Something has been really irritating me for the last few days at work. One of my colleagues (who works in a different country to me) is continuously spelling my name “Skpe” in emails. And to top it off, today he called me “Skype” on the phone.
So the reason why this irritates me is two-fold. First of all, my name is clearly “Skye”. I don’t see or hear a “P” anywhere!
Secondly (and this is why this is one of my biggest office pet peeves), I think it’s the absolute height of unprofessionalism and disrespect to spell someones name incorrectly in correspondence. Particularly when their email (which you have) and email signature (which you also have) and business card (which again, you also have) and all other instances of their name (available to you) are clearly spelled in a different way. To me, a mistake such as spelling someone’s name incorrectly shows that you don’t care about the impression you make and leave on other people – and the service driven world that I work in, this is an absolute no.
Now I concede that occasionally there are genuine mistakes. I’ve seen a colleague email another colleague using a completely different name, and I’ve had the odd email where people have genuinely made a typo because they have been in a rush (or emailing from their Blackberry). But when you have the extra 5 seconds that it takes to check your email for spelling errors, and you have a nice, clear monitor in front of you… And again I return to how unprofessional I think it is.
I will call out my team members if I see them doing this to other people, and if need be, I will lecture them because I want my team to be seen as a highly professional, service driven team.
Am I being too harsh?
Oh, tell me about it!
I get called Vicky quite a bit and I just have to correct them NNNNNNNNNikki… Honestly! I also get people spelling my name “Nicky” when it’s clearly Nikki on my email address. Then one time I phoned a customer and asked for so & so and said who I was, over the phone I heard them shout across the office “It’s Nicola from…”. I mean, Nicola… I’d said Nikki!
P.S. – Rant over, hehe
I get called “Marie” sometimes. Actually, I don’t particularly mind being called that, it’s just that it’s the second part of my mother’s first name, so technically they’re addressing my mother instead of me.
But I understand and sympathise with you, especially when you went out of the way to provide the person with all the material to identify you properly. While small and inadvertent mistakes are human, laziness is definitely something that should be called out.
On another note, what about the type face of your name on your business card? Could the “p” be mistaken as a “y” because of its style? Some fonts can do that. Other than that, I have no other idea as to how the person can mistake your name.
By the way, I almost read the mistake as “Skype”, not “Skpe”. In fact, how does one pronounce the latter? =)