Ask a Manager: Update: Employee doesn't want to use a name

[minoanmiss]

Remember the letter-writer whose employee didn’t want to use a name for themselves? Here’s the update.

Thank you to Alison and to all of the commenters. I read every comment and learned a lot. (One thing I learned was that you all have excellent literary and pop culture taste!) I took a lot of what was said to heart and especially want to thank SaraM and GythaOgden for their lovely and insightful comments. A few things I feel compelled to add:

I had spoken to the employee previously about their situation and was told that their therapist had recommended that they not rush into any permanent or semi-permanent name changes. Their therapist asked them to ask us to “try to be comfortable with some ambiguity at the moment for the sake of their mental health.”


The employee does not identify as cisgender, and yes, it is their full name that is at issue. They still retain their legal name. Once they settle on a new name, they will consider changing their name so that they don’t, indeed, have to look at their dead name on paystubs, etc. At least that is what they told me, not that it is anyone’s business.

Socially — and I know this because we have mutual friends outside of work — they are also not using a name, and it seems to be causing some not dissimilar issues.

Many commenters mentioned the Public Universal Friend, which is interesting because “friend” is the term that we now try to use to get their attention and/or distinguish them in meetings. It has worked for the most part.

I spoke to my grandboss and he agreed that the name change need not be permanent.

I also spoke with the employee using some of the suggested language and explained that, at least for work purposes, they need to choose an identifier and that it need not be permanent. They said they understood and are going to think about it for a week. Once they do, the IT department should be able to find a workaround.

Thanks so much for all of your advice!

Comments

[conuly]

I am intensely curious to know wtf the therapist was thinking if they really advised "go with no name for as long as it takes". Because, honestly, I can't see how the effect of everybody resenting having to refer to them as That Person Who Remains Nameless is going to improve matters, whatever the root problem is.

Not that I don't sympathize, of course, but... seriously, this cannot be the best plan.

[cimorene]

+1. My exact thoughts.

[beable]

Whut was the therapist thinking seemed to be the common theme in the comments when I looked at them earlier.

I can totally see where the therapist might not have realized that Nameless was going to apply this to ALL aspects of their lives completely (and one wonders how billing and scheduling with the therapist is handled if they are)

[ysobel]

Yeah, I think there's a disconnect between what therapist recommended/meant and what's actually happening. Not rushing in to a permanent decision is one thing, but not having anything at all is ... impractical?

It's complicated because it's hard to judge from outside -- e.g. if I were trying to figure out my gender I might see using a gender-ambiguous name plus 'they' pronouns as an acceptable compromise between "I don't yet know who I am" and "society assumes people have a name and pronoun", but probably the employee in question *isn't* ok with that. I'm glad the LW isn't dismissing the issue, but it's messy, and I don't know what the therapist/LW/employee each know. So maybe the therapist assumed that they were going e.g. by Pat and just undecided about -rick vs -ricia, or assumed they were ok going by oldname, and didn't even think about [no-name-here]?

[shanaqui]

I think "some ambiguity" is one thing, and "no name at all" is another. Like for a while I was using two different spellings of my name, which created ambiguity, until I could be sure how I felt about the attempted change. I wonder if there's a game of telephone going on here, and the therapist was more envisaging something like that?

Although I kinda wonder mostly if they didn't think much about it and responded to "I don't know, I wish I didn't have to make a choice yet" with a warm, "you don't, you can ask people to give you time" without taking the step of figuring out what that looks like.

[misbegotten]

Thanks for posting this update. I'm pleased that the manager is putting so much thought into it. Nonetheless, sustaining ambiguity hardly seems like a feasible solution, even temporarily -- having everybody discussing and debating over what to call me would make the situation worse, not better, in my head.

[minoanmiss]

Oh goodness you're totally welcome! This was an update to a really intriguing post so as soon as I saw it I dashed over here!

[beable]

I'm glad that grandboss backed down on the "this must be TEH PERMANENTS" routine.

I think that LW is being super generous in thinking that a week to think of a temporary placeholder identifier is appropriate, I would not be surprised if this drifts into longer but hopefully employee will embrace the power of a temporary initial or sigil or something and acknowledge that they live in a world in which people have at least one identity of some sort within the very generous week.

[beable]

I have a friend whose name changes in ways that one can absolutely not predict.

They are gender fluid, have three first names depending on how their gender is feeling that day (or that part of day) - and three sets of pronouns for that matter, but at least they consider they acceptable regardless of their current gender identity.
Complicating things is that they are only out to a small subset of our IRL circle of friends and other peeps, so the added complication when in mixed company of out/not-out.

In theory they have tried to mitigate this by reasuring us that "original birth firstname" is fine because we've known them for years, and they've additionally talked sometimes about how because OBF has historically been used for both genders they're thinking they should just be OBF regardless of their current gender identity which would make the selectively out thing less jarring presumably but even if they have suggested this repeatedly it doesn't seem like they find it fits as an answer, as they definitely seem more comfortable when we don't use OBF unless they're actually feeling their assigned-at-birth gender.

Most of us in the mutual circle of friends have ended up defaulting to using the middle (non-binary, they pronouns) firstname by default and that seems to be working, unless of course interactions involve not yet outed to. For a while I tried a nickname (that friend endorsed because it was fun and descriptive and had absolutely no societal gender identities tied to it at all) with them but said nickname is great for written communication and hard to enunciate/pronounce when talking to each other.

Before we all sort of defaulted to the non-binary firstname and pronoun set, it was somewhat frustrating because all social interactions would require spending too much initial network-connectivity-handshaking to determine their identity in the moment while at the same time they didn't want all of our socializing to be focusing on their gender identity. But the middle non-binary name seems to be their most common identity and when they're in one of the more gendered edges of their identity the middle first name and pronouns dont seem to be dysphoric at all, so I suppose it's working as well as can atm.

[ioplokon]

Glad it worked out. Also, reminds me of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names.