Office's awkward moments – lengthy email address

Warning: contains adult theme

Being a public relations person, I often receive business calls from abroad on a daily basis, most of which revolve around themes of press request, sales promotion, advertising opportunities and so on. Not quite ‘fun’ by traditional definition indeed, and yet the fact that one gets to liaise with a complete stranger over the sheer medium of voice is a bit of a thrill to me.

Because these phone calls are made from anywhere possible in the world, and that everyone is equipped with his/her own unique accent, phone calls can end up being quite an embarrassing joy to experience in a day of office routines. One prime example to which I can always refer is when the convo reaches the point of exchanging email addresses for sending extra info.

Now, my dear readers, I am not exactly certain how your work email address is composed in your company, but mine is by the classic formula of

English Name + Surname @ company . com

The tricky part is that the amalgamation of “Benedict” and “Tsang” gives birth to a rather clumsy address of “benedicttsang@ company .com” . Double T. A disarray of confusing E, B, D, T and Ns. Spelling my email address is hence often a bewildering task brining much awkward pleasure. Awkward to me and pleasure for listeners.

“So my name is Benedict and my surname is Tsang, T-S-A-N-G. Put them together with company.com and you will have my email address” I explained.

“Sorry sir, could you please spell it out?”

“Certainly. So it is: B-E-N-E,” I offered.

“D-E-M-E”

“ah.. No. it’s B, for Boy”

“Okay”

“and E for egg, N for Nap, then E for egg again…”

“E for egg, okay, M for Map”

“No… *polite chuckle* N for…. NIGERIA.”

“uhhh….”

“Okay N for…. NAME! NAME it is.” witty. 1 score for me.

“Oh I see, Name. Okay so we have B-E-N-E -”

“Yes and then D-I-C-T”

“B-I-C-D…” (what??!)

“D for… ( the word ‘dick’ came to mind but couldn’t enunciate) …er… Daisy”

“D-I-C-D”

“No, T, as in.. Tea. (very unwise to think of the homophone of “t”) I mean, you know, T for… ” 

“do you mean T for toilet?”

“YES, T for toilet please!” I cried in excitement. What an epiphany.

*cue hooty, hysterical laughter from colleagues*

“Sorry sir I heard laughter from your side, I hope you didn’t mind..”

“It’s absolutely fine. Totally.”

So up to this point, we reached but halfway of my email address. Highly inefficient you say? Well yes indeed, and it certainly doesn’t sound corporate enough to use unstandardised initial reference (T for toilet is more than a bit awkward for a first time conversation. Fact.) So, I have actually thought of speeding things up by putting on my desk an initial reference table (those from kindergarten lessons, you know) so my thought wouldn’t go astray to something completely incomprehensible to others.

When asked upon an initial reference, I am abominably inclined to thinking of the most improper examples. “D for dick” and “T for tea” are one thing, other than which I have also futilely tried “B for ballistic”, “L for luscious”, “N for Nigeria”, and so on. Whenever I was briefly at lost for a proper reference, my colleague opposite me stared at me in bafflement, thinking what an odd guy she has in front of her.

If only my work email address was the “cool-type” such as BT@company . com. Neat. Succinct. Crisp. B.tsang would be quite lovely to actually. Or ben.t? No that would only be another problematic 'bent'.