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What’s the Best Tactic When Your Boss Gets Your Name Wrong?
Answer: it will be hella awkward no matter WHAT you do.
My first Zoom meeting with department personnel happened today. As a new hire, I was one of the first to be introduced and welcomed on the call. In front of the screens of a hundred different employees, the head of my department proceeded to garble out some variation of my name.
Yet somehow I was the one who came away feeling embarrassed.
Initially, I took the slip of tongue in stride. I thought, “Yeah, my name is close to some take on Julie or Julia or whatever, and my last name gets mispronounced all the time because it’s one of those old European castaways.” My day-to-day supervisor kindly stepped in and corrected the mistake before the meeting moved on, and I thought that was the end of it.
Until my boss called me afterward to apologize.
The short conversation was an odd one for both of us, I think. Her first words, “I’m sorry,” were met by obliviousness on my end: “For what?” I asked, even though I had already been mulling over in my head whether I really was that forgettable.
When she went on to explain and detail the lengths of her faux-pas, I listened quietly — and then proceeded to laugh it off.
