Who Do You Think You Are?

This seemed barely worth mentioning when it happened, almost made it into a Twitter post an hour ago, but it's grown into a full blog post now.

My job has me sending out emails to all and sundry, from people who can barely type their name right up to our "almost honourable" MPs. I have email templates set up to save myself work and I begin most of my emails addressing the recipient "Hi there,".

Well apparently this is not good enough for some people.

After looking into an order and replying to the customer, I received back an email including the response 'I also object to being addressed “Hi there” -- my name is available to you'.
I suspect this may be related to his title being 'Doctor' and his job being at Cambridge University.

Now some people may apologise and go grovelling at his feet, going "Oh I'm sorry Doctor, please let me kiss your ass for a while just in case you happen to be the second coming of Jesus himself, throwing miracles around the way you do, O lord al-fucking-mighty".
But I'm not like that. Doctor Cambridge (still ranked second to Oxford, cough cough) is nothing more to me than a bunch of letters at the bottom of an email and as such will be addressed exactly the same way that I address all letters at the bottom of other emails. The MPs don't complain, the hundred-million-pound-earning company CEOs don't complain, so little Dr C-word over there can deal with it himself.

Next time I'm going to address him as "Hi Philip" instead, see what colour he turns then. Because after all, "his name is available to me". Suck it up, bitch.