They Asked To Be Known By Their Preferred Name At Work, But After Management Ignored It, They Decided To Change Their Name Legally
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Workplace policies get interesting when HR decides a preferred name suddenly stops being acceptable.
After years of using the same name everywhere, one operations manager finally receives 300 business cards printed with a legal name nobody uses.
Rather than argue further, OP takes HR’s “company policy” literally and makes that preferred name legal instead.
Read below how it went down.
Nasty HR claims “policy” and then it’s used against them.
“I used to work for a big, global company at one of their many big sites as an operations manager.
Loved the job, couldn’t stand the company.
I hadn’t gone by my legal name in about 12 years at this point.
Everyone knew me by another name; I used it everywhere, all my clients used it, and my name badge even used this name as there was a section for “preferred name” when I started right there on my application.
I had zero problems up until the new HR manager arrived.
This doesn’t sound good…
She was a nasty cow and especially disliked me.
At around eight months working there, I still hadn’t received any business cards and had put in many requests for them over the time.
I think maybe the new HR thought she was going to pull one on over me as she did indeed get my business cards printed and delivered all 300 to me…all written with my legal name.
I questioned this and was told it was “company policy” and that I would need to write my preferred name on each card if I wanted to keep using it.
Even though there were several other managers who also didn’t use their legal names and yet had their business cards printed as they wished, I was singled out.
She was so smug about it.
And at this point, “malicious compliance” is really my MO.
I had never worried about changing my name legally as it had honestly never really been an issue. People will generally call you whatever you introduce yourself as.
But, well, opportunity came knocking at my door, didn’t it?
She got down to business.
I spent $160 and a full day at the courts changing my name legally and hell, while I’m there, I’ll just change my last name, too!
I was never attached to it and this one is much better.
I also went and applied for a new driver’s license and spent the rest of the afternoon faxing my new documents off to the many places that would need them.
It WAS a lot of work and it did end up costing me about $200 all up, but walking into work the next day was the most satisfying day of my time there.
Here you go!
I was able to hand over my official Change of Name certificate and I personally handed the HR manager back all 300 brand new, completely unused business cards with my now-previous name.
And to top it off she had to update all my files and my contract, send everything to Head Office to be completed, and then had to come crawling back to my office for me to sign each one with my NEW name.
It probably explained the vindictiveness she displayed later but I ended up quitting not long after.
I doubt Head Office would have liked having to fork out for another set of business cards, either.
And sure, I had to spend a bit of time and money doing it, but it was something I should have done a long time ago, anyway.
I just got a little shove in the right direction and the payout was so satisfying.”
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And this is what folks had to say on Reddit.
This person weighed in.
Another individual shared their thoughts.
This Reddit user spoke up.
This individual chimed in.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who got the perfect revenge after being told he can’t work from home.
And this Reddit user had a lot to say.
OP spent about $200 legally changing both names, then returned all 300 unused cards and handed HR the official paperwork.
HR then had to update contracts, records, and headquarters paperwork before ordering another set of cards with the newly legal name.
They insisted on the legal name, so OP changed the one thing they forgot was changeable.
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