g.j. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
in_the_blue) wrote2009-11-03 01:25 pm
in_the_blue) wrote2009-11-03 01:25 pm
Desperately Seeking
Apologies to all you Susans out there, you're very dear to me.
Imagine the setting: you work in an office at a busy college in Boston for a year. Since you're no one special -- just part of the administrative staff -- you're the one who gets sent from building to building to do things like make copies or deliver messages. It doesn't matter; Boston's Back Bay is nice and it's fun to get out of the office, to not have to type all day every now and then. So you put on your clothes to buffer against the cold wind slicing in off the Charles (or if you're a tried-and-true Bostonian, the River Chuck) and trek around with envelopes and folders in your hand, trudge up the stairs to the next building, wait in line, make your copies.
On more than one occasion, you're greeted with a brisk but sometimes friendly-enough Hello, Susan. How are you today? The only problem is this: your name isn't Susan. It doesn't look like Susan, sound like Susan, have the same number of letters as Susan. It doesn't even start with an S or end with an N. On top of that, you don't even look like a Susan. But because it's not your department, you grin and bear it, wait your turn, make your copies, hurry them back to your own office. Besides, the break from being inside more than makes up for it, right?
Now flash forward: you've been there a year, longer. Almost a year and a half. Oh, hi there, Susan, back to make more copies? The only difference is that today's your last day and you don't have to take it any more, and the resentment that's been building for a year and a half over being wrongly identified as Susan (not to mention the year and a half of drudgery as THE word processor person) finally reaches the boiling point. It's your last day of making copies for this fucking place and so finally, finally, you let it go. My name's not Susan! And much to your surprise, the receptionist, sheepish, says, I know. You must be really sick of me calling you that. How insulting that I can never remember your name.
It's pretty much a wind-ripped-out-of-your-sails moment, because what else can you do but agree with her? The point is, it doesn't take rocket science to remember these things. It doesn't take a huge effort to be polite or friendly. There's no reason for the inscrutably-Welsh-named of the world to have to go around pretending to be Susans when they're not. The thing is this: I can just see that receptionist sitting around months later going I wonder whatever happened to Susan? I haven't seen her making copies in a while.
With a vague sense of dread, I sense a new nickname coming my way.
Imagine the setting: you work in an office at a busy college in Boston for a year. Since you're no one special -- just part of the administrative staff -- you're the one who gets sent from building to building to do things like make copies or deliver messages. It doesn't matter; Boston's Back Bay is nice and it's fun to get out of the office, to not have to type all day every now and then. So you put on your clothes to buffer against the cold wind slicing in off the Charles (or if you're a tried-and-true Bostonian, the River Chuck) and trek around with envelopes and folders in your hand, trudge up the stairs to the next building, wait in line, make your copies.
On more than one occasion, you're greeted with a brisk but sometimes friendly-enough Hello, Susan. How are you today? The only problem is this: your name isn't Susan. It doesn't look like Susan, sound like Susan, have the same number of letters as Susan. It doesn't even start with an S or end with an N. On top of that, you don't even look like a Susan. But because it's not your department, you grin and bear it, wait your turn, make your copies, hurry them back to your own office. Besides, the break from being inside more than makes up for it, right?
Now flash forward: you've been there a year, longer. Almost a year and a half. Oh, hi there, Susan, back to make more copies? The only difference is that today's your last day and you don't have to take it any more, and the resentment that's been building for a year and a half over being wrongly identified as Susan (not to mention the year and a half of drudgery as THE word processor person) finally reaches the boiling point. It's your last day of making copies for this fucking place and so finally, finally, you let it go. My name's not Susan! And much to your surprise, the receptionist, sheepish, says, I know. You must be really sick of me calling you that. How insulting that I can never remember your name.
It's pretty much a wind-ripped-out-of-your-sails moment, because what else can you do but agree with her? The point is, it doesn't take rocket science to remember these things. It doesn't take a huge effort to be polite or friendly. There's no reason for the inscrutably-Welsh-named of the world to have to go around pretending to be Susans when they're not. The thing is this: I can just see that receptionist sitting around months later going I wonder whatever happened to Susan? I haven't seen her making copies in a while.
With a vague sense of dread, I sense a new nickname coming my way.
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I mean, do I look like a Susan to you?
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did youever see the beatles' film 'a hard days night'? the segment where georgeis tried for some kidn of model stitn for a popular brand of clothes and they say soemthing like 'we have totel lsusan' or something aki ntothat and he goes 'and who's this susan when she's at home?"
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See, I am occasionally awful with names, but I make up for it by not using a person's name unless I'm certain of it! (And often if I am certain of it, really, just because using names frequently is not a verbal tic of mine.) It's perfectly possible to be friendly and chatty without ever addressing somebody by name, and definitely preferable to just picking one out of a hat and going with it.
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