To refuse to call him by his stupid nickname??

[PonyPals]

So we have a brand new staff member in my team who has a perfectly sensible name - Steven but has decided to use some ridiculously stupid nickname he made up - Sonty
And he is now constantly correcting all of us and insisting we use his nickname. I am his manager. I feel silly even uttering Sonty. Yet he corrects me every time I say Steven.
Aibi to want to take Sonty and shove it up his bum!
PS not his real name or moronic nickname but they are similar to what I said.

I am going tell my work colleagues to call me 'Star Lord' from now on

I have actually used my nickname for so long now that someone using my given name the other week threw me for a minute. It's probably the first time I've heard anyone use it out loud since I was about 5, but then my given name is two long names with a hyphen and no one wants a 7 syllable first name!

Dazza however is nearly as stupid as my name.

Wow thanks for the unanimous vote on how unreasonable I was being

It wasn't unanimous.

Could you compromise on Dan?! To be fair I thought you were being unreasonable until you said Dazza. Will he have much interaction with clients?

Sorry Daz!! Autocorrected to Dan

It wasn't unanimous

In fairness, it looked like it was going that way. It was only when OP revealed the name that the thread took a dramatic turn.

I thought ywbu until your update on what the name was. I agree that Dazza sounds v unprofessional! Yanbu

No, it wasn't unanimous before that point.

If he wants to be called Dazza by colleagues I don't see the problem. I worked with many people who used nicknames in the office. Actually I was known by my first and middle initials pronounced as a 'word' (like K C=Casey, but my initials aren't K C) in one office as there were two of us with the same first name and last initial.

But if he deals with clients and signs correspondence then he needs to be instructed to use his full first name when dealing with them.

Dazza sounds silly to me but it isn't my name, so shrug

I work with a Susanne who is Sooz and a chap a long Indian name who gets called PJ. Neither super professional imo. But they are both great at what they do, and being professional is more important than sounding it.

If its public facing you need to sit down with him and tell him, as his manager, you won't be introducing him to clients as Dazza

Dazza?!
No way.
That's just so so naff.
Anyway, you can call him that but tell him your will be introducing him as Darren and then he is more familiar with customers etc... he can let them know he prefers Dazza (what a cock!)

Could you start by calling him dazzar and slowly morph it to "desire" and see how he reacts

how come sooo many people were asking what the nickname was when it was in the OP first post?! or am i missing something...

I work with a man who won't tell anyone his name. He goes by a three letter acronym that stands for a description of him. HR said he had to have a surname so they have made the third word in his acronym his official surname.

His acronym is less silly than Dazza though, as a name.

In hindsight I should have included his real name/nn to begin with.. or just used a better example.
Dazza has a client facing role. His portfolio is to engage with our tenured academics.. who are all pretty set in their ways (and call most of us by our surname). I have a meeting with Dazza tomorrow and I am introducing him to one of our most 'serious' clients. I can just see how it will go. Hello Professor Alexander this is Dazza
It's 1.30 in the morning! I should be asleep but can't stop thinking about tomorrow and all your replies are a great distraction

As hells says I'd call him that then introduce him by his full name to clients.

my ex did this. so say his name was Nicholas, he insisted on being "nickbo".

except that it wasn't just "nickbo". it was "The Nickbo".

and it wasn't just "the nickbo". it was REFERRING TO HIMSELF IN THE THIRD PERSON AS THE NICKBO. eg: "The Nickbo is sad today, applebite. He has some issues."

what the fuck did I see in him!?

Call him a different woman's name every day a la Dr Cox on Scrubs.

Start tomorrow with Betty

If its public facing you need to sit down with him and tell him, as his manager, you won't be introducing him to clients as Dazza

Very much this.

People giving themselves nicknames does smack a little bit of narcistic 'look at me'. For all the calls of 'he can call himself what he likes' that is fine outside the professional environment but in the office I would not be using informal nicknames around clients.

Jesus Applebite has just given me a terrible flashback to the brief relationship I had at university with someone called Beans. It hugely contributed to us breaking up.

Omg applebite that's terrible!
I guess I should be thankful he is not asking me to call him Dazza the Great

You've misread the OP, guiltynetter.

Notjustuser - is he Inspector Morse, and also wtf?! What kind of attention seeking bollocks is that (is ASB his name? it should be) - if you don't like your name, why not just change it to John or Mary.

Dazza is a pub name, I agree. I would need to point out that now he is an adult, he will garner more respect if he ditches his schoolboy nickname and tries to pretend to be normal, if only for the sake of his career. Unless he's a footballer or in a boy band, maybe.

The number of people in the world who need to get the fuck over themselves is rising at a troubling rate.....

You read my mind Blether

I hate Jonty but just because the Jonty I knew was a nasty fecker

I assume he signs correspondence to clients from Darren? I don't envy the OP. Imagine a female employee called Sharon who likes to be known as Shazza!

OP have you spoken to him about his NN, does he get it? Is he from the UK? Is this a professional setting, i.e. law, medicine, City, etc?