Identity issues

I’ve ranted about this before, and it’s bound to happen again, so it won't be the last time. Still, better out than in.

I have a very simple name to spell. It’s not an uncommon name, but there are a couple of ways of spelling it.

One PR I know regularly uses an alternative version of the spelling. To be honest, I don’t really give a toss. In fact, now I think it’s quite funny when she uses the alternative spelling. I always sign off using the spelling my parents chose all those years ago, and she always greets me the other spelling. I think she’s probably got a friend or relative that uses the alternative spelling, because she always uses it, even though my email address and autosignature kind of gives the name game away. Thing is, she’s actually really rather helpful. So all her Good PR outweighs this one piece of Bad PR.

This morning though, I got a message from a PR, and he’d used a completely wrong name. I’ve had this before with mail merges gone bad, but this was different. This guy has written to me three times with three different wrong names.

Making matters worse, I actually initiated the email chat, using my real name, so he’s seen and responded to three emails from me, each with the real name in the sender box and each with my real name at the bottom, and on each occasion he’s used completely the wrong name in response. Not only that, the wrong names don’t even match each other!

Once, twice, three times a moron.