My entire life, people have mispronounced my last name. I've always considered these people as somewhat foolish. My last name has seven letters that all follow the standard rules of English pronunciation. In fact, my last name is a word that appears in the dictionary. Nevertheless, most people insert an extra "I" into my name.
When I was a missionary I had my last name on my chest all day long (except for the one time we took off our name tags and pretended to be airplane pilots for S.C. Johnson & Co.). One day at church a woman spent about 30 seconds staring at my name tag before loudly mispronouncing my last name. I corrected her. She said, "But it's spelled like [mispronunciation]." I said, "No, it's not." A little bit later a child also mispronounced my last name. I said, "It only has one 'I,' like you'll have if you say it wrong again." That kid and I did not turn out to be friends.
Last month I interviewed for a job in China. I hadn't really heard anything back from them. I've been casually e-mailing one of their employees, and he tipped me off that I should get in contact with his boss if I'm still interested. It turned out the boss had e-mailed an offer to me within days of the interview, but had misspelled my e-mail address, so I hadn't received it. He had inserted an extra "I."
He didn't get anything back from Mailer-Daemon because it's a valid address for someone, somewhere in the world. And whoever owns that address probably thinks he just had a sweet gig in China fall into his lap. But he hasn't bothered to write back.
Anyway, now I have a couple hours' notice to decide if I want to move to Beijing for two years. Advising comments would be appreciated.
via oneofthebest
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