Utility company - pronouns

[SomethingPunny]

I've just had an email from my utility company, Utilita, suggesting I add pronouns to my account. Obviously it's optional, and I'm not going to bother, but the bit that got me was "If you choose to add pronouns to your account, we'll use them to refer to you when you speak to us". When are Utilita ever going to interact with a customer in a way that requires them to use the customer's preferred pronouns? Maybe I'm being thick but I can't imagine when that would be necessary.

Is this going to be the norm now? Are we about to be bombarded with emails from every company we deal with asking us for pronouns which they will never need to use?

I imagine they mean using "sir" instead of "Madame" or something? That is what that reads like to me.

I got the same thing , and thought the same thing , i had to contact them the other day as they took money they shouldnt have , and other than the initial name , address ect , dnt think the person on the other end of the phone addressed me at all , and if they had refered to me as "she" whilst speaking to me i would have told them i am switching to someone less rude , as they clearly have my name

fix/pipes/please

I always wonder what fraud provision these companies have in place.

What happens if you need to call them or they need to call you regarding payment or account details or amending details and they call and ask fir the account holder and a very female voice says " hi I'm Mr John smith"

That's a level of security removed surely?

Those are titles not pronouns

OP - ignore, or do fix/pipes/please as @achillestoes suggests. Don’t pander to this silliness.

They can use them when they are talking about you not to you so its utterly pointless

Yes, exactly. They have my title, that's all they need. Don't worry, I've no intention of pandering, I'm just expecting this to be the first of many. Of course they had the obligatory Stonewall graphics at the end of the email so we all know where this has come from.

Fraud aside, this is actually quite a sensitive approach for both their customers and their staff.
Without visual clues it's much more likely that a trans person is going to be addressed in a way that's potentially upsetting for them and embarrassing for the person calling.
I'm no fan of pronouns but think this is tactful.

You will never meet a utilita employee so they will never see what you look like so what's the point? Pronouns aren't used in direct speech

‘Without visual clues it's much more likely that a trans person is going to be addressed in a way that's potentially upsetting for them and embarrassing for the person calling.’

How would this conversation go?

Beamur, why do you think that? The utility call centre operative will address the trans person as “you” or their name, surely? How could they possibly need to use “he” or “she” in a direct conversation?
And what do you mean by the absence of visual clues? That voices tend to be correctly sexed?

Ooh, wonder if they'd be inclusive about my 'Queengender' pronouns; most high majesty/highness of all realms (in heavens and earth). They said they'd use chosen pronouns.

Yes, it is on a list somewhere . And, has a flag!

The upsetting thing is that fuel costs are sky high and many families will be choosing between eating or keeping their house warm.

The idea we pander to someone being mistaken for a man/woman called Mrs Smith instead of Mr Smith when someone is only trying to be polite/do their job is ridiculous. Just politely correct and move on. It's really not some huge thing we should be worrying about reactions too. Maybe if it was friends or family constantly doing it you'd have a point but these guys probably just wanna know if you want a smart metre .

Yes, I think voices would tend to indicate sex not gender.
I do think this is in no small part for the benefit of the employees. True, they may not need to actually use the specified pronouns but it's a reminder not to accidentally slip in 'sir' when the customer wants to be called 'madam'.

I’ve noticed a lot of the Indian/ Bangladeshi/ Pakistani people I’ve worked with over the years add their title to their email signatures. When I asked about it a couple told me their names aren’t common and don’t translate in the UK. So they’ve done it to stop people getting their sex/gender/whatever wrong when communicating solely via email (far too common!). In that scenario, pronouns are probably useful if their title is also non-gender specific like Dr.

So annoyingly, pronouns are probably actually quite useful. I say annoying because this isn’t the reason they’re doing it and the whole “preferred pronouns” thing does my fucking head in.

(And this will only become more of a thing over the years now that unisex names are more common…. River and the like.)

Why? What happens if u accidentally
Call someone sir. How many of us have been called sir by shop staff . Or even done it themselves. I work in a very predominantly male environment sometimes it just slips out as I say it so many times.

Why do they need to take on the responsibility of being part of a strangers transition. Especially as people is sir/madam amd mr/Mrs to be polite amd not presuming they can just jump right in with using a first name.

I have a difficult to pronounce surname fir example. I dont berate people who attempted to pronounce it and got it wrong. I dont expect them to research the origins of my name and run through all possible pronunciations.

Context is everything

I used to temp for British gas. I took a number of calls from people who called genuinely upset because they were still getting bills addressed to their spouse who had died. They had called several times ( according to them) and still it kept happening That certainly did not get the attention that pronouns do 🙄

Oh for fucks sake! Just on the phone to a call centre in India - the person asked me the name I would like to be called and I answer - easy, no need for pronouns.

I can't remember the last time I was addressed as madam (or sir!) by customer service staff. They usually address me by first name or if they want to be polite they use my title and surname. Neither require them to know my gender or my preferred pronouns. It just feels like virtue signalling and a waste of time and resources to me.

HQ - operator picks up a call and needs to book a contractor to go and fix a pipe…

hey Mike, can you do a call out this afternoon at 2? Broken pipe. Address is 101 acacia avenue. customer says her…

(scrabble by everyone within earshot to check customers files for pronoun abuse…)

FFS…

Yeah, I suppose.

It's hugely unnecessary, though, in English.

e.g. in German it's very much the norm to kick off a letter or email of the sort you might get from a utility company with a salutation along the lines of 'Dear Sunshine', which will be 'Liebe Sunshine' or 'Lieber Shunshine' depending on your gender... it's relatively difficult [though very far from impossible] to converse with someone without gendering them in a language where adjectives are gendered. But in English, the gendering can only happen through pronouns [and as you say the odd noun such as 'gentleman' etc], which when you're talking to someone face to face, in the first person, is trivially easy to avoid. In German you might very sensibly signal your pronouns to someone so that they correctly gender you when they start applying adjectives to you. In English you're signalling your pronouns arguably so that they correctly gender you when they use your pronouns within your earshot, but realistically it's much more about virtue signalling.

Oh well. They're not getting mine. Not sure I've decided what they are yet.

In a phone call? When they have everyone's account including name? Speaking directly to me?

Good morning Mrs Pogoing...

Should anyone ever refer to me as she/he/they/ze etc directly to me I would assume they were being very rude, had no social skills and would revert to "She is the cat's mother" response!

It isn't having the bloody things that is the issues. It the forcing them on people who aren't there!

No it is not tactful.

What you are careful to not say is that humans can sex people by voice.

So for staff, the company are deciding that they can be disiplined if they correctly sex the customer.

The sensitive method would be to remove all optional titles apart from Ms. and Mr. This would tell the support staff that the customer wants to be addressed as either
Ms. = Female or
Mr. = Male.

But that would mean that they would still have to deal with the staff recognising a female/male voice saying that they are a man/woman.

Emails and other communication are fixed format text and can be sorted by using our customer.

This is pink washing preformance for awards and corporates patting themselves on the back because they can upsell "corporate social responsibilty" at minimum /no cost.

I can bet that if the customers who were pissed off with the service levels weaponised that, changing pronouns monthly and doing data access requests, that the project would be quickly and quietly dropped.

"If you choose to add pronouns to your account, we'll use them to refer to you when you speak to us"

This potential issue is already covered by the Title option, surely. Did that not occur to them?