What's In A Name?

I've got plenty of excuses for not posting more often this winter. Work-related chaos and stress, one dental disaster after another, a dog with cancer and major surgery (it was benign, thankfully, so we're hopeful), the doldrums of my fourteenth (but hopefully final) miserable Minnesota winter, the frustration of waiting for the financial windfall that we won't actually get till later this year, watching friends struggle with personal, medical, and financial troubles...

Yeah, it's been that kind of winter. It's shut down my writing brain. Which puts me in a whole different category of insanity. But let's see if we can jump-start things.

How many of you have worked in customer service? Show of hands. Lots of you, right? Whether it's reception, retail sales, restaurant work, service providers, bank tellers... whatever. Most of us agree it sucks. A lot. And most of us are taught that you're always supposed to give your customers/clients/patrons your name, because that makes them all happy and friendly and stuff. Maybe you have to wear a cheery-looking name tag.

I disagree with this practice, as both an employee and a customer. It annoys the living shit out of me.

Back in the late 80s or early 90s, when I worked for the Indianapolis public library system, the Powers That Be decided that we had to start wearing name tags, and I almost quit over it. I was working the front desk not because I adore the book-reading (or, in many cases, book-stealing or book-damaging or just plain moronic) public, but because I love books and am very good at clerical and administrative work.

I had lots of reasons for not wanting to wear my name prominently displayed over my left boob. The least significant one was that I get creeped out when total strangers peer at my chest and then get all familiar by calling me by name. The main one, though, is that my last name is very unusual, and even back then - in those dark, dismal, empty, pre-internet days - it wasn't hard to find people with very little personal information. There were the inevitable pissed-off patrons, but the most disturbing were the way-too-friendly ones.

There was one guy who appeared to be from somewhere in South America, and he was far too focused on me. I felt like he was practicing his American bar pick-up lines. He would bring cookbooks up to the desk, after waiting for me to come out of hiding in the work room, and ask my opinion on various things, and then offer to cook me dinner. Despite the wedding ring clearly visible on my left hand.

I should also mention this was my "cute year." After I lost a bunch of weight, and before I regained it all. It was the year of the pretty stretch-cotton floral print dresses, short sleeved and fitted to a slightly dropped waist, flaring into a full skirt. Think a 50s-era silhouette without a bunch of petticoats. It was also a good hair year, in general. I was about 25. I suppose he can't be blamed for being intrigued. But he was way too persistent, and had beady, shifty, "I'm totally up to something, and if I cooked you dinner you would definitely wake up in pieces in a dumpster" eyes.

I did not want to wear a name tag.

Besides our job title, our tag would read, for example, "Mrs. Brown." If your name was Brown, which mine was not. If my name had been Smith or Brown or Johnson or Clark, it wouldn't have been so bad. There were undoubtedly dozens, if not hundreds, of Mrs. Browns in Indianapolis. Not so many Mrs. Whitwams, making it far too easy to find out where I lived, if you were so inclined. I guess some others voiced concerns, because the Board decided it would be okay if we misspelled our last names, to help protect our privacy. So, I became "Mrs. Whitham." (I still have the tag somewhere. It's freakin' hilarious.)

The absurdity of this did not escape me. Well over half of the female employees - and some of the males - were wearing fraudulent name tags, ranging from the sly to the ludicrous. Sort of defeated the purpose of identifying ourselves to the patrons.

In my many years of reception work, I inwardly cringed every time I had to answer the phone with some variation of "This is Lori, how may I help you?" because then callers would start calling me Lori, and that feels way too familiar for someone I don't know - and am not even seeing face to face. Plus, whether or not I would feel inclined to help remained to be seen, so making the offer at that point felt a teensy bit dishonest. I'm not one of those people who uses names fifty times in a conversation, unless you are across the room not paying attention to me and I need to tell you something or ask if you have any chocolate.

I also don't do "eye contact," but that's a whole 'nother quirk.

It's not just about my identity, though. 99% of the time, I do not need to know the name of my cashier, dinner-server, drink-bringer, or convenience store clerk. Do not need to know, and could not possibly care less. I'm not going to say, "Morning, Vito. Ring me up on pump 2," or "Hey, Horatio, pour me another glass of merlot." I'm just not.

I've been thinking about this every time I go through the drive-through at my bank to deposit my paycheck. Starting a few months ago, the tellers have been greeting me with, "Hi, this is Frieda, and I'll be helping you today." Really??? Why do I need to know that? First of all, I'm in the drive-through. You could be Mickey Mouse, or an albino cyclops with seaweed hair, and I wouldn't know. Or care. Do not speak. Just take the little plastic cylinder when it plops down in front of you, process my deposit, and shoot the receipt back through the high-pressure air tube thingy. Discussion is not necessary.

I use the drive-through for two reasons. 1) I am way too lazy to get out of the car and walk across the parking lot when a perfectly good alternative exists, and 2) I want to keep the number of humans with which I must interact to an absolute minimum.

If I had a transaction that required conversation or explanation, I would come inside. If I were so starved for human contact that I needed to see you up close and personal, I would come inside. But I did not. I am in the drive-through. If your corporate leadership is saying you have to tell me your name in the interest of customer service, they are asshats and don't know anything about anti-social people who prefer drive-throughs to over-the-counter service.

Oddly, I've recently found one exception to this iron-clad personal rule. Dental assistants. Or dental technicians. Or whatever the currently correct title is. I've spent a lot of time in the torture chair this winter, and the tech I've had at every appointment is quite nice, but has never introduced herself. I think the doctor may have referred to her by name once or twice, so I might know what it is, but she's never said, and they don't wear name tags there. And at some point I crossed the threshold in which I decided if someone's fingers are going to spend that much time in my mouth, and if I'm going to spend several hours staring up into her perfectly-made-up blue eyes through the "don't spit on me" plastic shield, I might care - a little bit, though not enough to ask - what her name is.

At least I hope the plastic shield is for spit. Because if they're expecting me to spurt blood or tooth bits far enough to endanger their eyes, I need to find another dentist.

That, however, has been the only exception. I suppose if I wanted to bitch to management about an employee, it would be handy to know his or her name. But I'm not typically much of a complainer, so it's not really relevant. We did once name a drink-bringer at a club, but we made it up. Pippi The Bar Wench. Because she had braids and brought me many many drinks. I'm pretty sure Pippi was not her real name, but it totally should have been.

I'm encouraged, though, that society might, in some small way, be coming around to my way of thinking. Sure, the service people are still going to have to share their names, verbally or via name tag... but there are more ways to avoid having to deal with them. Oh how I adore self-checkouts at the grocery store and the library. You know, on the rare occasions I go to the grocery store, or the theoretical time I might have to go to the library again now that I have George-the-Kindle. I resisted self-serve gas stations until about 1992, but now they're the only option, and I've decided I'm okay with that. Pay at the pump, zero human interaction... score!

If I need to know who you are, I'll ask. Otherwise, it's totally unnecessary information. And it smacks of insincerity. Because most of you don't care who I am any more than I care who you are, so who are we fooling?

And I leave you with this thought... Whoever invented those "Hello! My Name Is..." adhesive name tags that sadistic management types make you wear at meetings and conferences and (shudder) team-building events should be guillotined. Or drawn and quartered, but that's way messier and a lot more work. But, your choice.