It is lovely when family members are able to visit you at work to say hi, but sometimes it can also cause confusion.

When the person in this story’s grandma tried to visit at work on their day off, nobody had ever heard of them because they recently changed their name.

Grandma couldn’t believe they hadn’t heard of her grandchild, which made for a very funny situation.

Check it out.

“He” doesn’t work here lady

A little backstory:

A while back I came out as a trans woman, and everyone reacted as I expected, family, friends, and co-workers.

But my co-workers seem to be more defensive over people dead-naming me than anyone else.

And with the staff turnover, it meant that the core staff would always introduce me to new staff as my preferred name, rather than my birth name.

And lately when new members see my legal birth name on the rota, they ask who that person is, which is what makes me laugh and reminds me of the following story.

Cast: (Aliases used)

Jack/Jill = Me

Grandma

Newby

Andy

Mike (The Legend)

Dylan (The cherry on top)

So it’s a mid afternoon and I’m just in my room (possibly playing a game on my PC, not important), when I get a call from Grandma.

I say hello and ask what’s up.

She seems like her normal peppy self, but it’s clear she’s a little bit shocked and appalled that so many people at work don’t know who I am.

I’m a little confused as to what she’s talking about, so I agree with her and ask her to explain.

She tells me that she went to visit me at work, but when asking the staff behind the register, they’d never heard of me.

I told her that we do get a lot of new staff, and maybe they haven’t met me yet.

Ahh, now it makes sense.

She then proceeds to place the last piece of this puzzle and tell me that she asked for “Jack”, but no one had heard of a “Jack” working there.

At this point it all made sense and I covered the phone speaker while I headbutted my computer desk.

I reiterated that they must have been new, and hadn’t met me yet, then we ended the call and for once I was looking forward to my next shift.

I went in for my shift and casually said “So, I heard my Grandma visited the other day?”, and this is what they told me.

Grandma walked up to the register and asked Newby (who did actually know me, but as Jill) if Jack was in today.

Newby looked puzzled and told Grandma she doesn’t know a “Jack” that works here.

This was the first button pushed, that set Grandma off on a speech that put me up on a pedestal, like I was someone to be very lucky to know.

Then Andy showed up to the counter and my Grandma asked if he could tell her if Jack was in today.

Andy also only knew me as Jill, and thus he had no clue how to help Grandma out.

Second button pushed.

She clearly loves her grandchild.

Grandma set off depicting me as a biblical god (only a little bit of an exaggeration).

But luckily Mike (knows me by both names) saw from behind the scenes what was going on, and quickly rushed around to the counter to explain that “Jack” was not in today.

But also informed her that I go by Jill now.

All buttons pushed.

Grandma quickly silences Mike and informs him that nobody uses that “nickname” around her because she doesn’t like it.

I wish I knew what other things were said during this moment of the confrontation, but when I caught up with Dylan he gave me the ending I didn’t know I needed.

The whole time this was happening, Dylan was on his break in the restaurant area.

He watched it all go down as he ate his meal, but then suddenly Grandma turns around and walks towards him.

Dylan thinks carefully about his next move.

Grandmas can be so cute.

Grandma simply says to him “I can’t believe nobody in this store knows my grandson Jack.

Dylan only knows me as Jill, but by now he’s pieced together the puzzle, and Dylan loves to “light the fuse” so to speak.

So, with an internal grin as devious as the Grinch, Dylan simply replies “Who’s Jack?”, and with that, Grandma raises her arms, shakes her head in disbelief, then storms out of the store to go home and call me.

We all had a good laugh.

I do love my Grandma, and I accepted that she will only ever see me as her Grandson.

Maybe she just wanted to see her grandchild.

But when she decides to go to my place of work (where everyone respects my life choices) and dead-names me in front of staff that have only been introduced to me as Jill I honestly don’t know what she thought she would accomplish there.

Also, before I came out as trans, my Grandma would visit the restaurant every now and then because my shifts had me sleeping through the day, and working through the night, so it was the only way she’d get to see me on a busy week.

But after that visit, she never came back to the restaurant again.

And yet she still wonders why I don’t visit her often?

That’s a new twist on the old ‘I don’t work here lady’ story!

Read on to see what the people in the comments say about this situation.

This would have been funny.

They better get this right.

Everyone is different.

People are funny.

This person has a similar story.

A confusing situation made funny.

So at least there’s that.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.