I’ve a PhD and an MD. Please don’t call me ‘doctor’ if it can be avoided.
Chiropractors just love it when you call them ‘Doctor.’ Pleases them to no end.
I’ve never met one and hope I never do. Sounds like the makings of an insufferable prick.
I used to play volleyball with an Orthopedic. We all called him by his first name. Even when we’d hurt ourselves on the court and he’d do a quick eval for us.
-D/a
My father is an M.D. And one of some professional success. He founded several medical societies, and edited some prestigious journals. At all social settings, he was “Frank.” He probably insisted on it, it was never a big deal. No one called him “Mr. Procrustus,” however, always Dr. Procrustus.
Now, I’m sorry to say, he’s old and sick. When he’s in the hospital the nurses, aids, and doctors call him Mr. Proctrustus. I hate it. He doesn’t seem to mind.
Ph.D. in mathematics, currently employed as a government statistician. Other than when I’m being introduced before giving a talk at a mathematical or statistical conference, I don’t expect to be addressed as ‘Dr.’ I wouldn’t expect to be addressed as ‘Dr.’ in a social setting, even if the social setting was a social hour at the conference where I was one of the speakers.
And it’s been long enough since I’ve left academe that even the youngest of my former students are in their 30s now, so if I were to run into them socially, I certainly hope I could train them out of addressing me as ‘Dr. [Firefly].’
Yeah, that’s obnoxious. One can either put “Dr” in front of your name, or use the post-nominals, but not both.
I just address all female clients as “Ms” unless they either correct me, or have something else listed on their account.
I had a great aunt to insisted on being called Doctor (except by realitves & close friends). God help anyone that called her Miss or Mrs. Of course she did go to medical school in the 1930s and sacrificed alot to get that title. And of course during most of the '40s it was “Capt” or “Major”.
My parents frequently refer to lawyers as “Attorney ____” (well, my father often says other things ;)). Also when I had jury duty both lawyers were refered to like that in court.
The only social situtions I can imagine any titles being used these days are formal wedding invitations.
I don’t use titles unless I’m referring to a job function in the 3rd person (e.g. “the boss”, “the undersecretary”, “the janitor”.) I introduce myself as Firstname Lastname. I address people as Firstname or Firstname Lastname. If someone can’t be bothered to tell me his or her name then I don’t call them anything.
It’s rare that people use a title when introducing themselves to me. I don’t really keep track. The last few folks who have used one were medical professionals providing services to me. It’s a bit silly; I try not to giggle.
I have a professor, well had since I just dropped the class, who insisted everyone call her Dr. She did not want to be called Miss, Mrs, etc because it meant she was married to her brother or father. Ok… I gathered from some of her other comments that she was poor and maybe from the wrong side of tracks and needed the validation from a bunch of students she didn’t get as a kid. Either way it was irritating.
I made sure to call her by Miss, Mrs, or Ms.
So she prefers to use the professional title she earned in the most appropriate professional setting and you purposefully use titles she has asked you not to use and she’s the irritating one with the inferiority complex?
I’d feel odd calling a medical professional working on me by his or her first name. In those contexts I’d prefer the feeling that I was dealing with someone a cut above the man or woman on the street.
I have several friends who are either MDs or PhDs and I’ve never seen any of them insist others call them Dr. or introduce themselves as such. It seems kind of jerkish to do so, especially to another adult.
That said, while I realize it’s a master’s degree and not an MD or PhD (which makes me frequently feel like the female equivalent of Wolowitz in the Big Bang Theory amongst my comparatively smarty-pantsed friends), I would now like people to start calling me Master. Or, more appropriately Mistress. Yes, I do think I’m going to start insisting on that.
This is a very sensitive topic for a lot of female faculty. There are many students who automatically call male professors “Dr.” or “Professor” but do not default to the appropriate professional titles with women. If it is standard at your university is for faculty members with doctorates to be called “Dr.” or “Professor” by students, she is right to insist upon it and you are the one being irritating. (I withdraw my objection if the institutional norm is for faculty to go by their first names and she is the only one insisting on a title.)
I am close to finishing my doctorate but I don’t care much about having the Dr attached to my name. I work with severely mentally ill patients who mostly call me by my first name and some of them refer to me as “Ms. (and my last name)”.
But I have this female supervisor who finished her dissertation and got the “Dr.” slapped on to her name years ago. She doesn’t have a license. She ALWAYS corrects people and insists they call her doctor. She corrected a superior court judge once who addressed her as “Ms…”
She will not talk to patients if they don’t address her as “doctor”. This one time…she got into an unnecessary argument with one of our patients who suffers from Schizophrenia and was actively psychotic at the time. He refused to call her doctor. So she got into an altercation with him, further agitated him and had him removed from the building and wanted other staff to call the police. It was ridiculous.
I don’t have much respect for her. I just tolerate her because I have to.
If you’re a doctor and you insist that everybody at the party address you as “Doctor” (or if you simply just introduce yourself that way), expect lots of other people there to ask you for medical advice.
I am a nurse, I work with MDs, both General Practitioners and Psychiatrists. (I have also worked with clinical psychologists with doctorates too.) They all introduce themselves by their first names, but I tend to default to Doctor, which annoys two of them. I have trouble with it, because this is the first setting where EVERY doctor wants to be on a first name basis.
I went to an open house at another hospital’s new psych ward (gee what wild fun I have on my days off) and bumped into three of the doctors. I introducted them to my husband and son as Dr…X. Dry Y and Dr Z and was immediately corrected. My son then asked the psychiatrist if she was one of my “work friends”. She told him I was. That was kind of cool.
I try to teach my son to call adults by honorific titles, but in general most people shake them off.
I always figure that going more formal than strictly necessary costs me nothing, then it is up to the holder of the title to tell me what they want to be called.
I do not consider calling someone Dr. as settting them ina higher class. To me it is reconizing the work they put into getting the DR.
When I was in college we had one teacher with a Dr. in ecconomics, but he was teaching engineeering classes and was one of the 3rd assistant engineers on the training ship. He went by Mr. Howie. But if his degree had been in engineering I bet all the engineering students would have called him Dr Howie.
At the same time the captain of the training ship insisted that everyone refere to him as Captain Last name, both students and facility. But Mr Howie always call the captain Mr last name not captain last name. And his coment was if the captain ever insisted the he be called Captian Lastname, he would insist the captain call him Dr Howie.
In professional settings, whether I ask it or not, I get called Dr. Sometimes I try to not use Dr, and technicians with whom I do not work still insist on using the Dr. OK, then…
Teaching students is occasionally part of my job, and there I insist on the title. I tell them I don’t care if it is just “Dr.”, “Dr. first name”, or “Dr. Lastname”. And I also tell them that that applies only to my area, once I am done teaching them, they can no longer call me Dr. unless they’re talking to me about a professional consult. If they see me outside drinking and hanguing out, I tell them I don’t want to be addressed by my title.
Since my own doctor knows what I do and my specialty, she gives me extra information, which I find cool.
One of the PhDs at my company goes by “Dr. Bates”. His license plate is “DR BATES”. I have not had the balls to ask if, when he merely had a Master’s degree, his license plate said “MASTER BATES”.
That’s because chiropractors aren’t real doctors. 
My father is a doctor of pharmacy. He has no trouble calling MDs by their first names and generally prefers to be called by his first name in most professional settings. Unless he doesn’t like you, or he thinks you need to be brought to heel. Then he’s Dr. <lastname>.