Hi, My name is Bob.

You know what really, really gets my goat?

It's not that I don't support the right of everyone to make a living, I'm not a nazi or one of those anti-immigration crazies that thinks we should ship everybody right back home. I'm quite moderate on the issue. The immigration issue, not the nazi issue. (My stance on nazi's is that I think they're evil. All of them. Nazi's are bad.) The thing that gets to me is the customer support on the phone.

Today at work I got a voicemail from an unknown number. I go to check my voicemail and the woman that left me said voicemail had an accent so thick I couldn't understand her. I swear to you she read off the order number and it sounded like she said "B as in beldar." I'm not kidding. I don't even know what a beldar is or where it is or if it is a thing or if it's just some overseas wacko prank calling me.  So, I figured that I would call them back and maybe talk to someone else that doesn't have an accent.

Apparently the Biotech company has sold their collections department overseas. I explain the situation to the foreign operator and he asks me for the person's name. After a short pause I mumble an estimate of what her name was. I was reasonably sure that her first name was Amelia, which I could believe because the British folks did establish a colony in India but her last was Jimenez. Sure. She married a Mexican dude in India. Right.

Okay, so her last name wasn't really Jimenez but it sounded like Jimenez. Simmons.

I told you she had a thick accent.

Besides I think it's safe to say there probably aren't a whole lot of Simmons'es in India. What company says to it's employees:

'We're changing your name so the Americans can identify with you.'

First of all I think it's crap. If you have some odd Indian name at least you'll sound confident when you say it. Secondly, it just functions to throw the Americans off more because we hear something we kind of understand, IE Amelia, but then stop listening because we're now trying to justify the fact that your name is definitely not hispanic, but we can't figure out what it is. At least we know we'll screw up your Indian name. Not to mention it's kind of insulting to your employees.

It's not about avoiding confusion, it's about minimizing the confusion. I already have the expectation that I have no clue; I don't need the reassurance that I really don't.

Besides, if as a company you're going to change your employee's names, name them all the same thing. Like Bob.

Oh and by the way, apparently she said:

'D as in delta.'

Riiiiiight.