Ask a Manager: Asking a New Hire To Go By Her Last Name

[minoanmiss]

[link goes to inc.com, second link to AAM site]



2. Asking a new hire to go by her last name.

My name is ... let's say Kara. And I recently hired someone who is also named Kara. During the interview process, we discussed the potential issues with us being mixed up due to the nature of our positions and the fact that she is reporting to me.

She agreed it would be confusing, and said she'd be happy to go by her last name, Miller. I have been introducing her as Miller to everyone, but she has been introducing herself to people as Kara. I don't want to be a jerk, but she had agreed during the interview process to go by Miller, and I feel embarrassed at how this makes me look to the other folks who report to me, as if I forced her to go by another name, when really it was mutually agreed upon ... or so I thought.

We have other folks in our organization who go by their last names and it has never been an issue before, so there is a precedent for this. How do I broach this with her without being a jerk? I can't imagine what a nightmare it will be to have two Karas reporting to each other in our line of work.

Green responds:

Is it really going to be such a nightmare? It's incredibly common for offices to have two people with the same first name working closely together. Usually people solve it by using last initials and referring to Kara M. and Kara W. or something similar to that.

If she doesn't want to go by her last name (and I realize she said she'd be OK with it, but it sounds like she might not really want to), you shouldn't force her to do it; it's not fair for her not to be able to use her name just because you were there first.

I'd talk to her and say something like this: "Hey, I know we'd talked earlier about you going by Miller to avoid confusion. I've noticed you're using Kara -- do you prefer that? If so, let's start using Kara S. and Kara W. so that it's clear who's who." And then if you're talking to someone who doesn't know the importance of including the initial, say something like, "When you follow up, make sure to ask for Kara Williams since there are two Karas here." Really, this is what people do every day in loads of offices and it's not a problem.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I wanted to post a nice trivial letter, and this is splendidly trivial. Some people are theorizing that Kara's name is more like, say, Hepizbah, a name she never expected to share. To which I say:

Anyone who knows my first name knows how over the top it is. Ten letters and a hyphen. My name is ridiculous and my parents have always been SO extra, it even comes with its own story. I have, in the age of Google, found three other people with it: the lady I might be named after, a gentleman whose name has the same phoenemes but a different meaning, and a college kid who might be named after me.

If I were faced with a new employee who somehow shared my wackadoodle name I would not ask her to give it up during an INTERVIEW where the employee is at their most powerless and the employer at their most powerful, and I certainly wouldn't strong arm her into going by her last name all the time. Just to check I'd say, "Let's be Name Initial and Name Other Iniiial, if that works for you?" And if we somehow had the same or similar last names, I guess I could be OG Name and she could be Revised Standard Name, or some other disambiguation.

In short I think LW is risible and may all our problems be of similar magnitude to this one, or even less.

[lethe1]

In short I think LW is risible and may all our problems be of similar magnitude to this one, or even less.

Amen to that!

[azurelunatic]

In my sister's kindergarten class, they had Tay-Tay K. and Tay-Tay L.

THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT.

[ellen_fremedon]

The kindergarten TEACHERS at my school were both named Kathy Schutte. (They were in-laws.) They went by middle initial, and the five-year-olds had no trouble learning to say that they were in Mrs. K. A. Schutte's class.

[likeaduck]

I love this. The five-year-olds do not have trouble!

[neotoma]

There are 4 women (including myself) with variations of my name, 4 men named Mike, 3 Stephens and 2 Stephanies at my workplace. We are a company of less than 50 people. It's not hard to distinguish between duplicate names, though you do have to make sure your email doesn't default to the wrong person.

I think this LW is being ridiculous.

[melannen]

At one point we had three Susans and two Sarahs in my workplace of 10 people. It's not hard folks!

(LW if the issue really is who's reporting to who I suspect you will swiftly become Boss Kara or Manager Kara and it will be fine.)

[edenfalling]

My (tiny) graduating high school class had FIVE KATES and TWO KATIES. Three of the Kates and both Katies were even members of the same overlapping friend groups. Somehow we managed to keep them all straight without requiring anyone to give up being addressed by their first name!

[ioplokon]

Obviously they must arm wrestle for who gets to be Kara.

[likeaduck]

But how will we know who we're cheering for?

[ioplokon]

The winner, obviously.

It reminds me of this bit about Martin St Louis coaching his first game against the St Louis Blues.

[azurelunatic]

Someone once suggested, at work in Silicon Valley, that I should battle with a certain other three-letter initials colleague about who got to keep their IRC nickname intact and who had to change. We declined the knife fight on the footbridge between our buildings. Everyone adjusted.

(Think alp and alq, a fun moment for everyone with dyslexia. We were pre-existing friends, and while I do not go by my wallet name initials in social spaces online, we'd previously discussed that we might do this if we ever worked together.)

[minoanmiss]

This is EPIC.

[cereta]

I can't imagine what a nightmare it will be to have two Karas reporting to each other in our line of work.

Every teacher reading this is cackling with laughter.

[caramarie]

We have a couple teams at my work where eg a Sally B reports to a Sally B. You just learn to be specific!

I am in a large organisation, so there are a lot of people with the same name. At one point all the Janes even had a special Jane meet-up :D

[mommy]

I've had two direct supervisors with the same name as me. The second one even had the same initials so we had to use the full first and last name to specify. We made it work.

[mommy]

My workplace has two Jasons, two Johns, two Carols, two Mikes, and three Anne/Anns. There's a point where you get in the habit of just saying the whole name, even after a person with duplicate name moves on.

