What's In A Name? Part Deux

Only three weeks ago I posted What's In A Name?, an account of how a system administrator decided to treat me like human garbage by refusing to correct the spelling of my name rather than going to the trouble of reinstalling one application on my computer. Now you may ask, "what's in a name?" Well, quite a lot, if you ask me. In fact, one of the most efficient and effective ways to show someone how little you care about them is to get their name wrong. And I've just had another harsh reminder of that, at Harris Teeter of all places.

When you go through the checkout at Harris Teeter, the cashiers first ask "Did you find everything you need?" OK, that's a nice thing to ask. It shows that they want to correct the situation if you had any trouble getting what you wanted. Then they ask "Are plastic bags OK?" In other words, they'd prefer to use plastic, but they want you to know it's still your choice. This way they almost always get what they want, but they can still accommodate people who insist on paper bags. (And by the way, the environmental implications of paper vs. plastic are not nearly as simple as you might think.)

The next question they ask is what bothers me, because it's so retarded. After I swipe my credit card, they say "Thank you, Mister ... uh ... Mister ... ________?" Yes, the pronunciation of my last name is not perfectly obvious, so I can understand their hesitation. What I don't understand is why they think that taking a guess and forcing me to correct them is going to make me feel like a more valued customer than if they just said "Thank you."

You would ask someone how to pronounce their name if you were meeting them "for real," and you wanted to say their name correctly next time. A neighbor, a coworker, a friend of a friend—these are people you're likely to get to know as time goes on, so you want to know what to call them. Why in God's name do the cashiers at Harris Teeter think I hold them in such high esteem? I don't. I'm happy to be friendly with them for the duration of the checkout process, but I'm just not ready to take it to the next level with them. I don't have anything against them, but that's just the normal customer-cashier relationship. I actually rank most of them far above the moron who thinks it's hilarious that I go grocery shopping more than once a month. (On further reflection, he decided that week-old milk would be fresher than month-old milk. Good for him.)

I guess it would be tolerable if I could tell each of the cashiers how to pronounce my name once, and then never have to deal with it again. But I keep correcting the same people over and over. Each one of them only sees me once in a while, and they've got millions of other customers, so how can they possibly remember? So I don't really know what to do. I could use someone else's credit card, pay cash, preemptively introduce myself each time, wear headphones, or use any number of other techniques for avoiding the wasted effort and indignation of having to let them butcher my last name and then correct them. Or hey, maybe I'm wrong, maybe we should take it to the next level. Would that be a mixtape or Christmas cards?