not seem “friendly” when store clerks who don’t know you call you by name–it seems creepy. Besides, I don’t expect “friendly” when I’m at the library, anyway. I expect “polite” and “helpful” and “professional”, but I’m not going to complain that the librarian did not smile at me as I walked in the door or call me by name as I checked out my books.
I am very against it. I worked at Bed, Bath, & Beyond for a few years, and it is company policy. In a large number of other very annoying customer service requirements, this was probably the worst for me. I was a cashier and then supervisor, and I personally refused to do it. I would also tell my cashiers not to do it.
I have a somewhat difficult to pronounce last name and I hate it when people try to say it for no apparent reason. It was also a policy at my grocery store, but since I was a regular there I finally corrected them and it didn’t bother me as much.
I will also go along with those who don’t like it when people used a clerks first name. I wore a nametag, but I do not consider that an invitation for friendship.
I dislike it also. And I think that the people who make up these policies at every corporation should read this thread and find out that their customer hate this crap.
They do it as a means to make things more comforting and familiar to teh customer - but instead it is overwhelmingly obvious that it creeps the customer out and they feel their privacy is a little violated.
Definitely it’s a practice that should stop, and it should be pointed out to management what a failure of an idea it is.
i think i wouldn’t mind too much, but then again i haven’t really been put into that position
but where i work, as soon as someone calls i address them by their name. “Hello Mr. Jones…” etc. They already know i’m going to address them by name though because it is in out advertisements and on the various other things that the customer gets. No one seems to dislike it, but it can be a little akward when i say “Hello Mr. Jones…” and it is actually Mrs. Jones on the phone. hehe. And in the instances when the name looks hard to pronounciate, i don’t even attempt to butcher it and go with the standard “hello…”
