{"id":1262,"date":"2010-02-28T16:38:17","date_gmt":"2010-02-28T11:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/?p=1262"},"modified":"2010-02-28T16:38:17","modified_gmt":"2010-02-28T11:08:17","slug":"names-and-correct-modes-of-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/names-and-correct-modes-of-address\/","title":{"rendered":"Names and correct modes of address"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was reading the latest post on the Flipkart Blog<\/a> where they talked about how they lost a customer because they addressed him informally in their correspondence with him and it started me thinking about how important it is to make sure that you address a person correctly. The problem is that the ‘correct’ mode of address changes depending on where you are and who you are addressing.<\/p>\n

Till I went to college (before 1999) mode of address was easy, anyone in the same generation as you but older was called Bhaiya\/Didi (elder brother\/sister), anyone younger than you was called by their name. Any person from the older generation was either called Uncle\/Aunty or by their relationship to you. Oh and teachers were called Sir or Mam. Over all quite easy to remember. <\/p>\n

When I went to college in the US everything changed and it was a shock. Suddenly I was supposed to call my professors by their name which I felt was rude and when I started working I kept calling my bosses Sir\/Mam. It wasn’t me being formal but just showing respect which thankfully they understood. Still I was told to stop doing that and call them by their names. For a person coming from a background where you never call your elders by name it was a big deal and took me quite a while to get used to it.<\/p>\n

Then I came back to India and was lost again, because by then I was used to calling everyone by name even when they had kids older than me. In personal interactions it wasn’t that big a problem but professionally it was an issue. If you called someone by their name they felt that you weren’t giving them the appropriate respect. So I ended up calling everyone senior to me Mr xyz or Ms Xmy. <\/p>\n

Luckily for me all the companies I have worked for had people who dealt with Americans or had studied in the US so if I accidentally called someone by their first name it wasn’t an issue. <\/p>\n

Now I have a simple policy in this regard, if you are my age or 5-10 years older I will call you by your name unless corrected and if you are older then that I will call you by your last name. This is for in-person meetings, for conversations over the phone I take my cue from whoever introduces me to them; if they called the person by their first name I do the same otherwise its was back to formality. (Though I have stopped calling anyone sir or mam and I tell all my juniors to not call me sir.) <\/p>\n

The mode of address is a small part of dealing with a customer\/co-worker but is quite important. You want to come across as an approachable person but not get too familiar which some people might find offensive and its quite a balancing act. <\/p>\n

I sympathize with Flipkart that they lost a customer but in the customer’s defense he told them that he wanted to be addressed formally but they still addressed him informally so its understandable that the person got ticked…<\/p>\n

Another way to annoy a person is to get the gender wrong when addressing them. I have made that mistake but thankfully the person I was corresponding with had a sense of humor and corrected me without getting upset. Since then I try to be extra careful when using gender based vocabulary in an email but to my dismay the name doesn’t always tell if a person is a male or female especially when you are dealing with names from another culture. So I rarely use gender specific words when I don’t know the sex of the person I am emailing\/chatting with.<\/p>\n

The funny part is that my name has been mistaken for a girls name a couple of times so I know what it feels to be on the other side. But still, I think most issues can be overcome if both parties are willing to work for it and have a sense of humor (Yes, I know sometimes humor doesn’t translate well across cultures but that’s for another post)<\/p>\n

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.<\/p>\n

– Suramya<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reading the latest post on the Flipkart Blog where they talked about how they lost a customer because they addressed him informally in their correspondence with him and it started me thinking about how important it is to make sure that you address a person correctly. The problem is that the ‘correct’ mode […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1263,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions\/1263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suramya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}