Her Unspeakable Woes
Writing bravely in the Guardian, Icess Fernandez Rojas unearths a new realm of suffering, one hitherto ignored by the unthinking masses:
All I really wanted was a venti, white chocolate mocha without the whip cream.
No, don’t worry, it isn’t that. Ms Fernandez Rojas does get her beverage. The horror comes before that.
I gave the barista, a lovely older woman, my name and she shot me the typical confused look.
It begins.
I spelled it for her like a first-grader would recite her home phone number. “I-c-e-s-s. You know, like the goddess, but spelled like ice,” I explained. “What?” she asked again.
Yes, our latest Declarer of Ostentatious Grievance was trying to order a personalised coffee – or rather, coffee in a disposable cup that has her name scrawled on it before being thrown away – a baffling concept in itself, one made more complicated by the author’s uncommon and phonetically unobvious name. And the confused barista, despite being a lovely older woman, was, albeit unwittingly, grinding our Guardianista’s face beneath her heel.
In fairness to Starbucks, it’s not just baristas who are at fault but any restaurant or eatery requiring a name to add a personal touch to its service.
You see, Ms Fernandez Rojas has endured this poignant political struggle before – “a lifetime of having my name misspelled and mispronounced.” And those tears won’t dry themselves, you know. Which is why you, the public, must be told. What with your dull and obvious names, like Jessica and Angela:
Angela could get coffee at Starbucks with ease while Icess was still spelling her name out. Jessica was a staple at my local Chinese place even though Icess paid. And even Microsoft Word recognised Jenny as a proper pronoun, a proper person, over me; the red squiggle line was a constant reminder.
Spellcheck too? Will this oppression never end? One for our collection of classic sentences. And doubtless Ms Fernandez Rojas is intimately familiar with the spelling and pronunciation of every name of every employee at her local Chinese restaurant.
Sometimes the endless quest for name validation, even in my own Word document, was exhausting.
Poor lamb. Perhaps a coffee would help. Oh wait.
It’s all very tragic. Our Guardian columnist just wants to “celebrate [her] uniqueness” in an “inclusive society” and her spellchecking software, the subtleties of which apparently elude her, is dashing those hopes. She isn’t being “validated” by Microsoft Word. It’s how utopias die. No, you black-hearted scoundrels, stop that smirking at once. Why won’t you feel her pain? Doesn’t its immensity weigh upon your breast? Well, at least Ms Fernandez Rojas isn’t suffering alone.
Update:
Sniggering at the spelling errors of Starbucks baristas is now a thing among Guardian readers, who seem to imagine a ten-second interaction with someone whose own name they don’t know, and don’t care to know, is equivalent to a relationship with a long-standing colleague or close family member. (Next week in the Guardian: laughing at dyslexics and people for whom English is a second language.) Though I did quite like this dissenting comment: “This is a bit of a pot-and-kettle situation. A few weeks ago this newspaper ran, on its front page, the headline marquee ‘Plane carrying Bolivian president, Eva Morales, rerouted to Austria.’ There was no mention of when Bolivian president Evo Morales had announced a sex change.”
Thank you, David, for making me laugh on a dull afternoon.
Well, we live in strange times and Ms Icess Fernandez Rojas is far from alone in her lack of moral proportion. For many young people, especially those who’ve been exposed to the arse-end of academia for longer than is wise, whininess is now regarded as a virtue. It’s how some people hope to make themselves interesting, if only to other idiots. Apparently stoicism is terribly old hat. Whingeing is what the sexy and enlightened people are doing now. And so by some accounts, nothing is too small or banal to be unjust or oppressive, or emotionally crushing, from hairstyles that are racist to the traumatic names of nail polish colours. Apparently these things are “microaggressions” that are “extremely triggering” and making the intellectuals of tomorrow weep into their pillows.
And as I’ve said before, this farcical unrealism is being taught and cultivated.
Rob reminds me of a trick my father used to use. He figured that whenever you went to an Italian restaurant, you give an Italian name, you might get seated sooner. German restaurant, German name, etc. etc. Seems the goddess Icessss could use her imagination a little. She’s supposed to be of the creative bent, after all.
All she needs to say when asked is that her name is spelt like “ice”, as in frozen water, with a double “s” on the end. It doesn’t strike me as that hard. Although that wouldn’t allow her the opportunity to link herself to a goddess, which I imagine she finds important.
