Dear Stil,

Thank you for your email.

Everyone at Boost works really hard to create a great all round experience for all customers who step into one of our stores. From the brightly coloured store layout, to the music, to the staff who have fun and enjoy what they do, we really do like to live our motto ‘Love Life’.

Asking people for their name is just one part of this. We rarely receive negative feedback regarding this procedure and more often our customers are appreciative that they are not asked to take a ticket and wait for their assigned number to be called. If you wish to call yourself Amanda, or any other name for that matter please feel absolutely free to do so! What we want most is simply to get the freshest, most delicious, made-while-you-wait juice into your hand promptly and efficiently. And, of course, to serve it to you with a smile!

Thanks again for your letting us know your thoughts as it’s always great to receive customer feedback.

Love Life
Boost

Of course the jolly, nameless customer service droid who’s composed this response has missed the point. It’s not that I want to be called Amanda. It’s that I don’t want to be referred to a name at all.

If they were actually “work[ing] really hard to create a great all round experience for all customers,” they’d change their procedures to cope with all customers’ preferences. Instead, they’re saying that most people don’t complain, so the strategy rolls on regardless — while we all have fun and smile and enjoy what we do.

Love life.

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No, it’s because they always want to know my name, when all I want is juice.

For Boost, this is part of “Our Guarantee”. I can’t link to it, they’ve got one of those stupid Flash websites. But it includes:

Be polite enough to call you by your first name.

Dodgy grammar aside, this assumes everyone wants to be called by name in a juice bar. I don’t. Apart from having an unusual name and not wanting to draw attention to it, like many people who grew up in the country I find it rude when a stranger demands my name. And I find it uncomfortable when some teenager calls out my name in a busy shop.

As Allan and Barbara Pease write in The Definitive Book of Body Language:

People raised in sparsely populated rural areas… need more Personal Space than those raised in densely populated cities.

This applies to psychological space as well as physical. I won’t tell a stranger my name until I know them a bit better. If I’m just buying juice, I’ll probably never see them again. So I’ll be polite, but I won’t want them to know anything personal. And I won’t be so rude as to ask them either.

Boost does this with best intentions. “Our Guarantee” also says:

Make you feel great, give you something to smile about and always give you a reason to choose BOOST!

But once I’ve placed my order, handed over cash and received change, that’s the end of the transaction. Psychologically I’ve moved into that state called “staring aimlessly at random objects while waiting”. A personal question at this point is unsettling.

So Janine Allis, founder of Boost, I’ll continue to tell your staff my name is Amanda Vanstone and let them suffer a little discomfort too. Unless , of course, there’s another juice bar nearby where I can remain comfortably anonymous.

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