I happened to notice something today. I was nothing new, however it occurred to me I ought to put it out here and see what everyone else thought about it.
I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few things. When I got to the checkout I presented my membership card (which gave me a savings of $1.38 on two bottles of salad dressing). The checkout girl person presented my receipt and proceeded to thank me by name. Now; I understand that she is just following orders, however this never fails to irk me at least a little. She is a total stranger to me and I to her, what gives her the right to call me by name. Just because she read it off of a card? She has no clue what my hopes and dreams and fears are. She has never held back my long, flowing mane of luxurious hair when I was throwing up…because of the stomach flu. I’ll bet she doesn’t even know my favourite brand of beer (around these parts they don’t sell beer in the grocery stores, which is a a real travesty). She doesn’t know me, therefore she should not be calling my by name. Especially if she can’t even pronounce it. And it’s not even a really difficult name, if she would just sound it out phonetically she’d be really close. But instead she has to add an extra “r” or “l” or sometimes both.
I guess someone in an office somewhere said, “Hey, I really appreciate it when total strangers call me by my name. It makes me feel like I actually have friends. And since I’m a really important dude in this organization I’m going to make it company policy for all of my underlings to do this. After all, if I like it, everyone else out there must like it too.”
Fortunately for me, I am blessed with many beer buddies who are welcome to drop by The Redneck and call me by name anytime they want, so I don’t have to go out into society and make any new friends.
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Tim Ebl // Jan 7, 2008 at 7:42 pm
My wife kept her card from before we were married, last name Stone. Every time we go together to this one supermarket, she uses her old card, and the bagger addresses me as ‘Mr. Stone’! I always get a laugh out of that one, but then I think a lot of things are funny. They always look at me in a weird way when they see the glint in my eyes.
2 Canucklehead // Jan 8, 2008 at 6:24 pm
This is SO obviously some kind of paid post - sad really. Who’s paying you off beer guy! The Redneck? Is that it? Sad really.
On an unrelated note, the people at the grocery store usually call me Mr. Stoner, usually preceded by ‘beat it’ and/or ‘get the hell out of our store!’
3 mickie // Jan 11, 2008 at 8:36 am
Okay, now you see. New Yorkers have this reputation of being mean & unfriendly but this kind of thing irks people.
Blockbuster Video rental does worse. They force their employees to say “Hello” everytime someone walks in the store and then they get you again at the register with the name thing.
“Listen buddy, don’t know you, don’t wanna know you, just give me my change.”
4 Julia (JD) // Jan 12, 2008 at 8:38 am
I dislike this overfamiliarity trend. And, mickie, when I used to frequent Blockbuster, I always made it a game to sneak in without someone yelling HELLO at me. I never made it.
Julia (JD)’s last blog post..I am Distracted so you don’t have to be
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