I know this has happened to you before. You meet someone, and somewhere along the line, they get confused about your name and call you something else. When they call you that wrong name, you’re thrown off. But instead of correcting them, you just dance right over it. Sounding familiar? It’s happened to me several times in my life.
I would think of myself as fairly confident, and honest, but when it comes to correcting someone when they get my name wrong, I completely shy away from it. But WHY?The reason I’m bringing this up is because it’s happening to me right now. One of my new colleagues keeps calling me Emily. While I can sympathize with the fact that Emma is a similar name to Emily, Emma does not equal Emily. Emma is not short for anything. Emma is a whole name (and a legitimately normal name at that). Emma. Emma Emma Emma. Too bad I can’t say that to the guy calling me Emily.
The kicker is that he has a rather difficult name, and I seem to have mastered that without a struggle.
I’m sure eventually he’ll figure it out, since all my emails host my actual name. In the meantime, I try to avoid him and say a quick good morning without using his name (so as not to prompt him to inaccurately use mine).
What do you do when that happens to you? And how awkward would you feel if someone told you that you were using the wrong name?
It's SO awkward to correct!!! I don't know why but in Korea "Kristen" is a very hard name to say and all my korean-speaking coworkers seem to love calling me "Kristine"- not my name! I was fine to go along with it (i did for more than 6 months) when another one of my coworkers did the most awkward thing and said "her name is Kristen, KrisTEN!" to my BOSS! Oy vey!
ReplyDeleteKK that's too funny! But hey, at least someone else did the dirty work for you, that's what I would love to have happen...preferably when I'm not around though...
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