At the risk of sounding like a Seinfeld stand-up routine, when did eating establishments start taking your name when you order something? I can't imagine this is any more efficient than just doing what they've always done at New York cafes/delis: yell out the items you've ordered with a vaguely menacing look on their face that suggests any further delays in your retrieval of the order will entitle you to a side order of warm spit with your meal.
This new name game is particularly annoying for people like me, who have names that approximately 0% of New Yorkers can spell on the first try. When I go to Jamba Juice, I don't want to give the clerk a lesson on South East Indian phonetics, and how the letter "t" before a vowel is pronounced with a "th" sound, whereas a final "t" is more of a hard stop. Again, I have to ask if this is any real improvement in service time, which is all customers at these establishments care about. If this was some lame marketing guy's idea of building "brand loyalty" or something, it would only confirm everything I think about people who work in marketing, which is that they view the populace as a bunch of lurching, mindless clumps who will patronize a restaurant because the staff calls them by name. You know what I do when someone gives me a coffee that I've ordered and then addresses me by name? I give them the obligatory thanks and a half-smile: the kind where my lips form a grin but my eyes remain steely and dead. I sure as hell don't think Trent and I are going to be friends, and if you do, you're probably the kind of person who chats with every cashier you interact with and then friends them on Facebook with some lame comment like, "Hey Jill, those khakis really worked out great. Thanks a bundle! ;)" I hate those people.
What happens whenever I go to a name-check establishment is that I have to give a fake, monosyllabic name that cannot be messed up by anyone with two functioning brain lobes. Recent favorites include: Chad, Brad, Tad, and Dad. The last one was pretty funny, if only to hear the guy who made my Berry Blast at Jamba ask for it to be picked up--Dad? Berry Blast for Dad?
Do away with giving out your name at these places, and failing that, give out names of television characters or historical figures. I'm looking forward to trying out Indiana Jones and Kublai Khan.
This new name game is particularly annoying for people like me, who have names that approximately 0% of New Yorkers can spell on the first try. When I go to Jamba Juice, I don't want to give the clerk a lesson on South East Indian phonetics, and how the letter "t" before a vowel is pronounced with a "th" sound, whereas a final "t" is more of a hard stop. Again, I have to ask if this is any real improvement in service time, which is all customers at these establishments care about. If this was some lame marketing guy's idea of building "brand loyalty" or something, it would only confirm everything I think about people who work in marketing, which is that they view the populace as a bunch of lurching, mindless clumps who will patronize a restaurant because the staff calls them by name. You know what I do when someone gives me a coffee that I've ordered and then addresses me by name? I give them the obligatory thanks and a half-smile: the kind where my lips form a grin but my eyes remain steely and dead. I sure as hell don't think Trent and I are going to be friends, and if you do, you're probably the kind of person who chats with every cashier you interact with and then friends them on Facebook with some lame comment like, "Hey Jill, those khakis really worked out great. Thanks a bundle! ;)" I hate those people.
What happens whenever I go to a name-check establishment is that I have to give a fake, monosyllabic name that cannot be messed up by anyone with two functioning brain lobes. Recent favorites include: Chad, Brad, Tad, and Dad. The last one was pretty funny, if only to hear the guy who made my Berry Blast at Jamba ask for it to be picked up--Dad? Berry Blast for Dad?
Do away with giving out your name at these places, and failing that, give out names of television characters or historical figures. I'm looking forward to trying out Indiana Jones and Kublai Khan.
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