“Okay, and, what's your name?”
The need to simultan-eously personalize and computerize every man-woman-and child's physical experience has lead to a phenomena of being asked your name before completing any kind of order.
When your order has been completed, a person who was probably separate from and unaware of the conversation you had earlier with the cashier, takes one look at the receipt, calls your name and hands you your meal/coffee/2-sided copies directly, as if they themselves had invested personally into your order, and boy how they hope it reflects well for them and the company they represent.
“Ardi?”
“No, the two initials, R ... D.”
“Are-Dean?”
Sometimes I even wear a t-shirt spray-painted with a huge “RD”, that, like a kindergarten teacher, I'll point to and spell out when the cashier is helplessly confused by the message I'm trying to convey with my name.
I recognize my voice is low and I have a tendency to be shy, and on top of the constant cranking of espresso machines, the fact that people might not be expecting initials when they start writing a name down, plus its short syllabic presence which doesn't lend to framing against other sounds for extrapolation (hence the phantom syllables that turn up in some people's interpretations, “Are-Eee-Dee?” “Are-Dee-Yah?”)- I can see the real barriers to getting it on one pass. Once I do get the point across to the cashier, then the real challenge of meeting the societal/personal dichotomy begins.
The system of entering a customer's name on a receipt along with the short-hand version of what was ordered by the vendor's guest happens in such a routine and precise manner, when something out of the ordinary pops through the pipelines, the employee is temporarily stranded on an island, cast away from the reliable world of ventis and grandes and fraps to try and figure out how to turn a volley ball into a new best friend.
There's a moment, and you can catch it in their eyes, that sheer panic takes control of their being, for instead of a name printed in the “guest” field on the receipt, there are two consonants squeezed together, and nothing more.
As panic seamlessly mutates into “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?,” other “work appropriate” responses start to take shape. The flash cards of useful tips handed down by management start flickering by, with only nano-seconds to produce the correct one.
Usually, the first card that turns up a positive response is “blame and rise above.”
“They must have entered this wrong. ROD, your order is ready, ROD, or ROB.”
The second most popular stop position on the meter is “Assume the computer is right.”
“Uuuurdd. Double maximo for Errrrd.” They keep trying to stretch the “R” sound into some kind of vowel, sounding more like motor engines revving, while imagining to themselves what kind of exotic place I must be from where they can string letters like R and D together and make a name. Then when they see just a goofy white boy flailing up to the counter, they say “Where are you from, son?” And when I say “East county,” they nod with a half smile pretending that they know what that means.
The third most common reaction is to dissolve into the panic- “You could get fired for this.”
“Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I'm totally going to screw this up. R .... uh .... D, no, ROAD.”
“Pollo bowl,” she announced.
The attempt was brave, and I appreciated it. Figuring that English was probably her second language, I was humbled by the fact that in Spanish, the name RD is much harder to pronounce than “ar Deee”. “ErrE Deh” would be some kind of Spanish equivalent. There are like three stresses, the R is rolled, and the D comes out with enormous thud, both in its attack and release. Unless you do tongue pilates, you may not get through it all.
Most of us wouldn't even know where to begin with the Chinese name “Xu.” I think our inclination would be to take a breath, then just go with “Pollo bowl!” It's like the English name “Sue,” but I think the sound is colorfully laced with tones that come out only through the trained pallet of native speakers.
My least favorite card of all, and this is never funny, is the joker card.
“What is this, RD? Research and Development!”
“Receiving and Delivery!”
Unless, of course, the humor is an attempt to be flirty and you're a cocky but not self absorbed honey who has no inhibitions about being photographed for BUTT magazine, and the drink-code scrawled on my cup is actually your number.
But that's usually when I have to play my “The barista does NOT have a crush on you” card, so I can act disaffected when you ask “Is that a Polaroid camera?” when really on the inside I'm txting like crazy “OMG OMG OMG OMG.”
It did take a barista, at Starbucks of all places, to recognize my plight, and met me at the battle ground with an offering of peace that blew my mind.
Now, my slight against Starbucks (which is an attitude that extends towards most of commercial/popular/corporate culture) does need to be explained, justified and defended a little bit here. I always question the validity of making a point if you need to go through a power point presentation of defenses to prove its truth. “Who are you trying to convince anyway?” is the line that always comes to mind when I go on for too long explaining any one thing.
So, I'll try to convince myself that my indignation comes from a place of symbolic gesturing, while pointing to a much larger societal discomfort.
WHAT?
Okay, I'm only saying Starbucks sucks in the sense that corporate America is man-scaping the happy trail of modern existence into an inevitable blow hole of complacency and obsession. What is it we're missing so much in our lives that we need to pornographize our brains with images that tell us we're not good enough and we need more? Or maybe we want more and don't need it? Or maybe we forgot what the difference is, and, wait, what are we in line for, again?
The sense of security that I might hear my name repeated back to me without making it a “thing” is one those things I seemed to find myself in line for.
This particular barista could see something deep coming out of me when I opened my mouth and expanded my chest to deliver a very deliberate and precise “R” “D”.
Without skipping a beat, the barista said “Like this?”
He showed me the cup with my name on it:
AGRH DEE
He did it. He cracked the code of what it is I've been getting at all this time. Honestly, I would switch the order of the G and R so it reads more like pirate talk, “Argh...” But he was doing it off the cuff in a matter of seconds, so I take it that's what he meant.
It's deep, it's guttural, it's two sounds, two syllables, and definitely not “Ardi” or anything where the stress would be over the R.
In this way, the attending server would need only to allow the moment of panic to turn into a moment of relying on a most basic instinct- sounding it out. With more than just the two letters of the name to sound out the beginning and end, they have enough information to get a running start. The loop is complete, the connection is made.
Argh Dee. I am in love. By the style of the writing, I want to say he's also a graffiti artist. I'm very in love.
From going through all of this, I can safely say, this entire situation doesn't even need to happen at all. The whole song and dance of tying people's names to their orders in no way is reflective of the situation that brings about the interaction, which is ubiquitously to consume something.
And if your reaction to such an attitude is “Well, how else would you know your order is ready?” or “Well, it's nice,” then for that, I am glad it exists.
For the record, it stands for Ronald Daniel, which is not a secret. I've never been good at lying about what it stands for and wish I could say I have a favorite fake version. It cracks me up on the occasion when people hear that the R stands for Ronald, the first thing they think is the D must stand for Donald. I understand why you'd have that reaction, but, really, Ronald Donald? I only ever went by anything other than RD in high school, where I was Rawn. Hopefully that means all my friends from high school can't find me on Facebook.. I prefer no periods between the letters, and as long as you digested the concept that it's two letters and not “Ardi”, you can call me any two initials that come to your mind when you first meet me, and you'll ask a few times “JR?” and I'll tell you and it'll eventually stick.
Or I could just go all out with, IT'S ARGH DEE, matey.
