Moderately Confused by Jeff Stahler for November 25, 2022

My apologies for the two-part post. As the holidays approach people seem to get ruder and ruder, especially towards service people.

I wrote this a long time ago.

I believe in reading nametags.

Partly it’s because I do worse than most people when it comes to remembering names. I learn by seeing things and doing things but am particularly poor remembering things I hear. I forget them before the sound of the words bounce off the wall behind me.

I can only remember my own name only because people shout it at me all day long. Why can’t people carry billboards with their names on it? Maybe that’s why I liked being in the military; everyone wore a name tag.

But that’s not the kind of name tag I am talking about. It does seem that name tags are everywhere: on the overalls of the mechanic at the garage, sitting at the counter of the clerk at the bank, on the shirt of the waitperson at Red Robbin and even the person bagging groceries at Food Lion.

Each of these people have a name, so I use it. I greet them by name. It’s nice to see their faces light up. Sometimes the name is unusual and I’ll ask how to pronounce it and if it has a special meaning or what the origin of the name is. It opens a door and often starts a conversation.

If nothing else, it makes the bagging and checkout experience seem to go faster.

The only place I have success in remembering a name I hear is on the telephone and that’s because I write it down. Whenever I call the help desk – it doesn’t matter if it is at work to the IT Department to get my Outlook fixed or to Direct TV to decipher how to program the remote, I have pencil and paper in hand.

They usually start of with something like, “Hi, my name is Alice …” I respond with “Hi, Alice, I’m Dan. I’m calling today about …” and end it with, “Thanks for your help, Alice.”