What the hell evidence do you have that this is what is actually happening? As far as I can see, our idiot OP is asking people for their name and title, and getting pissed off when they don’t magically divine his real intention, namely to ask what their profession is. If you’re going to just make shit up, why not have it go like this:
Travel Agent: Here is a free flight and a voucher for a blowjob, Mr PhD sire.
Traveler: That’s DOCTOR PhD Sire to you, you foul-mouthed amoebic cretin! Hold still while I cockslap you into next Tuesday.
Probably not. But, some people are pretty attached to their titles and and honorifics; if the airlines didn’t include them on their forms, it probably wouldn’t be an issue, though. Besides, since it’s entirely voluntary, an actual MD can simply not bother to check the “Dr.” honorific if he just wants to not be bothered with a fellow passenger’s hemorrhoids flairup. I just don’t see it an issue of a PhD want’s to have “Dr.” in front of his name if he so chooses. I would venture to guess the majority of flights don’t actually have an MD passenger on board; they should just handle every flight as if that were the case, rather than waste time trying to locate one among the passengers.
Do you have any reason whatsoever to believe that our putative traveler actually knows the travel agent is going to make a stupid assumption based on the title they use all the time? Call me weird, but I tend to charitably assume that the people I deal with aren’t complete fucking morons. I suppose I’ll have to reconsider this when dealing with travel agents. Nonetheless, I don’t see why I should be blamed for someone else’s fallacious affirmation of the consequent. Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em in their messed-up emergency tracheotomy.
Come on, do you really think the OP just has some big problem with PhDs? Do you really think that?
I can relate two personal stories in a service capacity with PhDs:
One of them was when I was an undergrad and I was working in a customer service call center. People who work in those jobs have my respect because I witnessed the sheer lunacy they put up with daily. I had a customer who called in to place an order. I asked him his first and last name while taking his information. Later in the conversation I said “Thank you Mr Customer.” He started berating me INSTANTLY that he was DR Customer because he earned his degree and didn’t work like a monkey in a call center. He said “Do you even know what a PhD is?” over and over again. I apologized and called him Dr. He continued to insult me and tell me that a monkey could do my job. He was clearly demonstrating that he was an asshole. Easy enough!
The other was when I was working in a hospital. The husband of the patient was quite a character. He refused to call anyone by name. It was “hey you!” or “You over there, come here!” when he’d speak to us. This was fine with me as his wife was sick and he was upset. I introduced myself to him by name and identified myself as his wife’s nurse. He then decided my name was “Toots” anytime he referred to me. It was hard to tell when he meant me though, since he also called the phlebotomist “toots” when he spoke with her. I corrected him only on time when he grabbed my arm and said “Toots.” I smiled at him and said “My name is ________, your wife’s nurse.” He disregarded what I said. Fine. The capper was when I explained something to him and referred to him as “Mr ____” and he ripped me a new asshole that he was DR! so loudly that two people from the station outside came in to see what was wrong.
I certainly don’t condemn people with the PhD title because of the few assholes I’ve met, but I don’t doubt for a minute that the OP could be the result of a conversation with someone similar to the people I’ve met in the past. You (and a few others) seem to think this is silly to consider and that the OP must clearly have some sort of problem with PhDs even after they advised us in post #11 that they appreciate the title. If you can assume they just have a weird problem with PhDs, why can’t I assume that the person was ranting because of a problem they encountered with an asshole on the job?
Well, at the same time, if you are the paying customer in a service transaction, it doesn’t seem out of line to ask to be addressed by the title that you prefer and have every right to use. As an example, it doesn’t matter in most cases if the service person thinks I am or am married or single but I still have every right to ask they call me by my choice of Miss/Mrs/Ms.
Of course you always need to be polite, but the OP isn’t pitting the guy for rudeness, they’re pitting him for using a title.
I work at a college. I know a lot of folks with PhDs. For the most part, they don’t use the honorific outside of the classroom. People who get their feathers ruffled because they’re called Ms. Smith instead of Dr. Smith tend to be more than a little pretentious, in my experience.
No, I don’t think the OP has some big problem with PhDs. I just think he’s an idiot with less logical facility than the average ham.
You’re doing an awful lot of assuming on the OP’s behalf. Why?
Yeah, what a cunt, eh? Going around assuming people aren’t fucking cretins like that. Craziness.
Again, where is there any evidence of anyone “getting their feathers ruffled”? As far as I can see, the OP is just pissing and moaning at people who, when asked what honorific they prefer, tell him what honorific they prefer.