[annotated_em]

I started going by Em the semester I was in a class of thirty that had four other Emilys and there were like seven Emilys at my job (no overlaps except for me). And that's not even thinking about the countless iterations of Jennifer and Katelyn and Madison and Michael and David and so forth are out there.

Grow up, LW, and with all due Southern Lady Courtesy, bless your heart.

[xenacryst]

Welcome to the world of Johns and Gregs and Jennifers and Mikes and Karens and whatnot. It's crowded, so crowded. And yet somehow we manage to have identities. It must be possible, somehow...

[shirou]

My name is common in my family's country of origin but rare in the US. I much prefer dealing with almost-nonexistent confusion caused by sharing my name than with the spectacle English-only speakers make over not knowing how to pronounce it.

[adrian_turtle]

Did I ever tell you of Mrs O'Hara?
She had 23 kids, and she named them all Kara.
When she called, "Come here, Kara," she didn't get one,
All 23 Karas came in on the run.


(Dr. Seuss wrote in time of fewer Karas and more Daves. I saw a tattered copy of the poem on the bulletin board of a house where the All-Dave Softball Team had shrunk to the All-Dave Infield.)

[heavenscalyx]

My workplace had, at one time, 4 Kristins, 2 Christines, 1 Christa, and a Chris. The Kristins had the most potential for confusion, so 2 of them ended up going by their initials (KB and KT) and the other two by their last names, so no one actually went by Kristin. (We also, had 3 Karen/Karins, 3 Kates, and 2 Steves.)

I might be twitchy about this one because when I got to grad school, I found that there were 2 faculty members there who went by the nickname I used at the time. The senior faculty member started using my full first name (which I associate with being In Trouble, since that’s the only time my parents used it), which everyone else picked up. It was just one microaggression in that deeply dysfunctional department, but one that still makes me angry.

[harpers_child]

I've got 27 Jennifers stuck in my head now.

I went all through grade school with someone who shared my first name and last initial. There were four other first names in my high school class and several more in the school. Grow up LW.

[synecdochic]

I was going to link that song in the comments if nobody else had mentioned it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nN_5kkYR6k if people don't know it

[minoanmiss]

*dances*

[rmc28]

Rachel was a really popular name in my age cohort: I think there was always at least one other Rachel in every class I took right through to university.

At one point in my work career, there were two other Rachels in my team and, for reasons that individually made sense at the time, we had a round of seating changes that left the three of us sitting together. Someone would say "Rachel" and we'd all look up. That lasted probably 6-12 months before I got moved away again.

[somariel]

I was one of four Rachels in my grade in my elementary school. Everyone got along just fine by referring to each of us as "Rachel [Last Initial]".

[ysobel]

When I was in elementary school that was how it worked -- so I had Jenny B, Jenny W, Jenny C, and Jenny P as classmates. If necessary, they went to two letters, e.g. Sara WO and Sarah WI. (But said as separate letters -- not "wo" but "doubleyou oh")

It got ridiculous with my sister though, because -- fake names here -- she was Jane Smith and a classmate was Jane Smart. "Jane S" didn't distinguish. "Jane SM" same. So they were "Jane SMI" and "Jane SMA". It would have been easier to just use the full name! "Jane Smith" vs "Jane ess-em-eye"...

[conuly]

Was this LW exclusively homeschooled, with also no extracurriculars? Because this is a solved problem. Every kindergartener knows the solution.

[haggis]

I had two Auntie Karens on my dad's side. This led to the mildly patriarchal-sounding "Colin's Karen" and "Your Karen" (for my dad's sister) but never caused significant problems.

[cimorene]

Meanwhile there's another woman on our street - maybe one block down? - who shares my wife's first AND last name and in spite of the different address #, she's received (important, time-sensitive government!) mail at least once. Her son had to hand-deliver it, but now any time a letter goes missing they have to be suspected...

[wyomingnot]

Something I loved about having a name nobody else had in school was that I only ever had to put my first name on anything I turned in. I was the only one in the entire school. It was nice. :)

LW needs to grab a clue. Or if she's got a title, use that. Boss Kara and just Kara. Ta-da.

In my classes, if we end up with a duplicate name, we just have Name 1 and Name 2. It's never come up, in any of my classes, that two kids with the same English name joined a class at the same time. (and when I get new students who don't have an English name, I do my best to steer them to a not-common name)

:)

[purlewe]

I am laughing thinking about the Good Place's Eleanor Shellstrop and then there was the Good Eleanor and the Bad Eleanor and YUP... still laughing

[naath]

Kara L and Kara M? Kara the dev and Kara in management? blonde Kara and brunette Kara? We have 10-13 ppl in our team, we had when I joined two ppl with my name, we have two Johns still (well one is a Jon), we cope . DO NOT impose a nickname or alternative name it must come from her, meanwhile fullname or name and job title, or email address.

If for Kara read "Jane Smith" she will have had this issue before and have a preferred solution, if it is really "Aphrabelle Antoinette" then maybe this will be a harder convo.

[jamoche]

Had a manager who shared a name with someone else at our massive company, so he put his team name in parentheses in the database's first name field: "Mike (Cocoa)".

We moved into a big round shiny building with mini coffee shops in every wedge and a brand new computerized ordering system to replace the paper and "oh hi Mike, the usual?" we'd had before. Said ordering system lacked any way to customize your order beyond what the designers had thought of, so people who wanted a bit of chocolate in their cappuccino would use the name field to indicate the modification. Like, say, "Jenny (Cocoa)".

Mike discovered this when the cafe workers were confused about what he was trying to add Cocoa to.