I've been mistaken for a man at work

[reducingfootprint]

Emailed an external 3rd party to ask for something for a project, i have spoken to him over the phone weeks prior, i sound like a woman (because i am!)

fast forward to yesterday i emailed asking for said thing, he replied and copied in some more people as they had the info and in the email referred to me as 'he' and 'his'. i have a female name but it is sometimes mispronounced as a males name, think Louise and then being called Louis. The subject matter was engineering related if that matters.

He is in west coast USA so i have woken up to a thread of emails where they all think i am a man!!! is it to late now to email them back saying "btw i am a she" when i need to set up a group call and they see i am in fact a woman, would it be awkward for them?

Oh I've done this. I've booked an annual event 5 times with a contact called let's say 'Sam'. We are on different continents - Sam sends people out to me to run training events.

Each time our inefficient accounts office has failed to pay on time, so Sam emails me as the event booker, I bollock accounts, it (eventually) gets sorted.

This time the event had been cancelled due to corona, months ago. Turns out poor Sam hadn't been paid for expenses incurred, & sent me a mildly grumpy email.

I'd absolutely had enough with accounts being bloody useless, & fired off a rant to them, copying Sam in, & pointing out that this does nothing for our international reputation as an organisation '...& frankly I think it's unacceptable, as Sam has to chase us up every time; I'm sure she has better things to do, & she's providing us with a great service & we are not behaving respectfully to a business partner by letting her down repeatedly like this in the matter of prompt payment'.

Response from Sam: 'thanks Corvus. Btw. I'm a Samuel 😂'

I've been chatting to the bloke online several times a month for half a decade!

He was definitely amused, not offended (& he got his money that day & emailed politely to thank me).

I don't think it's anything to make a big deal of?

I've got loads as dealt with a lot of people in different countries where some of the names I hadn't heard before so couldn't be sure.

One was called Ukie from somewhere like Austria. Email address was Ukie.company [email protected]. Never spoken to them via phone but always email started "Hi Ukie." Assumed it was a guy??

A long time, years later, noticed a name at the bottom of the email was a different name like Susan. I was like where's Ukie gone? Did he leave??

No! Ukie never existed. The email address was UK-ie funny thing is Susan never corrected me on it and let me go along with it for years haha.

Ukie is brilliant

You could add your preferred pronoun to the bottom of your email signature. Plenty of big companies have that nowadays. Might allow you to correct the record without making it a big deal?

I have had this before as I have a similar name. A client gave me a french man’s name. Why.

I work for a company that is a man's name (think John Lewis but much less well known).

I always intoduce myself as "I'm Bake from John Lewis" and without fail the response is "Hi John" despite me having a very femmale name and sounding female

Do NOT start doing "pronoun signatures", that is a slippery slope.

Just shrug it off. "Misgendering" is not a big deal. Let them find out soon enough!

Ha I had a patient once who swore blind they had seen a male clinician previously so doubting myself I looked in the notes again- no that was me you’ve seen for the last year- oh dear, yes I do wear a lot of ppe and I have lost a bit of weight maybe that was it . I look female though I’m tallish and on the big side and sound female.... I hope

i once worked for a norwegian company. the short form of my name that i use is male in most of Scandinavia.

i met some very confused people over the years.