Right, so in the spirit of actually introducing something vaguely fact-related to this thread, I went to www.ryanair.com and tried to book a flight. I chose a route (9.99 return to Dublin: bargain!), and proceeded to confirmation. I see a drop-down box for my title; the options are Dr, Mr, Mrs or Ms. Nowhere is there the slightest hint that anyone will assume I am a medical doctor if I select Dr. I look through the terms and conditions; no hint there. Possibly overzealously, I inspect the page’s source code, only to come up emptyhanded.
I repeat the exercise at www.ba.com; the flight is approximately 7 times more expensive, but in recompense I get a much greater selection of honorifics, including Rev, Lord and Dame. There is still not the slightest hint that what they really want to know is whether I can puncture someone’s trachea with a biro.
I do it again at easyjet; same story, but more orange.
So, given all this: if I have a PhD in Proust and select “Dr” from the dropdown, am I an asshole? And if airlines don’t mention this apparently life-or-death detail to their own customers, why should travel agents expect them to magically know it? Doesn’t it suggest, in fact, that the airlines aren’t so stupid as to infer one’s profession from one’s title?
Oh yeah, and does anyone know some good nights out in Dublin?
And why do English-language companies insist on a honorific? The freaking field is compulsory! If I’m going to get a honorific, I want my Doña, which I’ve had from birth so there stomps foot
No, seriously, why do Glasgow Council and the gas company and the power company and the airlines and the phone company make the honorific compulsory, with no option to leave it blank? It’s got to be one of those cultural things, like calling people by their degree or job title outside of work.
In this hypothetical example, precisely what psychic power is travel agent using to determine without asking that Dr Traveller was, in fact a PhD-type doctor and not an MD-type doctor?
And while we’re pulling hypothetical conversations out of our ass, how do we know it didn’t go something like this?
Travel Agent: Name please? Traveller: Dr Joan Traveller. Travel Agent: Oh, a doctor. What area do you practise in? Traveller: Um. I’m a historian. Travel Agent: Oh. A PhD doctor. I thought you meant a real doctor. martyred sigh Now I’m going to have to go back and change that because the airlines want us to only use Dr for medical doctors yadda yadda yadda…
And speaking of which, having two PhD-holding parents I’ve never ever heard of any airline giving a toss what title a passenger uses, or quizzing people who call themselves Dr X to make absoutely sure that they’re the medical sort. And I’m not seeing any evidence in this thread that anybody else has either.
Well, IMO Aspidistra’s scenario is much more likely for the OP.
But the problem with both of these scenarios is they they take for granted something that has not yet been established—that airlines do, in fact, require to be notified about medical doctors who are traveling on their flights. As far as i can tell, all the evidence we have for this assertion is the OP’s claim that the flight crew looks at the manifest in emergencies to determine where the physicians might be.
Dead Badger’s little experiment suggests that airlines don’t actually give a flying fuck about what type of Doctor you are. I’ve booked multiple trips on multiple US and Australian carriers over the past five or six years, and never once do i recall seeing a single airline’s website place any conditions on the use of the “Dr” honorific.
Surely if it was a big deal, the airlines would make a point of telling their customers to be clear about whether or not they were a medical doctor. Maybe if the OP’s a travel agent, and he claims that airlines do, indeed, need to be sure about who the physicians are, he can point us in the direction of a policy or some other evidence of this.
Okay. So to sum up: the common usage of “doctor” means “medical doctor,” so physicians who insist on their title are doing the public a service by announcing their presence, while academics who insist on their title are pretentious assholes?
Sorry, that’s just not right.
Anybody with a doctorate has earned the right to be called doctor.
*Nobody *has earned the right to force others to grant them their honorific.
Anyone who insists on being called “doctor” by casual acquaintances, members of the public, or the barrista at Starbucks is being a jerk, M.D. or Ph.D. or whatever.
I prefer “Dr.” over “Mr.,” but both are accurate: I am a man with a Ph.D., and although I will put down “Dr.” whenever there is a choice, both terms are accurate and either is acceptable. And, to echo what others have said, it’s never caused confusion in any actual emergency.
Right or wrong, in today’s day and age a lot of people feel that way. You might not care what they think, but if you, as a Ph.D holder, insist on being addressed as “Dr.”, then you run the risk of having lots of people think you’re a pretentious asshole.
And an MD who insists on being addressed as “Dr.” is just as big of an asshole.
Airlines don’t have much of a reason to give passengers the option of identifying themselves as doctors, whether PhD or MD. In the event of medical emergency, shouting “Medic!” would be about a million times more effective that rushing to the front of the cabin and digging out the passenger manifest. So clearly, the booking forms are just indulging people who prefer to use their honorific.