I’m always a sucker for advice pieces, especially when they are directed from adults to children. Unsolicited Advice for My Three Sons, In No Particular Order is full of greats bits of advice but one stuck out to me more than the rest.
Names are a door handle to a person; that small little effort opens them up.
This is great advice, and something I use as much as I can, especially when talking to people over the phone. I work in a help desk environment and people feel dehumanized by the entire process so it’s nice to converse using each others names and not just a caller/callee relationship.
We’re both people and it’s important to remember that. We have feelings and we are working towards the same outcome. But it’s important for life too.
I try to take note of anyone with a name tag and thank them using their name. It’s fun to see the surprise in their face when I use their name when they didn’t give it to me.
I had the same feeling one day and I asked a customer when I worked in retail how he knew my name, he motioned to my name tag and winked. I had totally forgotten I had my name on my chest.