Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon
Call me old-fashioned, call me uptight, out of touch, pompous, of lofty personal conceit, call me anything you like, but please do not call me by my first name. Not until you have either been invited to do so, or you have asked me politely whether you may.
My preference for this now unfashionable gesture of elementary courtesy is quite simple to understand; as much to do with good manners as with good sense. Using someone’s first name implies you know that someone well enough to do so. Hence the usage also carries a certain nonchalance, a familiarity and, with those, usually a lack of fundamental respect.
This is most unacceptable when business is being conducted. When I phone up a store in order to buy a refrigerator I don’t believe it unreasonable to expect some hint of deference, not only to myself but to the individual at the other end. These days when you ask for the refrigerator salesman, you are put through to “Gary” or “Johnny”. This is glib and entirely phony. In business dealings it sets things off on entirely the wrong foot.
As often as not, Gary and Johnny are quite astonished, even hostile, when you ask for their full names. But not nearly as astonished and hostile as when you ask them to call you by your surname. They immediately write you off as some sort of loony.
This abandonment of formal title is, of course, part of the myth spread around by the ostentatiously tawdry society of South African businessfolk. It is utterly bogus, an brown-nosed replica for genuine customer service. I have found that, as general rule, the glossier and more facile the brand of mercantile affability, the more spectacular the receptionist’s smiles, the worse the service.
All this is another stodgy consequence of being politically correct. In their lightless mental dungeons, business and other organisations believe that it’s become wrong to use proper names. That they will be committing an act of social offence if they require staff members to refer to their seniors as Mr and Mrs, heaven help us, even Sir or Madam. Instead, the underlying nomenclature of the hierarchical structure is abandoned in favour of some vaguely defined parity register where everyone becomes equal in address and, therefore, status too.
Invariably implication is followed by inclination and more and more of the simple courtesies of life are replaced by the slimy codes of populist psychologists. I am still slightly shocked when I phone up a large business, ask to speak to a senior member of the staff by means of his surname and hear the telephonist answer, “I’m sorry, James is in a meeting.”
I remember the comments of a university coeval when he was a registrar in the tough old days of Groote Schuur general surgery under the redoubtable Professor Jannie Louw – of whom, like all the other registrars, he lived in mortal terror. He complained bitterly about how unforgiving and demanding Louw was. At the same time he grudgingly conceded the inherent values of a strictly vertical regime. Very few mistakes were made in Louw’s surgical firm merely because the resident doctors were frightened stiff of his power and his tongue. The easier penalty was being hauled up and bollocked – usually in the witness of fellow registrars. Believe it or not, they all called him Sir. And he ran the best wards in the business.
The nominal and contrived friendliness used instead of formal address is, I am happy to see, not prevalent. I have – lying in my out-tray as it awaits the framer – a letter from Professor Kader Asmal; another throwback to the old and now unfashionable school of gracious traditions, I would venture, as his letter is littered with all those dusty old habits of correct spelling, civil address, punctuation and so on. As it opened with a “Dear Mr Kirby”, it ended with a “Yours sincerely” – how seldom does one see that correct usage? These days it’s all “With warmest regards” and “Kindest wishes” from people you’ve never met.
Being well-mannered towards women is considered nowadays as some sort of insult to womankind as a species. Recently I held a door open for a modern lassie and received a severe dressing down along the lines of: “I am perfectly capable of opening my own doors, thank you very much. I don’t need some man to help me.”
The fire extinguisher with which I immediately decided to beat her to death was quite impossible to get off the wall.