It's All In The Name

So there I was, standing in line at Taco Time, ready to order. I haven't been there in weeks. Despite them being my favorite fast food Mexican place, there's a reason for my absence. A few years back, they made a simple yet crucial change in how they processed orders. Instead of giving you a circled number, the cashier now wants your name, which is used to announce when your food is ready.

That's a change designed to seem more personal and friendly, which is good for business. I can hear you thinking that. Unfortunately, I can't agree. I mentally cringe when this situation exists, knowing ahead of time the difficulty that goes along with having an old French name, one that the current generation has likely never heard before.

It goes something like this:

I order. The cashier gives me a total and I pay for it. Then comes the hard part.

"Name?"

"Jeanette."

I watch him write J - A - N - E - T.

And I cringe for the umpteenth time as my pet peeve activates.

The thing is, I speak clearly and enunciate well. No one has ever had a difficult time understanding me. And I'm extra careful to speak my name in these situations. It doesn't seem to matter. The hapless youth ignores the different syllable emphasis of my name as he/she writes down some American version that is familiar. The problem is, that's not my name and doesn't even sound like it.

You wouldn't call her "Jeanette Jackson," now would you? So why call me by a name that isn't mine?

I realize spelling my name correctly is nigh to impossible, and I don't expect that. All I want is to have my name misspelled in such a fashion that it shows the person actually paid attention and wants to cooperate. And so that it leads to the last person having a much stronger possibility of saying the right sounds and syllables when handing my food to me.

How I wish they would go back to using numbers. I'm seriously thinking of telling them my name is "#10" when asked. Then smile all friendly as if nothing out of the ordinary, and edge down the counter. Numbers may seem more impersonal, but it's better than mangling people's names all day. I've talked to other people whose names were homogenized into something else; my plight is not unique.

You think that's bad? Try having my French last name and now you've got a recipe for disaster. My last name is Foshee (pronounced "foh-SHAY"). It's pronounced and spelled correctly in France, but that doesn't help in the States. You would not believe the permutations of pronunciation, much less spelling, that happens.

For the sake of brevity, I will list the most common variations:

     Foster
     Forster
     Forshee
     Fosher
     Foshay
     Foche
     Fooey (pronounced "phooey" -- it's my favorite)
     Fouchee
     Fashey
     Foshen

That said, my pet peeve is over; it felt good to let off steam. In the end, names are important; it's who we are. And we wish to hear it spoken correctly or even an attempt at it.

I realize we all get caught up in the "do it fast and move on" mentality, but there's a rare pleasure when someone stops just long enough to ask me how to spell and/or pronounce my name. In this culture of mass processing, giving a few moments to be human and interact with each other goes so far; why not make the attempt?