Hello My Name is K-Y-L-E-Y and I Might Be Passive Aggressive

There is little that makes me more angry / frustrated / annoyed than when people misspell my name.  From my one aunt who has only recently mastered it (seriously, 23 years later she seems to have it down) to random coworkers sending me emails.  Today I’d like to focus on the coworker side of it.

Here’s the thing.  My work email has my name spelled out in it.  Additionally, I have an email signature at the bottom of every email that contains my name.  That means that anyone sending or receiving an email from me has at least two chances to see / places to check the spelling.  I don’t understand why this is hard. 

And maybe I’m being overly dramatic but the fact that people just seem to refuse to look and see if they have spelled it correctly strikes me as incredibly rude.  Especially since the most common offenders are people I have told before that they are misspelling it.  Like really?  Do you not even have enough respect for me to check that you’re spelling my name right?  Better yet, that you even have the correct name?  Because I've become “Kyle” on many an occasion.  You’re not only altering my name there, but my gender!  It just really frosts my cookies.

All this said, I've realized lately that I have some pretty strong passive aggressive tendencies that come to light when this happens.  My first instinct, for example, was to email people back and blatantly misspell their name so they could see what it’s like.  And I could just keep it up.  Keep spelling their name totally wrong.  That seemed a bit too intense though so I didn't do it.

Most recently I've just started taking it into account when prioritizing my miscellaneous projects.  Like, “oh, this person needs this done but spelled my name wrong and this other person needs this done and they managed to spell it correctly.  Looks like other person’s project is going to be the one I do first.”

When none of these tactics seem to affect the people in question though I’m forced to resort to aggressive aggression by emailing back and saying something like “Yeah I can do that and also you keep spelling my name wrong.”  I guess I’ll just be that girl at the office.  The one that gets crappy about my name.  I do the same thing when I introduce myself to people though.  Usually the conversations go like this:

Me: Hi, my name is Kyley, it’s nice to meet you.
Person X:  Hi Kayley it’s nice to meet you too.
Me: It’s Kyley.
Person X: Keeley?
Me: No, Kyley.
Person X: Kelly?
Me: NO! Kyley, like rhymes with smiley.
Person X: Ohhh, Kyley, nice to meet you Kayley.
Me: *Internally* Nice to meet you too, jackass.

Seriously these problems could all be eliminated if people would just pay attention to what is going on around them.  Check spelling.  Actually listen to people, don’t just think you’re hearing what they are saying and that that’s good enough.  Listen and make sure you are really hearing.  I can’t be the only person this happens to so chances are that if you’re not making a conscious effort to listen you’re probably offending more than one person.  And if you miss something don’t just go with what you think you heard, ask for clarification.  I would much rather repeat my name to someone who says they missed what I said than to someone who has just decided on a new name for me.

Anyway, rant over I suppose.  Sorry about that.