The joys of a common name

[Midorikawa]

I've been browsing here and having a good laugh and/or a facepalm at most of these stories, and figured I should post my own. My first name is Mike...An all too common name.
I work for a large shared hosting company in Utah, at the time in Tier 2 Scripting Support, and there's 4 or 5 other Mikes here (this is important to the story)

I got an escalation from an L1 tech about a scripting issue that was ungodly complex and way beyond our support, somewhere between "my site needs to be designed" and "my site is hacked beyond recognition", both are sadly common requests, but not relevant here.

After talking to the tech and telling him my answer, the customer decided that wasn't good enough, and I had the tech patch the customer on to me. The customer tore into me asking me all manner of questions ranging from "why won't you fix my site?!" to "are you fscking serious?!" Sometime during this he demanded the CEO's personal phone number (yeah, right!), and continues thusly:

SC: stupid/sucky customer
Me: Yours truly

SC: I'll find out who you are and make you fix this!
Me: Is that a threat? May I remind you that all communication with us is logged. I will forward this chat to the police.
SC: Fine. Give me the CEO's phone number.
Me: I don't even have that. I have no contact with him whatsoever.
SC: What's your name?
Me: Mike.
SC: Last name?
Me: We are not obligated to give you that. I have been in bad situations before because I was required to give first and last name.
SC: Fine. What's your supervisor's name?
(Teehee. Here's where he loses it. I can answer honestly and really miff him off.)
Me: Mike.
SC: QUIT LYING TO ME!!! GIVE ME BOTH NAMES NOW!
Me: I have not lied to you once throughout the duration of our correspondence.
SC: Let me speak to this "Mike" person then.

I sent him over to my supervisor gladly to get him out of my chat queue so I could go to break. That has to be one of the few times having a really common name paid off.

[Nurian]

First: WELCOME!

Second, I, too, know what it's like to have a common name. It always pays off when people get irate with me

[MadMike]

My first name is Mike...An all too common name.
I work for a large shared hosting company in Utah, at the time in Tier 2 Scripting Support, and there's 4 or 5 other Mikes here

I was in a class like that back in high school. The teacher would call on "Mike", and one of two things always happened -- we'd all answer, or none of us would.

[Midorikawa]

Yeah...I had one supervisor who thought he'd be funny by seating all 3 Mikes on graves (out of a crew of 10) together. That got old fast when a tech would walk up to one of us and say "hey Mike..."

[Mr Hero]

But Mike is my name!
I thought I was the only one!
A pain I know all too well.
So this is what it's like when doves cry.

[Nurian]

But Mike is my name!
I thought I was the only one!
A pain I know all too well.
So this is what it's like when doves cry.

Thank you, Milhouse :P

[Mr Hero]

Thank you, Milhouse :P

What? I can't let Irv get to all the Simpsons quotes before I have a chance to.

[Kurisu313]

I've got a really common full name, only just a bit better than John Smith.

Wherever I go, there's always at least one person who shares my first name.

However, I have two middle names, one of which is exquisitely unusual - Chibbett.

When I get married, I plan to hyphenate my surname, which means I'll have five names in total, and finally be completely unique!

[LillFilly]

My last job had 'SO' on the name tag for 'Security Officer', followed by your name; like 'SO. Brown' and people would come-up to me and say "'So,' that's a really unusual first name; is it Korean/Oriental/Vietnamese?'

[smileyeagle1021]

ah yes, the joys of the name Mike... my first job there were 7 of us (out of a staff of 30).

[morgana]

"Patricia" isn't a whole lot better. Three of us in the same class all through school (small town), and there's been at least one other Pat, Patty, or Trish in every office I've ever worked in.

[chikenlady]

At my job there is two of us with same first and last name (somewhat common names but not really), and it is not a very big place and the other one is in management. I am constantly getting called to the phone for her phone calls.

[Crossbow]

Surprisingly, there's several Eric's (or Erik, in my case) at my office. One used to be in my department (so 20% of my team had the same name). I go by Ian a lot (just blend my initials and it fits), which works for the most part. Of course, I then ended up somewhere where there were multiple Erics and multiple Ians.

Last job my department consisted of 2 Michelles, 2 Debras, 2 Judy's, Laura, Lauri, Aaron and Erik. That was annoying....I told my manager she had to filter out the duplicate names before hiring anyone else.

[Jester]

Back when I lived in the dorms at ASU, we had a very large number of Johns. As we were guys in their late teens/early twenties, it was inevitable that we would sort out the various Johns by using nicknames. And so we did. The nicknames I can recall for the Johns included Dallas, Chief, Rob, Goat (I think he was a John, but I certainly remember his nickname), and I am sure there were others. We had at least six Johns on our floor. Maybe eight.

My friend has a name that is not necessarily common, but not that unusual either. For purposes of anonymity, I shall refer to him as "Tom Perry." So Tom moved down here to Key West for a while, and he was out job hunting. He walks into this one bar, asks for the manager, and when he meets the manager, he says, "Hi. My name is Tom Perry. I was wondering if you were hiring." Or something to that effect. The manager fixes him with a weird look and says, "You can't be Tom Perry." Tom says that he is indeed Tom Perry. At this point, he is a bit confused. And then the manager says, "No, you really can't be Tom Perry. That's Tom Perry." And she points to one of the waiters working there.

They hired Tom. And so they had two Tom Perry's working there at the same time. And as if THAT wasn't odd enough, Tom Perry (my friend) left that bar to work at another one, and a short time after that, Tom Perry (the other one) got a job at that same other bar. So they worked together, with the same name, at two different bars.

I have never met anyone with my same first and last names, but I am aware of a few, including a successful English novelist, a prominent judge in Miami, and a disgraced former president of a prestigious university. I have, however, gone to school with a guy who had the exact same first and last name as one of my cousins, but then, both the first and last names in question are both ridiculously common.

[ArcticChicken]

When I get married, I plan to hyphenate my surname, which means I'll have five names in total, and finally be completely unique!

Technically speaking, you'll still have four names, one of them will just be a hybrid. If you want five names you'll just have to tack your spouses last name onto your full name somewhere.

I never had much of a problem with repeated names, but my sister... Out of 100 people in our middle school there was a Lexi, an Alexis, and three Alex's. There were also two Nate's who went by their last names, and in my gaming group there was Evil Dan. There used to be a Good Dan as well, but he was only Good because Evil Dan was evil(er).