A Krista by any other name … is NOT ME.

Matt and I went to the Home Show a couple of weeks ago, just to check out what products were on offer. We wound up set­ting up appoint­ments with a few dif­fer­ent trades to get some estim­ates: retract­able screens, gut­ters, and a product that will fix cracks in the front walk.

I received an email from Joseph at the gut­ter com­pany, say­ing, “It was great meet­ing both of you,” and that someone would be in touch to set up an appoint­ment. So far, so good.

I then received a phone call from Joseph to talk about set­ting up an appoint­ment for him to come by and have a look at what we need. He was very friendly, yet also put some emphas­is on Matt being part of the dis­cus­sion. About three times dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion he made a ref­er­ence to how if Matt can­’t be here we can res­ched­ule, all with the tone of someone who is being help­ful and accom­mod­at­ing. Nat­ur­ally I down­played this as a con­cern, giv­en that 1) Matt is back at the office full time, and 2) I am an intel­li­gent indi­vidu­al who is per­fectly cap­able of show­ing someone the issues we would like addressed.

I then received a con­firm­a­tion email. This email opened, “Hi Matt, it was great chat­ting with you.”

?

Now, I should point out that the very first email opened with, “Hi Matt & Krista.” So he knows my name. He even knows how to spell it (coz he got it off the form we filled out at the Home Show). I am also fairly cer­tain there was no way he did not know he was talk­ing to ME on the phone.

I replied thusly: “I just need to point out that you were not speak­ing to Matt, you were speak­ing to me. Not sure how you missed that.”

To which he replied: “My apo­lo­gies. Our sys­tem auto filled Matt’s name. See you next Monday.”

I replied: “Thank you. All good. It’s import­ant to double check these things before hit­ting send.”

He replied: “Noted! My wife reminds me of this all the time :(“

Now, if it were me, I would go in and fix my auto-fill inform­a­tion. At least use both our names, even if for whatever reas­on dude can­’t see fit to just address me. Did he do this? Let’s find out:

[Also in this email it said, “It is import­ant that the decision-maker(s) be present on-site for this meet­ing. If the decision-maker(s) are not avail­able or if you will be send­ing someone else, please let me know so we can res­ched­ule.” –> so my back is going up a bit because he keeps talk­ing about includ­ing Matt, and now emphas­izes the import­ance of “the decision-maker(s)” being there, and I’m get­ting the sense that he does­n’t believe I can pos­sibly be that per­son. Not even to men­tion that he just totally dis­missed me by not using my name. Ok, on we go]

Joseph him­self came to my house and I showed him what we needed. He took pho­tos, and talked about their products, etc. etc. All the things one would expect.

Then he emails me the contract.

“Hello Matt,

Attached is your gut­ter sys­tem con­tract. I have item­ized the quote as reques­ted. Please care­fully review and sign to pro­ceed. Our office will be in con­tact with you shortly after we receive the signed con­tract. Feel free to con­tact me any­time if you have any questions.”

And yes, the Hello Matt was in a title format at the top, in bold.

Let’s exam­ine how this made me feel, shall we? Dis­missed, ignored, like I’d been kicked… Those are good for a start. He cer­tainly had­n’t changed his auto­fill inform­a­tion, nor did he fol­low my sug­ges­tion to double check an email before hit­ting Send.

I sent a some­what pass­ive aggress­ive reply that said some­thing like, “Can we try this again?” and signed off with my name in bold red, but that turned out to be a no-reply email he had used. Shucks.

He sent the con­tract email about four times before I finally wrote back. I hit Reply on the email wherein he said his wife reminds him of this all the time, and I said:

He replied by say­ing it was not a prob­lem to change it. He changed it and re-sent the con­tract. No apology.

Now part of me is wondering–and maybe you are, too–why I did­n’t just say, “For­get it.” I mean, there are oth­er gut­ter com­pan­ies. Coz this sort of thing has happened to me before: the assump­tion is made that Matt is the one who makes the decisions, that the com­pany rep speaks to Matt and ignores me com­pletely, that they ask to speak to my hus­band rather than speak­ing to me, that they assume my last name is the same as Mat­t’s… the list goes on. There are times when I want to scream: “I AM A HUMAN BEING!” What the hell year is he liv­ing in? He’s a young fella, too, so… wtf?

But. I am hopeful–maybe it’s silly of me–that I can com­ment on this in the feed­back sur­vey I have been prom­ised, and maybe it can be a teach­able moment, rather than a case of a cus­tom­er look­ing pissy. Am I being pissy by ask­ing that I be addressed as ME not as my hus­band? No, I don’t think so. But I am hop­ing the mes­sage is received once I send it.