AIBU to call my colleagues out on constantly spelling my name wrong?

[gretagreengrapes]

I started a new job about 8 weeks ago. Certain team members spell my name wrong on every email, despite it being in the email address, on rotas, telephone lists etc. I'm finding it a little rude and careless to be honest.

Think Tracey/Tracy, Clare/Claire... but with more than one letter difference, more Sean/Shaun.

AIBU to call them out on it, and how do I tell them?

I used to work alongside a man whose company email had been set up by a lazy person in IT, apparently unable to understand the basics of their own job, who just had a rough guess at it and left a letter out. He had an Asian name which is not commonly familiar with non-Asians either with the correct spelling or with the omitted letter. For illustration, say his name was Gurminder and his email was set up as [email protected].

He tried for a long time to get it changed, but in the end just gave up. I can only assume that the IT person, having set it up wrongly, received an email from 'Guminder' asking for a correct email address for him and assumed that he must somehow be confused as to what his own name was , as his 'correct' name was 'proved' by the existence of the email address he'd been given and just used to contact them (not that he had much choice).

It's highly disrespectful (and, in his case, quite likely racially 'othering') and made both him and the company look unprofessional, although he left people in no doubt that it wasn't his fault. Imagine having to type somebody else's name every time you want to send an email to come personally from you. It wasted so much of the company's time with him having to clarify with email trails and in otherwise-unnecessary phone calls - and caused him no end of frustration - having to tell people that, yes, his name was Gurminder but that his email address in a FTSE100 company had been set up as 'Guminder' and, no, although he'd brought it to their attention on numerous occasions, they didn't have anybody capable of correcting it.

For his personal email address, he had the equivalent of [email protected]! He was a lovely chap and far more patient than I would have been.

If he'd wanted to, he probably would have had a legitimate and potentially costly (for the company) claim for racial discrimination as I very much doubt that any new starter called Timothy would have just been told to put up with 'timthy.smith@.......', as IT had already set it up without typing carefully and couldn't be bothered to change it now.

He's even tried to correct DH about my name. That was fun.

I think that's the nub of it. I don't think anybody minds a one-off mistake followed by an apology (although still annoying when 30 people a day make that same 'one-off' mistake); but it's when you're told that you don't know your own name and you must have made a mistake, because THEY couldn't possibly be wrong. Even if your name is Xsywknovh, pronounced 'Ann', there's still no excuse for gaslighting you or getting it wrong when they have it right there in front of them to copy. What do these people do if they have Polish or Czech colleagues with names that look very complicated to English speakers? Just address them all as Dave Perkins and expect them to be happy with it (and 'wrong' if they aren't)?

When my mum retired after working for the same company for 40 years, they spelt her name wrong. Think Tracy instead of Tracey. She wasn’t pleased.

100% YANBU! I'm a pedant with things like this, try to make sure I get it right - especially on an email reply, it's not fucking difficult!!!

I get this all the time at work. Major multinational company, been there 9 years and I still get emails addressed to Clair or Clare..

Even emails in response to one I've sent them spelling my name correctly in my signature and email address.

I've corrected them multiple times, the first few times I got sorry it was an autocorrect. But this is nearly 2 years later and it's still being spelt wrong 🤬🤬🤬

@BoingBoingyBoing

It monumentally pisses me off when people spell my name wrong. It's just fucking rude.

It's right there, in my signature, in my email address and on the bottom of my emails. It's not hard.

Completely agree. Some people have continued to spell my name wrong at work for the last 10 years despite me politely correcting them. I'll send a simple email saying something like "are you available for meeting at 2pm. Thanks John" and they'll rely. That's fine Jon thanks. John is not my name but I have a completely normal name spelt in the normal way but they will still invent a spelling. When I get an email from someone new I always check I've got the spelling right when replying.

@claireb7rg

I get this all the time at work. Major multinational company, been there 9 years and I still get emails addressed to Clair or Clare..

Even emails in response to one I've sent them spelling my name correctly in my signature and email address.

I've corrected them multiple times, the first few times I got sorry it was an autocorrect. But this is nearly 2 years later and it's still being spelt wrong 🤬🤬🤬

I do think that when you work for a large multi-national organisation that you should make much more effort to look at names and no assume, as there are often different spelling s in different companies. sometimes I need to look twice to figure out which is the first name, as I respect my colleagues and don't want to get it wrong

Lol at 'Guminder' having his own email address pointed out to him as proof of how his own name is spelt!
To the pp who said someone was adding an 'h' - do it back. Especially if her name is Catherine or Jennifer.

@LemonBreeland

Definitely, I always double / triple check names as some of them are very tricky (Polish names in particular)

It’s so tricky though. I was on a team or 15 a few years ago. There was a Tracy, Tracey and a Tracie. Mark and Marc. And a Katharine and a Catherine I stopped even trying and just did not use names on my emails because I knew I would get it wrong.