Talking Out Of Turn

No, this isn’t about Steve Jobs, or Steve Hays for that matter.

I mentioned a year ago that I have a coworker who calls me Steve. Today he did it again. As far as I can tell he is not doing this for a laugh; I think he really believes that that’s my name. (If you work or have worked with me, then I can tell you that he’s Microcomputer Support over at Mason Ridge, and that should give you enough to figure out who I’m talking about, if you’re curious)

I wrote him a thoughtful note today, noting that a PC in his building is keeping a constant stream of 5 megabits/second traffic to a domain controller, and did he have any idea why that would be? His response opened with “Steve,” and went on to misunderstand what I had sent.

I do actually have a bit of a dilemma here. I’m not sure how to approach this. We have been in meetings (large ones, involving over ten people) in which he has called me Steve, and I have seen his boss and our account representative with his organization try to tell him that my name isn’t Steve. He doesn’t seem to hear them. I actually didn’t answer him a couple of times in the last meeting, and looked around to see if there was a “Steve” in the room, and he still didn’t get the hint. By the end of the meeting I was answering to Steve, just to get the meeting over with.

So, we’re now closing in on ten years that I have worked with this man — not closely, but we’re in regular contact as our jobs demand. He used to know my name. But for some reason, a few years ago, he started calling me Steve.

I am actually wondering whether this is some disorder on his part. I am starting to get sinfully frustrated about this; I assume that this is some point of pride on my part. At least he isn’t calling me “idiot” or any one of a number of worse names. But I just don’t see how I can send this man email, sign it “Charlie,” and get back emails addressed to “Steve.” I don’t know how a person’s brain can do that, and be working properly.

If this is an elaborate joke that he cooked up, then he got me, and got me good. At first I thought maybe that was it. Now I’m wondering if I should feel sorry for him. I have made mistakes with people’s names before, but I don’t think I’ve ever kept one up for this long. At some point I think I have always either been corrected, and accepted the correction, or noticed one day that I was calling one person by a different person’s name, and this was followed by profuse apologies and lots of notes scribbled in various places on my desk so I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

I could understand if he called me “Dave,” or “Todd,” or “John,” because I’ve worked with Daves, Todds, and Johns here, and they’re all gone and I’m still here. Maybe even a “Dan,” although in the right context, them’s fightin’ words. “Beth” is at least the name of somebody who has worked in my department. But no Steves. Never a Steve.

Let’s assume for the moment that this is some kind of honest mistake. What is the nicest, most face-saving (for him) way of telling somebody that he has made up a name for you out of blue sky, and you’ve been answering to it for years just because you didn’t know what else to do? I don’t mind looking like an idiot, but I don’t want him to feel that I’ve been patronizing him, or laughing at him behind his back.

(Postscript: oddly enough, he just called me on the phone, and he called me “Charlie.” I’m still not sure what to think, but he has gotten it right once, so I guess I’ll call off the crusade. Just another attempt to turn my life into some kind of Hal Hartley film, I guess…)