To be angry HR made this (relatively minor) assumption?

[SpaceCadet4000]

My DH and I got married last August. I made the decision to keep my surname and continue to use the title Ms. I don't mind if other people choose to change their name, but I personally am uncomfortable with the historical and gendered connotations of name changing. This have never been an issue- I just select the Ms box when filling in forms, and I don't shout about it to other people.

However, I have recently started a new job. On my second day I went for my induction with HR where they collected details about my next of kin (mentioned it was my husband as they needed the relationship stated), whether I wanted a pension, my NI number etc. All fairly innocuous, and actually very little form filling on my part, and certainly no disclosure of my title.

As I joined close to payday I received my pay check late through the post- it's addressed to Mrs Space Cadet. This suggests that the HR advisor has clearly assumed I'm a Mrs based on our conversation.

It's minor, and I assume fairly quick to rectify, but I feel really angry that someone else has made this decision about me. I'm no special snowflake, but I'm dismayed that my identity has been so casually undermined. The office culture is fairly conservative, so I also feel like I'll be judged as an SJW for asking for it to be changed.

AIBU to just email them and ask for it to be changed?

The trouble with Ms is I never know how it is pronounced. muzz?

YANBU, OP.

When I got married (6 years ago), we had a John Lewis wedding list. I kept my own name after I got married, why wouldn't I? The wedding list deliveries turned up addressed to Mr and Mrs DH's name - ie my DH and his mother. Not a good start. John Lewis refused to acknowledge they'd done anything wrong!

Have to agree with space that a man's opinion can be entirely discounted on this subject as it is an issue which affects only women.

Shazza, the only people who seem to really care are the Ms's it would seem.

Probably because we're the ones whose preferred title is shown least respect. And because so many people who don't care (or claim not to and then make several posts on the matter to show how unimportant it is) seem to see their lack of understanding of why we care as a flaw of ours rather than theirs.

Furious - addressing something as Mr and Mrs John Smith is a long established convention

( and I still find myself writing Christmas cards like this, but apparently that's a real No No).

YANBU!!
If others feel the need to declare their martial status to everyone, fine.
No one should force you to do this!!
It's unfortunate that people still make the assumption that women have to declare who owns them before their identity can be judged. Shows how far we still have to go.

Would love to reply to you 228agreenend but don't know your husband screen name with which to address you formally.

Someone has just made a mistake that's all. Email them and they'll correct it. Not the end of the world.

Your "own" name isn't just yours, Teatime; it's your father's (or mother's, I suppose). Do you belong to them?

YANBU - not least because the length of this, and many other threads on this subject in MN and other forums prove that people do have strong opinions and care.

It doesn't matter whether you choose to be Miss, Mrs or Ms in the UK - some people will make assumptions about you and judge you anyway. It is not like France or Germany or Spain where every adult woman is Madame or Frau or Senora (please insert accents as required.) It's not even like the USA where Ms is the default.

My preference is to use no title. There are not many online forms where that's an acceptable option. You nearly always have to choose something, and unless you've earned a title like Dr, Prof or Rev, it will almost always be a gendered title (and as has been mentioned above, plenty of people will assume titles like Dr, Prof or Rev will be male.) I did have a form about a month ago which had Mx as an option, which I think is the first time I've seen it on a form.

When it comes to HR, I would be asking why Ms isn't the default, why HR people (who I assume should be fairly clued up on things like unconscious bias, but I realise that this may be a depressingly wrong assumption,) would assume professional working women would use anything other than Ms unless notified otherwise, and how does this reflect on their commitment to diversity and equality?

(I should add that I do have a bit of a reputation for asking questions about this sort of thing - after a recent all-hands call, a colleague said, "Why didn't you ask one of your questions?")

I do not think anyone should be able to know whether I am male or female, single or married or living in some polyamorous community or whatever else, just by my title. In most cases, it's none of their business. My doctor needs to know I'm female, and my bank might use it as a way of establishing I am the customer I say I am (I'm allowed a bank card with no title, but apparently I can't have a bank account without one.) But most people do not need to know whether I'm male or female - I shouldn't be getting different service because of my sex. Where it is required knowledge, it can easily be dealt with by a M/F/other field; insisting on title being a required field is lazy thinking and lazy programming, until "prefer not to use a title" becomes an option on all forms.

