A new unique identifier

Dear Mom,

Sorry about this, but I was won­der­ing if you could go back in time and give me a dif­fer­ent name? Noth­ing against my cur­rent one - in fact, I rather like it. The French her­it­age, the sneaky little ac­cent over the e, the fact that it’s vaguely rare at least in the US… but, sadly, it’s just not work­ing out for max­im­um con­veni­ence these days.

Here’s the deal.

When I go in­to a lunch spot or a cof­fee shop and place my or­der, the per­son be­hind the bar fre­quently seems to need to know my name. This is so that there’s no con­fu­sion at the end… I get my vanilla latte, and the guy next to me gets his de-caf vanilla latte, and we don’t get con­fused over whose is which, be­cause his is named “Ferdin­and”, and mine is named “Remy”.

Ex­cept, not so much. Mine is al­most nev­er named “Remy”. And if it is, it wasn’t worth it.

Here’s how it goes.

“Hi, can I have your name for the or­der?”

“Remy.”

Blank stare. “Remy?”

“Yep, Remy.”

Blank stare. “Is that with an… ‘a’?”

“No… it’s R… e… m… y.”

Con­fu­sion. “Um. i?”

“Nope, a ‘y’.”

“R… y.. m… i”?

“No… R.. e…m…”

“e… n”?

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO IT’S LIKE THE COGNAC AND CAN I JUST PLEASE HAVE MY COF­FEE?!!”

So… yeah. That doesn’t work out so well.

(I’m usu­ally pay­ing with some piece of plastic that ac­tu­ally has my name writ­ten on it. And NO ONE ever looks to see what that plastic says. Which is alarm­ing to me for en­tirely oth­er reas­ons.)

The thing is, these people do not ac­tu­ally need my NAME.

They think they do. But no, all they need is a unique iden­ti­fi­er for my or­der… one that will not be con­fused with the people around me, so that I can get my or­der as ef­fi­ciently as pos­sible.

First note to self: al­tern­ate names are al­lowed.

“Can I have a name for the or­der?”

“Elvis.”

Blink. Double blink. “Elvis?”

SIGH. “Yeah, baby! ROCK-N-ROLL!”

“o… kay.”

Second note to self: pick a plaus­ible name, oth­er­wise it slows down the or­der, and in­creases the odds that you will seize the op­por­tun­ity to look like an idi­ot.

“What’s your name for the drink?”

“John.”

“Is that with an ‘h’?”

You’re kid­ding me; they got stuck on ‘John’? “Sure.”

Blinks. “So it has an ‘h’?”

“AUGGGGGGGGH. IT DOESN’T MAT­TER. PLEASE MAKE THE COF­FEE!!!”

Third note to self: pick an al­tern­ate, plaus­ible name with no am­bigu­ous spellings.

“Name for the or­der?”

“X!”

“X. Ser­i­ously?”

Oh, right. Plaus­ible.

This ac­tu­ally be­comes chal­len­ging. Can I find a really short name, to min­im­ize the time wasted on the or­der, and that has no way to mis­spell it? One that, ideally, isn’t the name of someone I already know, so I don’t feel like I’m pre­tend­ing to the them? “Ed” is fant­ast­ic, but I know two Eds. “Mo”. Awe­some name. But I know a Mo, and yeah, that would seem odd. “Al”. Hmm. I know some Alex’s and some Alan’s, but no Al. Let’s go with that.

“What’s your name for the scone and mocha?”

“Al.”

“Al­right Al, thanks so much!”

Oh­h­hh crap. Now they’re ac­tu­ally call­ing me “Al”. And sure enough, the next time I walk in the store, “Hi Al!”. This wouldn’t be so bad, ex­cept that this was at Flour Bakery, which is next door to No­vartis, so I see them all the time… now they see me on the street and say, “Hi Al!”. And the per­son I’m with says, “Why did they call you Al???”. “Sigh. Long story.” “You real­ize this doesn’t hap­pen to nor­mal people, right?”

The biggest prob­lem with all this ex­per­i­ment­a­tion is that I’m los­ing track. The folks at Flour call me “Al”, and the folks at Star­bucks in Fresh Pond call me “John” or “Jon”, and I think the yummy bur­ger joint in Har­vard Square still calls me “Tim”, which is where I real­ized I know too many Tims. I can’t keep these all straight, and even had to con­fess to the folks in the cof­fee shop in my home town that my name ac­tu­ally IS “Remy”, be­cause one of them got con­fused when my friends didn’t call me “Elvis”… and that took too much time and was sort of em­bar­rass­ing.

So, Mom, here’s my plea. Could you go back in time and give me some won­der­ful fam­ily name that you’re proud of, but that also hap­pens to be suit­able to be used as a unique, short, un­am­bigu­ous iden­ti­fi­er for or­der­ing food? Yeah.. No… “Yves” prob­ably won’t work out so well. Nor “Jean”. How about “A7” or some­thing?

Thanks!

Love,

-r’m