One of my favorite things is coaching my daughter’s soccer team. I love soccer, she seems to have signed on, and she’s become quite good. Best of all, it’s something we get to do together.
As part of this, my wife and my daughter got me a shirt with our team and league logo.
Usually these are for players, so there’s a spot for the player’s last name and number on the back. But since I’m a coach in this league, not a player, they wrote: “COACH BILL.”
I like this shirt and I wear it a lot. But more than once I’ve forgotten that it has my name on the back, and while I’ve been out and about, I’ve had strangers call me by name:OK, that last example might be more of what I sometimes imagine happening. It’s the kind of small anxiety that pops up once in a while: If someone knows your name, they know a little bit about you.
Even though it’s a little thing, especially if it’s one-sided (meaning they know your name, but you don’t know theirs), it can leave you feeling a vulnerable.I think it’s this experience that gave me a bit of empathy for some United Airlines flight attendants, who took umbrage at a change in their United Airlines flight attendant wings.
In short, United used to give its flight attendants two badges: wings, and a nameplate. But last year, United started issuing a new type of wings that included the nameplate in the same piece of hardware (including both the flight attendant’s first name and (if desired) his or her pronouns).