A friend of a friend of a son complained recently on Facebook that some retail service desk person had called her ‘sir’. Since she was a she, the ‘sir’ thing seemed pretty insulting. She said that we’d be better off if retail folks skipped the ‘sir’ and ‘madam’ thing entirely because there’s no need to be assigning genders during that interaction.

I don’t have an answer for this. I feel that some word is necessary that conveys respect. But I don’t have one handy that doesn’t have a gender associated with it. 

I’m not going to say “Put on some lipstick and fix your hair darlin’ and it’ll never happen again.”

Maybe we need a new word for sir and madam that doesn’t have a gender – “your consumerhood”, “your purchaserhood”. “Your Majesty” is gender neutral but seems over the top, even for retail. 

It’d be nice if it wasn’t as stupid-sounding as mailperson.