Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Names

You'll never guess what happened today with my name.

Sometimes I need to move money from the Credit Union to our household checking account.
So, I go to the Credit union and make a withdrawal. My husband's name is the first name on the account, so I have to put his name and then me as co-owner of the account on the Withdrawal slip.

"Would you like that check in Your name?" the cashier asks.
"yes." sez me.
After a few minutes she hands me a check.
The check is made out to my husband's name.

I hand it back. "That's my husband's name. You asked if I wanted my name on it."
So she deposits the amount of that check back into our savings and cuts a new check, to -- you guessed it -- Wendy Old.
By this time I'm a little ticked off with her.
I hand it back. "That's not my name, either."
I show her my driver's license, Wendie Old.

She cuts a new check, and hands me back a balance receipt with double the amount subtracted from our account.
She had forgotten to deposit the amount of the check back into our account and had simply cut another check from the account.

Several more calculations later, I walk out of the Credit Union with the correct check and the correct amount deducted from our savings.
(at least I hope everything is correct.)

At times I hate my parents for giving me such a strange spelling of this name.
-wendieO

3 comments:

Peni R. Griffin said...

I hear you.

This is why, when I'm in a service position, or signing books, I always spell the name back to people before writing it. I automatically spell my name to people who have to write my name, and half the time they put two ns in, anyway. Drives me up a tree.

Karen Packard Rhodes said...

I would not want to try to clean up for print what my daughter, an accounting clerk at a bank, who spends her days cleaning up teller errors, would have to say about that teller.

I'm not sure I see much excuse for her sloppy performance. And when your statement for the month arrives, check it thoroughly.

Indeed, what is in a name? At least we live in an age when people pretty much spell their own names one way consistently. Not so in the past, which I deal with as a historian. I have to keep records of all the name variations I find for one individual in original documents from the 18th century, which I'm dealing with right now. And on top of it all, these documents are in Spanish!

Peni R. Griffin said...

At least there's fewer ways to spell any given sound in Spanish, Ms. Rhodes!