As with Private Eye’s recent “Woman has Baby” cover, most CiF articles can quickly be reduced to their real meaning: “Woman with unusual name has mild trouble ordering ludicrously specific coffee, whinges”.
most CiF articles can quickly be reduced to their real meaning: “Woman with unusual name has mild trouble ordering ludicrously specific coffee, whinges”.
See also Black Man Eats Truffles.
This Ann Althouse post seems tangentially relevant: http://www.althouse.blogspot.com/2013/08/feminist-blogger-suspects-that-ap-meant.html
She coins the fabulous phrase, “bolus of feminism”, and says the following:
“Scan stories for minor details relating to gender, then highlight them, and make grandiose statements about the perpetuation of oppression. When the evidence is flimsy, lubricate the bolus with the notion of the subtlety of the oppression. It might be swallowable.”
Replace “stories” with “your own life experiences”, and “gender” with whatever the flavor of the month is, and we have the template for all unfalsifiable grievance-based Leftist fake reasoning.
My name is often pronounced wrongly, so get over it.
Lessee . . . someone having problems with a name. The rest of us recommending a placard to help with desired spelling and pronunciation. I’ve heard this before!
See http://notwithoutmyhandbag.com/blog/category/badbabynames/page/65/ and read forward . . . Very recommended . . .
“I-c-e-s-s. You know, like the goddess, but spelled like ice,” I explained. “What?” she asked again.
Had she held firm at the first full stop, the whole thing would have been a non-event.
I-c-e-s-s
“What?”
“I-c-e-s-s”.
Job done.
Egyptian goddess references just confuse things.
It’s spelled I-s-i-s. So, not only were her parents cruel, they were also stupid
Apparently, sniggering at the spelling errors of Starbucks baristas is now a thing among Guardian readers, who seem to imagine a ten-second interaction with someone whose own name they don’t know, and don’t care to know, is equivalent to a relationship with a dear friend or close family member. Next week in the Guardian: laughing at dyslexics and people for whom English is a second language…
Though I did quite like this dissenting comment: “This is a bit of a pot-and-kettle situation. A few weeks ago this newspaper ran, on its front page, the headline marquee ‘Plane carrying Bolivian president, Eva Morales, rerouted to Austria.’ There was no mention of when Bolivian president Evo Morales had announced a sex change.”
Next week in the Guardian: laughing at dyslexics and people for whom English is a second language.
I bet the person serving the coffee earns a lot less than the Guardianistas laughing at them. You’ve got to love those class war credentials.
Darleen suggests:
“Maybe Icess should just change her name to Bob (can’t spell it wrong in either direction) and let the stress go.”
Unfortunately Rowan Atkinson has made the name “Bob” inherently funny- yet another form of oppression!
Apparently these things are “microaggressions” that are “extremely triggering” and making the intellectuals of tomorrow weep into their pillows.
Yes, this is the logical consequence of the whole concept of ‘microagressions’. The term originally ment ‘small instances of prejudice which minorities deal with on a daily basis’, but it’s inevitably come to mean ‘small, trivial irritations which pretty much everyone deals with on a daily basis, but only minorities get to whinge about’. And so whining about trivialities becomes acceptable, and you get people demanding ‘trigger warnings’ for anything that might possibly offend or annoy them in some way. Ironically, they’ll often cry ‘first world problems’ whenever someone else complains about things they don’t consider important.
As a solution she should manufacture a disposable cup with a microphone and speaker so she can say her own name and have it repeated back without the oppression of spelling intervening.
It should only double the cost…
Apparently, sniggering at the spelling errors of Starbucks baristas is now a thing among Guardian readers
In a paper so notorious for typos it’s got the nickname ‘Grauniad’.
You’ve got to love those class war credentials.
Quite. But I fear the project was always destined for inadvertent comedy. I mean, the author of the article is a creative writing graduate – one with “an alphabet soup full of degrees” – who now teaches others how to be “amazing writers.” And this colossal talent, this punctilious corrector of error, is exasperated by the red squiggly lines that appear beneath her name as she types it. In fact, not only is she exasperated, it offends her politically. It makes her feel excluded, exhausted and invalid. And yet, despite this deep emotional trauma – one that’s presumably repeated day after day – she still hasn’t figured out how to get rid of those red squiggly lines.
Which I can’t help feeling is rather symbolic.
She should change her name to ‘Bitch’. Pretty much everyone knows how to spell that.
So this idiotic woman who uses a word processor for a living yet does not know how to add a word to the dictionary in Word?