What’s in a Name?

First things first. About tonight’s Boardwalk Empire, which is becoming ever more soapy: HOLY HOLY. Didn’t see that coming. (If you watch the show, then you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, then you don’t.)

Now, on a completely different note, I’d just like to say that I wish I could blog about my new job, which over the past week has proven to be exactly what I was expecting it to be (I’d done something similar while living in New York) and then some—and not a good some. I would love to tell you about the problems I am having adjusting to the company’s policies vis-a-vis breaks. Or even the minor conflicts I’ve already had with one of my co-workers. (To cut a long story short, he’s a total douchebag who was impolite to me—probably because I am a woman.)

Having said all this, I do have two short, interrelated and innocuous stories to tell. On Friday, one of my colleagues, a friendly young woman, asked me if I was Italian. At first, I thought this was strange because I thought she was Italian, as I overheard her say to a customer a few hours before that she had lived in Italy. When I answered her and explained the half of my family heritage that I know about (I have no idea where my mother’s side is from), she said that she thought I looked Italian. I have never heard that before. By the way, she told me that she is actually from Romania. So our first impressions about each other were all wrong.

And just yesterday, a middle-aged customer asked if I was Spanish, though she probably meant “Spanish-speaking.” She had a thick accent, but she wasn’t from Spain. I smiled and said, “No.” She pointed at my name-tag and said, “Oh, well, you have a Spanish name.” I couldn’t believe this. But I handled it well, responding without even the slightest hint of condescension, “Alexandra’s in every culture or language.” To this, she agreed.