Please Don’t Call Me Ma’am, Ma’am

March 1, 2006

I miss New York. A lot. And when I shiver in the bitterly cold weather here in northern Maryland, it makes me miss the temperate climate of Seattle.

Talk about culture shock. It’s one thing to move from Seattle to New York City – such excitement, awe, fun; so much to look forward to! But to move from the Big Apple to a place south of the Mason Dixon line, well that’s another story. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. This one is going to take some time and extra adaptation efforts.

For one thing, the next person who calls me “ma’am” is going to be taken out behind the barn and shot. To me, ma’am is derogatory, if not patronizing. The truth is, it's just downright geriatric. Why does everyone use that term when addressing a woman down here? The one time I caught myself accidentally calling another woman “ma’am” on a New York subway last year, I immediately took it back, “I'm sorry, I didn’t mean to call you ma’am.” She appreciated that!

Another thing they do down here that drives me nuts: People I speak with on the phone or otherwise regarding some service they’re providing for me just love to call me “Mrs. Bernard.” I guess that, by default, it’s assumed that any woman my age is married. Even after I correct them, they still call me “misses,” as if I ought to be married. What ever happened to calling people by their first name? Mrs. Bernard makes me cringe every time I hear it. Aaaaagh! I’m beginning to feel very OLD living here.

And the bodies behind the barn are going to start piling up.

But my biggest pet peeve of all is what I call the TMI Factor. I think it’s OK to socialize at work, as long as you keep it brief and don’t impede on your co-workers’ time. But here in the South, many people seem to be oblivious to the fact that other people in the office are there to work. They act like it’s a Tupperware party, boring their co-workers to tears with their extensive personal medical reports and incessant jabber about their kids.

There’s this woman I work with who has a super-fantastic attitude. I like her well enough. But she talks a mile a minute and is the most verbose person I’ve ever met. Being a mom, she only works 24 hours a week – and she works most of those hours at home, so I do get some reprieve. But my god, whenever she’s in the office all I can think is “Please go away. Go away now. Do it before it’s too late. Can I show you to the barn?”

Example: She walks into my office (where I’m peacefully concentrating on my work, which involves heavy research and writing); she immediately launches into how she has to go to the doctor later because the mucus she’s coughing up got thicker over night and her coughing kept her husband up and now she’s had this cough for six weeks and has been through two rounds of Amoxicillin and just can’t seem to shake this thang and she pulled a muscle in her back [insert lengthy description of how that happened] and blah, blah, blah. My God, woman, too much information.

I’d only met her once when she whipped out a miniature photo album with at least three dozen pictures of her kids. I am not joking – she carries this thing in her purse! Her family must spend every weekend at the local Olan Mills portrait studio. Kids in costumes. Kids standing by a picket fence holding a plastic flower. Kids on their bellies. Kids on their sides. Kids in chairs. Kids with Mom. Kids with Dad. The whole family in front of a blue backdrop with painted-on clouds. And of course, I have to be told their names, ages, and the details of their most recent illnesses.

After one visit with her I’m ready to scream. As soon as she leaves, I shut the door to my office and turn the lights off.

The problem is, it’s hard to say “TMI” to a co-worker when you’re the new kid on the block. So I generally smile and nod. Well, I did that the first few times. Now I turn around and start typing on my keyboard. But that doesn’t seem to help. Southern people will spout off to the back of your head for just as long as it takes before you plug your ears.

So, needless to say, I miss the abruptness of the typical New Yorker. In New York, things get done. Heck, I worked on Wall Street for a year and a half and never knew a single intimate detail about a co-worker’s medical history. And I can’t imagine any of those hard-working guys forcing me to sit my cubicle and listen to them carry on for 30 or 60 minutes about their personal lives while I’m trying desperately to get back to my hectic job. They just aren’t that inconsiderate in New York. They actually work at work.

It is strange. Not sure how long I’ll last here. I’m sure I’ll feel better about life after I get moved into my townhouse, get unpacked, get all the furniture delivered, and actually have time to spend exploring D.C.

In the meantime, I continue to feed my homesickness by watching as many episodes of Law & Order as I can squeeze in before bedtime every night.