Don't call me "Babe"

In my former life as a teacher, I was called a number of things. To my face, however, I was mostly referred to as Ma'am - only when the kids said it they didn't use the apostrophe. Being a Ma'am started to get to me and it was one of the things I was happy to leave behind when I quit my teaching job.

I now work four days a week, co-ordinating the madly-creative-and-talented-but-not-very-practical people who run a prosthetics and special effects studio, and no-one calls me "Ma'am". Why do I not seem gleeful then? Why do I not skip about glibly, scattering confetti? Why have I not written a self-help book on How to Be Happy Like Me? Because now people call me me other things, to my face.

I deal with producers and production co-ordinators. This involves many phone calls and meetings, but mainly it entails me standing over the schedule like that angel with the fiery sword who guarded Eden after Adam and Eve boned it for all of us. I can deal with the requirements of my job, no problem. Seriously, after teaching senior high English, I can handle pretty much anything. This having been said, there is one thing I loathe.

Who I actively channel when I am at work.

I hate it when I'm on the phone with someone, discussing some work issue, and they call me "My Love". Don't coo "Angel" at me. Don't "Hon" me. I am remarkably few people's love. I am no angel and only my mother calls me "Darling". Nothing makes my rage flare up faster and hotter than this presumptuous and familiar way of address. Don't do it. It makes me want to leopard crawl down the phone-line and vomit in the eyeballs of the smarmy production git, who makes up for what he/she so clearly lacks in good judgement with generous dollops of fawning insincerity.

I don't know if it is the tone of my voice that makes it so. If we were speaking face to face, the chances are that you would not call me sweetie. Why do some people feel safe enough to be that familiar with me? I don't know if it's only production people who do this. Perhaps I am whiney, or perhaps (and my money's on this one) it has nothing to do with me or the timbre of my voice, but is because they are so used to dicking folks around that they have learnt that they get pretty much whatever they like so long as they coat their requests in saccharine endearments.

HAH! Little do they know that I would crawl over fields of Lindt chocolate just to get my hands on a party sized bag of Cheese Curls and a beer.

Seriously, I hold this form of address in the deepest, vilest contempt because it knocks me for a six. One moment I am focused on the task at hand and the next I am a wide eyed five-year-old girl looking at the phone in astonishment. "What happened to my unicorn, Papa?"

What these thoughtless and meaningless forms of address reduce me to.

 It diminishes me. It demeans me and makes me feel like an incompetent child. In one phone call, just yesterday, a woman persistently called me "My love". Three times, in one conversation, she slipped it in there. I felt the mercury rise and rise until it popped out and I exclaimed in frustration: "MY NAME IS JEN". I was rewarded with wounded silence and an abrupt end to the conversation. I still have to work with this person, but now it is awkward.  I can hear in her voice.

I'm not sure of the best way of dealing with people who insist on using these inappropriate pet names. If you have suggestions, please let me know. The way it stands now it is only a matter of time before I let loose on the offender and hurl insults at them not only regarding their unprofessional way of communicating but also their lineage, and their mother. I would like to avoid this scenario and the subsequent legal repercussions.

What I become.