Manners maketh man

A friend of mine recently brought to my attention the fact that in computerised correspondence we are all being addressed rather strangely. It appears that the computer-speak, which has taken over the developed world, is incapable of following the time-honoured traditional modes of address one expects.

I receive letters with the following salutations with monotonous regularity.

"Dear Mr Kenneth Zammit Tabona" (very clumsy; straight out of a computer list that is taking no chances; the letter goes straight into the dustbin).

"Dear Kenneth Zammit Tabona" (as above)

"Dear Zammit Tabona" ( the most absurd of the lot; I stopped being referred to by my surname since I left college!).

"Dear Kenneth" ( have I eaten tripe with these people?)

It seems that computer programmers are incapable of inserting a programme that can produce the correct form of:

"Dear Mr Zammit Tabona".

One can always put this clumsy off-putting mode of address to an insensitive computer. However, the malady has also caught on to the telephone system.

One cannot imagine how disconcerting it is to be addressed by your Christian name by someone whom you don't know from a bar of soap!

The conversation goes something like this:

"Hello"

"Good morning, is that Kenneth?"

"Yes, who are you?"

"I'm Tracy from XYZ plc. May I take up five minutes of your time to tell you about our special offer for xxxxx..!"

"Tracy, I'm afraid that Mr Zammit Tabona is unavailable at the moment and even if he were I doubt whether he would be interested."

"But aren't you Kenneth?"

"Yes, to God, my family and my friends!"

"But, Kenneth, the XYZ plc are offering...!"

"Tracy, have we ever met? Do I know you?"

"No, I don't think so, but the XYZ plc are offering..!"

By this time I've had it and have hung up.

There is an even worse scenario where, to add insult to injury, the misguided Tracy offers to put you through to a Mr So and So and refers to him by his surname!

The above is a blatant breach of ordinary good manners. The awful part of it is that some marketing guru somewhere along the line has divined that there may be a few oddballs who actually enjoy being addressed familiarly by an unknown person and the result is the peculiar code that seems to be in vogue at present.

How they have not realised that the exercise is counterproductive beats me. Maybe there are far more bored and frustrated men who get a thrill out of it than I thought, hence there are also a great deal of people who are easily fooled and take up the XYZ plc offer! Maybe I'm peculiar; however, the way one addresses people reflects an order and method that keeps the entire fabric of society in perspective.

The above instances are not particular to Malta. However, the number of times I have been addressed by complete strangers as Chally, Gbin, Habib, Gisem, My Friend, Ras and other appellatives of the strangest origin defy computation. We are so used to it that I doubt whether any of you readers would have realised it before reading this article. It's so much part of the Maltese way of life that it is an institution!

Familiarity is not the key to a successful relationship. I can go on and on; however, it is an innate sensitivity to other people's requirements that can be the only key to establishing a social rapport. There are times when a couple of minutes after being introduced to a complete stranger one can be on first name terms and there are times when one still uses formal address after a lifetime of acquaintance.

Many people I know still use Mr X and Mrs X to address their parents-in-law. It all depends on the recipient in these cases to establish a mode of address that they are comfortable with. Some parents-in-law prefer to be called by their Christian name and some even go so far as wishing to be called Mummy and Daddy etc but it is up to them entirely and it is not up to the son- or daughter-in-law to establish it at all.

Generally speaking, in my experience, this works very well and, apart from the deliberate examples I gave initially that are generated by the latest fads in our social fabric, computer-speak and marketing ploys, the system works beautifully.

I remember the strange and uncomfortable situations that arose when a couple of weeks after the takeover, HSBC unofficially discouraged the use of the surname or Mr attached to the Christian name, among the staff.

I for one, who after 30 years of automatically addressing executives by surname, found myself addressing the new English CEO by first name, a privilege not restricted to myself or my peers but also the junior staff and non clericals!

The weird thing was that so far as we Maltese were concerned, we went on addressing each other as we always had. One cannot impose a culture that is alien on one which has grown organically since time immemorial.

Social strata are shifting continually and one's social circle is only deemed to be healthy if it is in a constant state of flux.

I would therefore appeal to the computer-programmers and marketing gurus to put their house in order and ensure that people are always addressed as they should be.