I was Office Max today, looking at spiral notebooks, minding my own, when I heard an employee say "sir". I immediately turned around without thinking, prepared to say something in return, but it turned out, he was talking to a customer on the phone.
My question is, have any of you guys ever gotten so into a male mindset that you don't have to think twice about responding to "sir"? I found it odd, because just a few weeks ago, I accidentally referred to myself as a girl, and now I'm just automatically responding to "sir".
I've found myself turning around for "miss" and "young man" within the space of 10 seconds. (I must've looked really jumpy)
I have only recently responded to sir ... and surprisingly have heard it more frequently ... I think I am more aware of seeing myself as a man .. and I am amazed at the number of times store clerks call me sir.
I respond to both because I only pass about half of the time. It does get kinda amusing in conversations though. Two different people will be talking about me, one using "she" and the other "he".
I don't even look androgynous, forget masculine, and when someone calls out "sir", "dude" or something to that tune after someone else I turn around half-hoping they meant me.
When someone says ma'am I usually don't pay attention or state blindly. If someone says sir I may glance around casually to see if they're talking to me. More often than not in shops though I just get the generic, "are you finding everything ok" or "can I help you find anything?".
I can't help but respond to 'Miss' and 'Ma'am' because that's all I heard at my old job so it's kind of stuck in my head for now. I got 'Sir' maybe once at my old job.
But I still hear 'Sir' and -almost- respond to it, but I really wish people wouldn't use those things at all. A "Can I help you?" is more than polite enough for me. You can always be polite by the certain words you use, your tone of voice and your body language without personalizing it with pronouns.
I was always getting called 'sir'....everywhere I went, even before I considered following what had been in my head since I was old enough to think!
Even as a baby in the pram people used to tell my mother what a nice son she had...true!
So now I have decided to finally go for it, it is totally liberating!
Now I get upset if someone says 'miss'...though that rarely happens.......
It doesn't matter whether it's a "sir" or a "ma'am" I hear, I always look. I'm really jumpy after years of wandering around oblivious to salespeople trying to get my attention. :D But I'm rarely called sir because I look so young... on the other hand I get paranoid of responding to "ma'am" and outing myself.
Not really. i get really excited when clerks call me sir, or young man. BUT in one of my classes there are 3 other girls with my birthname [stephanie] so whenever one of them is called I get jumpy and almost answer, or i get really upset that [what i believe is] my teacher calling me by the wrong name!
I am absolutely determined not to respond to either miss or ma'am any more in anyway at all. Unless of course it's directly to my face than I will correct whoever said it. I'm still working on doing that convincingly actually. I do my best to act surprised and then cheerfully correct them. I'm not the best actor however so it's a work in progress. Sometimes I still twitch when someone says ma'am but I'm getting better slowly. It's hard to undo years of years of condition response.
I'm also making a point to respond very quickly to sir. Most people don't use either sir or ma'am when talking to me which I suppose is better then just automatically being considered female.
When I hear sir I look around if I'm not sure who they're talking too. Not only do I not respond in any way at ma'am but I ignore it too.
I turn around all the time when I hear sir. Half the time, it is to me the other half its not... The other day when i was in walmart one of the employees greeted me as sir and i was returning something, and I had a whole conversation with him and he never second guessed me. Ive been working on deepening my voice and I think its working well.
I always 'saw' myself as a boy, so even after many years, hearing 'miss' or 'm'am' is what seems bizarre to me, so I've totally done a head turn to 'sir' only to find the addresser was talking to someone else.
I think for a great many strangers now, they just can't tell if I'm a girl or guy. I'll be in line at a store or coffee shop and everyone in front of me will get addressed with gender specific honorifics, when it's my turn they always just say 'what can I get you' without the addition of sir or miss/m'am, because they don't want to get it wrong. I actually find it kind of amusing, especially when they pause a bit or seem like they're going to pick one but then hold back.