Talk about first world problems! IMO you've blown this out of all proportion! You said you had a husband, most women who are married are a Mrs, you didn't point out anything different at the time so it's definitely not unreasonable of the HR department to put down Mrs. If it's such a big deal for you then make more effort to make your title clear going forward!

Also, any man who says it's an irrational reaction is just showing that they've never been on the receiving end of assumptions about who they are and how they think because of the title they use - because all men are Mr by default, whether single, married or divorced, or whatever opinions they may hold about equality or anything else. Until you've been judged in that way, you can FOTTFSOF.

228 - it may well be. It doesn't mean it's (a) correct and (b) that their desire to use such an outmoded way of writing to me trumps my right to determine my own name. The only name they hold on file for me is Ms X, not Mrs DH. I am not Mrs DH - they have written to someone who doesn't exist (or MIL, if initials are not used). How dare they assume to change my name (and yet not DH's) just because they knew the date of our wedding ceremony? I'm sure they'd have responded differently to a complaint from DH if they'd changed his name to mine and they'd written to us as such...

I can't fecking stand being called Ms. When Mrs isn't an option on a form it gives me the rage. Horses for courses.

Can you explain why you hate
Ms so much?

Sooper "When Mrs isn't an option on a form it gives me the rage. "

May I ask why it gives you the rage please?

EBearHug I created websites back in the dawn of the internet. I came across a very well argued article about collecting data online. The proposal was to have 2 boxes: one in which you input the name you wish to be known by, title and all; and the other, how you wish to be addressed. If only this had taken off.

Because it's not my title. I'm Mrs, I'm happy with that, it's my choice and being told 'just put Ms - it's the same thing' annoys me.
People in general wanting to be Ms, no problem at all! I think we all have the right choose the title we want.
Why do I hate being called Ms? I don't know really. A little like a Charlotte being fine with Charlie but not with Lottie I think. It's my name, I chose it (or its shortening!), it's not anyone else's place to change it.

I work on a large R&D site. I'd estimate that around 2/3 of the people working there have a PhD. It still astounds me that there are online systems in use (these are site-specific systems) that don't allow 'Dr' as an option. I always rebel and enter 'Mr' when I come across this.

Yes, that would have been good.

I can understand partly how it came about in the earlier days of computing, when memory and so on was far more expensive, and code had to be efficient and so on. I remember when we used to have to get management approval to add 4GB disks... (Not quite old enough to remember programming with punched cards, though.)

I also suspect that historically, as programming and IT in general was so male-dominated, men decided what fields to put, and never really thought about whether there could be any issues about offering any other titles than Mrs, Mrs, Miss.

Sooper, thanks for explaining that

So it's important to you for your title to show your marital status?

I resent the idea that being frustrated by ingrained sexism in the workplace is a "first world problem" or questioning whether people genuinely get pissed off by this stuff (i.e. as it's unworthy of emotion or attention for moral reasons). It's so often leveraged as an argument when people bring up their dissatisfaction with how things are.

If I'd butted into a forum discussing equality / poverty in developing nations and compared my situation to that, then fair enough, it's a valid response. But AIBU is not that.

Are you really, seriously saying you never get pissed off about the small stuff???? Not grammar, or the chores, or the supermarket being out of something, or scented tampons???

This is something I care about, and I understand that it's not an issue on everyone's radar.

Personally, I plan to have a long and fulfilling career, and I don't want to work in an environment which still sees men as 'normal' and women as 'additional' whether that's through subtle means (like in this situation), or in more overt ways.

On a practical note, if someone sends me a parcel addressed to "Mrs

If you wanted to stay as Ms Space Cadet why bother with the marriage? I'm genuinely confused as to why changing your name is out dated and sexist but marriage isn't?

I don't like Ms because it's too buzzy a sound in my head. Personally I'd just do away with all titles.