Name thyself

February 11, 2008 at 11:24 am (Uncategorized) (communication, manners, politeness)

I’ve been pretty quiet this week, I know. Sorry about that – I find myself busier and busier these days and when I do get time to blog I’m so annoyed by the spam that I log off. Childish, I know, but I reserve the right to be. I’m still a kid at the tender age of 25 ok!

Anyway, now I’m back and as usual I have something to bitch about. I’m trying to figure out how to respond to someone who has invited me to a party. I say someone not to preserve the privacy of the person. No, dear reader, I say someone because I don’t know who the person is.

To date I’ve received three smses, one mailed invitation and two emails from Person Who Is Not Named.

In the smses there’s simply no name. In the emails it’s signed by The Organiser. And the email address is a gmail address with the name and type of party to which I’m being invited; no person, no way of knowing who it is.

Now for some reason I am extremely ticked off by this. Isn’t it basic courtesy to identify yourself when you’re communicating with someone – doesn’t matter in which form?

Or am I getting on my high horse for nothing? Is this new quirky form of communicating the in thing, the hip thing? Well if it is call me prudish and stuck in the old ways.

I like knowing who I’m talking to. I like knowing who is talking to me. Even if you’re a blogger using a pseudonymn at least I’ll have some idea of who you are.

But no, Person Who Is Not Named doesn’t realise this. Worst of all is this person clearly doesn’t know me from a bar of soap but is organising the party for someone else whom I do know.

It’s annoyed me so much I don’t want to go (actually, I’m not being totally honest but more of that later. . .).

My instinct was to fire off a snippy response pointing out how absolutely fucking rude it is to send emails without your name to someone you don’t know. But that might offend the person who I actually do know and for whom the party is being held.

Shit, I hate this politeness thing sometimes.