For those of you who have an unusual name for the country you live in, or your name is simply not international enough, I am sure you can relate to this little dilemma: You pick up the phone to make a reservation at a restaurant for dinner with your friends. It’s a simple task, you dial the number, say hello, ask for a table for x number of people at a certain hour and thats that. max 30 seconds needed. But in my case that never would be the case. After saying my name, they ask me to repeat it three times, then we go into spelling it…and since “d” and “b” and some other letters sound familiar, you now have to go into F as in frank/foxtrot, a as in apple/alpha…

so 5 minutes later I have successfully managed to reserve a table for dinner. Well a couple of years ago I decided no more of this, so my resturaunt/starbucks/general waiting line name became Bob Heart. Think that solved the problem? Oh yes! However, once every three months, when I order coffee at a coffee shop and they ask for a name to call when its ready, I get the question sometime: “You don’t look like a Bob. You sure your name is Bob?”..to which I respond, would you like to spell my real name instead?