I was raised to address strangers and those I wish to show social deference to as “Sir” or “Ma’am”. It’s a difficult habit to break, as it is deeply engrained.
What is an equivalent gender neutral honorific that is relatively common in English? If I can’t break the habit I’d rather have a substitute word to use instead of an awkward pause in the middle of addressing someone
I’d just use Google to ask but I’d rather ask the people directly rather than an AI generated answer based off of Reddit threads
I work in 911 dispatch, understandably once in a while I get a caller who is just absolutely losing their mind over whatever is going on that they’re calling about
And sometimes pretty much the only thing I can do to grab my callers attention and bring them back around to listening to me is to just kind of repeat sir/ma’am until I get their attention they come back around to realizing I’m trying to talk to them.
If I can get their name, I use that instead and it’s more effective, but that’s not always a given.
Just sitting there in silence until they get their shit together on their own doesn’t work, and more likely they’re going to just hang up on me.
And repeating whatever question I need answered really just kind of goes in one ear and out the other while they continue going off.
Their name or sir/ma’am is punchier, it has a way of cutting through their panic and grabbing their attention saying “you are being addressed right now and the person addressing you needs your attention”
And I really wish we had a good, gender-neutral equivalent of that. It needs to be polite and professional, and maybe a bit authoritative-sounding, so something like “dude” obviously won’t cut it.
And I need it both for trans/non-binary people, and people whose gender just isn’t clear on the phone because they’re in a panic, calling from a potato, and/or just have a somewhat ambiguous voice.
Normally I just have to pick one and go with it, and they’ll either correct me (in some cases, choosing the wrong one might actually be more effective at grabbing their attention because astonishingly (/s) people don’t enjoy being misgendered and they jump at the opportunity to correct that) or they also just roll with it.
But I’d really like to avoid that if I can, and I haven’t really found a good option for it yet.
Have you tried a dolphin impersonation? I think that’s gender neutral.
“EEK EEK EEK EEK EEK”
If we’re going non-English, I’d prefer to address people like Death of Rats