Geoff or Jeff

Life I discovered at the weekend that some of the colleagues I work with, not directly but within the building went around for nearly a year and a half thinking that my name was Geoff or Jeff (the spelling probably isn't important). I have previously been called Ian in the past because it's my middle name and I'm pretty vigorous about using my middle name and people have been confused by that but this is the more interesting development.

It means that whenever people were about to ask me something, or perhaps talked about me if I was running late or wasn't available, they'd be saying "Ask Geoff, he might know..." "I wonder what's happened to Jeff today..." "Is Jeff there?" "I can't see him..." Apparently they realised after they saw my name badge and I know when that was because it was about the time they curiously started saying Stuart a lot when they talked to me. "Hello Stuart." rather than "Hello." and whatnot.

Inevitably I begin to ask myself, "Do I look like a Geoff?" I've only met three Geoff's in my span and I wasn't a big fan of two of them (and didn't know the other one well enough to form an opinion) which does bias my against the name somewhat. There are plenty of famous Jeffs of course, though in truth they tend to be labelled with the full Jeffrey or Geoffrey, at least professionally. In truth, I think I do look more like a Stuart. But not Stewart. That's just wrong.

2 comments:

Annette said...

LOL, that sounds like it would have made a good episode of "Seinfeld." And I agree, I don't think you look like a Geoff (though I don't know what a Geoff is supposed to look like, exactly).

Jambo said...

Er, if you don't know what a Geoff looks like how can you dismiss Stuart not being a typical Geoff . . .?