I just had a conversation on IM with someone I thought was someone else. This is so sad. It’s sadder that she had no idea that I had no idea it was her. The problem with communications these days is that you may not be able to decipher the sender/receiver by his/her moniker.
Everyone has the standard work email, JHefferen@myjobsucks.com. That’s easy enough to correlate. “Oh, that’s Jim.” It’s when you get into IMs like ‘BigMooseDaddy’. “Who the hell is ‘BigMooseDaddy’?
At my job, we use IM to communicate. Most people use their names or some form of their name. ‘JCowMoo’ or ‘JHefferen’ = Jim Hefferen. How the hell am I supposed to remember ‘BigMooseDaddy’ is Tim and not Tom Bullwinkle?
I’m all for the cute names and emails but not at work. Please. ‘BigMooseDaddy’ conjures up other images that I do not want to associate with my colleague. No, I’m not into bestiality. Get that sick thought out of your head.
I have a work IM and a home IM, although, I rarely am on at home, so I don’t see why I should have two separate ones. Nonetheless, I have two. One is straightforward. One is a play on my name.
Regardless of the two, if I haven’t IM’d a person in awhile, I always start out with, “Hi Paula. This is Pantrygirl.” It’s courteous. Once you’ve established the niceties, you can nail them with what you need, politely.
If you decide to have a cute moniker, then fine, just keep it as clean as possible because any name can have a sexual connotation. At least in my mind.
So to all you out there who use IMs at work, please, for the love of Pete, if you have never IM’d the person before or if it’s been ages since you spoke through IM, introduce yourself.
Oh, this reminds me. If you get my IM from a colleague, please do not play the “Hi, Pantrygirl. Guess who this is?” with me. It will not end well. I will not guess that ‘Analrapist’ is you, Tobias. Never.
