I go by an unusual name in the day-to-day office environment. I use my nickname, beggs, that I have had since I was in elementary school. People in the office call me beggs and I sign all of my emails ‘\beggs.’ But some people have not caught on to how the name is spelled or spoken.
Now, even in the US ‘beggs’ is a rather unusual name and here in Asia, where most people are not native English speakers I don’t spend much time correcting people who don’t pronounce it quite right; becks, begg, begk and other harder to write pronunciations.
What gets me is that people continue to use these strange pronunciations of a fairly simple word (beg, as in the verb ‘to beg’ and add an ‘s’) after months of exchanging email. I get emails that say: ‘Hi Becks,’ or ‘Beg.’ Now this is a fairly small thing, except that after I have exchanged countless emails with you over the course of months, all signed, ‘\beggs’ you’d think people would catch on to the fact that my name is not Becks—I am not a German beer. When I write an email to someone I check any previous emails I have from that person to see how they sign their name. does M██████ Somebody sign ‘M██████’ or ‘Mike?’ It’s a simple thing to do and even if you don’t actively check the emails before you write a new one if you exchange emails with this person on a regular basis surely you would notice how they sign their name over-and-over again?
The best part of this whole saga, confirming my long standing dislike of commercial type people, is the fact that nearly 100% of the long term abusers of my name are commercial types—sales, presales, account managers, etc. I get emails from Engineers and Developers who I might only exchange two or three emails with and they open them, ‘Hi beggs.’ I’ve never met these people but they obviously thought that reading my entire email was worth their time. Sales people in my own company—in my own office—have been addressing my as ‘Becks’ for months.
Now I ask you: who actually reads their email?