“Do you want a copy? heart“?” the saleswoman at a stall at the Pacífico market in Madrid told me a few days ago, after I passed my bank card through her POS (acronym, yes: Point of Sale Terminal). I was surprised by “heart“because I buy a hundred in wind at that stand variants (DLE: “Fruit or vegetable that is pickled in vinegar”), but I barely have any other conversation with the shopkeeper other than the one referring to my order. In the fishmonger, in the butcher shop or in the fruit shop in the same market, no one uses such an affectionate nickname, and generally customers of my age treat us and you with a certain distance.
When I say that I was surprised, I’m not saying that I was surprised in a bad way, understand me. In the world of commerce there is a great variety of treatment between clerks and customers, and sometimes we are surprised by the familiarity and others the you; some the “heart” or the “dear” or the “love” and others the “Sir” dry and distancing.
Once, in a well-known supermarket, with many stores throughout Spain, I asked a cashier if they had clear instructions from the company on how to address customers, unequivocal and universal rules, and she told me no, that each cashier or Each cashier addressed each customer as he saw fit, and not necessarily all of them equally.
The thing about you and the you goes in professions. In journalistic newsrooms, for example, the first thing that is usually taught to a recently arrived intern is that internally everyone is on a first-name basis, including the director, and that externally, in an interview for publication, for example, you have to address the always interviewed by you even if you have a lot of contact and trust with him.
Many years ago, I witnessed a very curious scene in the central editorial office of the German newspaper Bildthen in Hamburg. A newly appointed leader joined the meeting of leaders for the first time, who – according to what my interpreter told me live – addressed you to the director, amidst the fun and jokes of the rest of the audience. The director, who was a lynx, neither applauded nor corrected the rookie, but rather reacted quickly by commissioning a report on the use of the you and the you in the most varied aspects of German life: commerce, education, companies, sports stadiums, temples… It was published the next day, and was titled something like “Why do I treat the boss like you if I try to you to God in the Lord’s Prayer?
In peninsular Spanish, nicknames such as heart either dear either love We reserve them for our couples. None of them, however, appear in that sense in the Dictionary of the Spanish Language (DLE) of the academies. Yes it comes darling. “m. U. as an affectionate nickname to address or refer to a person. My darling. “My heaven” says meaning 7 of that entry.
I read a long time ago, I don’t remember where, that Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, lovers for fifty years and one of the most fruitful intellectual couples of all time, were about you. I have not been able to confirm it now. Yes, I have seen that he addressed her with the nickname Beavermaking a play on words between her last name and the English term Beaver, beaver in French and Spanish.
Beaver sounds good, it works as an affectionate nickname for men and women. For a couple or for a store customer and for a couple. I hope it becomes fashionable, darlings.
#shop #assistant #barely #calls #sweetheart
