Chopstork

I caught the end of American Inventor tonight, and a kid was pitching his idea to the panel. He was a black kid, maybe from the south. When they started asking him questions, he answered them, “Yes, sir…. No, sir…” Then one of the judges asks the kid not to call him sir, and looks appalled when the kid answers, “Yes, sir.” Hey judge: You’re a jackass. The kid’s not calling the you “sir” because he thinks you’re something special; he was raised to use “sir” to be polite. Don’t be such a conceited prick.

I worked on a project a while ago that was way behind, which means the customer comes in to “help.” On a couple occasions, I said something to him and he’d reply, “don’t call me sir.” Uuhh… I didn’t. The guy was so hung up on himself and his position (a big important customer—oooooh—working with a young new guy contractor) that he thought I was calling him sir.

If you find yourself telling people not to call you “sir” all the time (and you’re not in the military or some other organization where the use of “sir” is formalized) please get over yourself.

rant

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Whatever. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.