You Can Take the Man Out of the South, But...

Right answer, wrong reasoning.

Q. Husband Nicknames: My husband and I have been married six months. All is well and we have no real complaints. But he does have this annoying little trait that I am wondering if I am just being nit-picky or if I actually have ground to stand on. I will accept whatever decision you put forth. My husband is Southern and calls every woman sweetheart or sweetie. This only happened a few times when dating to an occasional waitress, but now I see that he does it with longtime friends, other men's wives, and co-workers. It grates me that he does this and doesn't even give me a different pet name. I ask him to stop but he says that's how he's been his whole life. Is this a marriage compromise that I should just let go?

A: I live in Maryland, the land of Hon, and I enjoy those infrequent occasions when someone calls me that, though it's almost always from other women and in a retail setting. However, I don't care where your husband is from, calling every woman in his path sweetheart is both inappropriate and grating. Believe me, at his office the other women have discussed in the coffee room how uncomfortable his pet name makes them. Since you say he's from the South, but it sounds like he's not in the South, he needs to stop spritzing sweethearts everywhere. Even in the South, I can't imagine a young guy in the office expects to get away with calling his female colleagues sweetheart.

I don't know what part of the South he's from, but where I come from, we call every woman ma'am. I don't see any reason to stop living up to the traditions in which I was raised just because I leave home. Nobody asks the Yankees down here to slow down, or stop cursing every other word as is apparently the custom in the rest of the United States.

The problem isn't that the language he is using is Southern in an environment that is Northern, it is that it is familiar in an environment that is formal. The confusion is understandable. Offices for the last twenty years have tried hard to chuck the idea that they are formal environments. Regular business attire went from a suit, to a shirt with a tie, to "Casual Friday," to casual being the office norm. People stopped using their last names: not, "Good afternoon, I'm Joseph Smith from AT&T," but "Hello! I'm Joe from the phone company."

It is therefore easy to see how a young man could make the mistake of believing that he was in a laid back, informal environment among friends. Nothing could be further from the truth. The office was always a deadly place to drop your guard, but it is far worse now that the threats are masked by the casual air.

Someone should take this boy aside, for his own good, and explain all this to him. The modern office is full of landmines and hidden daggers. Formal manners are the only armor that offers any sort of defense.