Dear Queenie,
I’m a woman but recently I was talking on the phone to someone I don’t know and the person called me “Mister”. I have heard my voice in recordings and I don’t think I sound like a man. It was kind of embarrassing.
Queenie, what should I have said?—Telephone Etty Ket
Dear Etty Ket,
Apparently that person did not know your first name, or you have a name that can be taken for either a man’s or a woman’s.
You could have said, “I am a woman, not a man,” or, “That should be Miss (or Ma’am), not Mister.” Confusion (and your embarrassment) ended.
