My Secret Starbucks Name
In today’s global business environment, managers and employees must learn to work with multi-ethnic teams. The first and foremost skill that must be learned is that of pronouncing foreign names.
Indians in the US do face some difficulty with American names — a strong Mallu accent can change a ‘John’ to a ‘Joan’ for instance — but in general they do fine. American first names are designed to be simple. The ones that aren’t, are mercilessly shortened to nicknames. I know no Timothys that don’t call themselves Tim.
Americans pronouncing Indian names is an entirely different matter. Americans have never developed the mouthparts to be able to say Jagadeesan Ramachandran, or Sabyasachi Mukhopadhyaya. These Indian gentlemen may be called Chandra and Tublu by friends and family, but Chandra and Tublu will never put those names on their business cards. It is not in us Indians to shorten our names or make them easier for the Americans. Our business cards and email display names will always carry our names in full glory and we will grant the right to use our shorter names only selectively to Americans who have earned the right to it.
Using initials is acceptable, though. Some names, are just too long even for Indians. If you are not Indian you probably think all Indians are cool with Indian names. Wrong. North Indians are totally clueless about South Indian names, which don’t always follow the First Name (my name) | Last Name (family name) naming convention. Some have a Father’s Name | My Name naming convention. Some have more complicated names which are more like mailing addresses — Village Name | Family Name | Father’s Name | My Name. Thankfully, these people always initialize. Except on self-addressed envelopes.
As I was saying, Indians generally don’t put their short names on their business cards. There are many situations where this practice does not work well. One, if you have an American boss. Two, if you are in Sales. If you have an American boss, he or she will decide on the first day of your employment what to call you. You can tell him right away, that you would like to be called Ram, or you can let him decide to call you ‘Jags’. Ram, of course, will always be pronounced like “battering ram” and never like “Lord Ram” whence the name came. Which is still better than being called by a randomly shortened version of your father’s name. Americans cannot fathom the South Indian naming conventions, so don’t even try.
The other situation, as I said, arises if you are in Sales or in any job that requires you to be in constant touch with people outside the company. Take my example. I have a pretty straightforward first name — Basab. It is pronounced baa-sub. It’s not a very common name outside of Bengal (my mother is Bengali) but it has the virtue of being short.
Unlike the examples above, when we are being introduced, Americans respond to my name differently. Where they are tentative and tongue-twisted with a ‘Sabyasachi’, they are confident and almost relieved about a ‘Basab’. Here, they say, is an Indian name that I will conquer with absolutely no help. “I can do this”, they think, and then say out loud — “Bus-aab, how you doin?”
Since I was in Sales and frequently the American I was meeting was a client, I never corrected anybody on the pronunciation of my name. Some clients would figure it out, some clients wouldn’t. There emerged a strong correlation between clients who were giving me more business and clients who pronounced my name correctly. At one time, I had begun forecasting my pipeline solely based upon a simple but unorthodox heuristic — proposals to clients who could pronounce my name correctly had an 80% chance of converting to revenue. Others weren’t worth the bar chart they were printed on.
All things being equal, in Sales, you can be under a major handicap if the client is unsure about how your name is pronounced. If you want to form a long-term relationship with someone who has signing authority in the millions, you don’t want to refer to you by pointing.
An Indian guy in sales in my company had this email signature — “Niraj (knee-rudge) Sharma”. Putting it in the email may not be the most user-friendly place to put pronunciation help text, but I guess it was less extreme that tattooing it on his forehead.
Others with unpronounceable names have taken even stronger measures. There was a guy I had some business dealings with in New York, whose parents, in an inspired moment nearly half a century back in India, had named him Bhuleshwar Gandhi. In New York, when he wisely decided to change his name, he decided to not succumb to sentimental half-measures — he changed his name to Bill Grandee. I suspect that was the turning point in his career.
Back to me. Having muddled through my sales career in the US being called various approximations of my name, I am now completely inured to the pronunciation of my first name (Nobody even approaches my last name, “Pradhan”. There are way too many consonants squished into a very small space). Even some of my Indian friends here now call me Bus-aab. It doesn’t matter to me any more.
But at one time it did. Once, in a moment of despair that only a sales guy short on his quota will understand, I told my wife that I wanted to change my first name. “Bobby” I said, “had a nice ring to it and was close enough to Basab”. She said that she had married a Basab and was not keen on widening the field to include Bobbys and such like. I left it that.
But there is one place where I can stop being Basab and become someone else — at Starbucks. Where I can fling off my Clark Kent persona and become Bobbyman — an immigrant superhero with the power of having his name pronounced and spelt correctly, always.
At Starbucks, they pride themselves in customizing your cup of caffeine just the way you want it. After holding up the line for 5 minutes to order a “Quad venti half caf breve no foam with whip two splenda stirred skinny three pump peppermint mocha”, both the customer and Starbucks are highly motivated to get that personalized cup of coffee to the right person. So they ask for your name which they then scrawl on the cup. The Barista then concocts your cup of Joe, screws up his eyes at the name written on the cup and loudly calls it out. A name like Basab can come out at the other end of this workflow, totally unrecognizable, even by its owner.
After a few disasters with Basab, I just switched to Bobby. It’s a win-win. It helps the good people at Starbucks (big fan, by the way) and lets me live my double life as Basab and Bobby.
So that’s my secret name and now you know it.
Reposted from 6ampacific.com
