THANK YOU ROYAL MAIL

[kaberett]

This is a screenshot of the "Fee to Pay" page on the Royal Mail website. Titles are obligatory. They offer six options, which are given (in order) as: Mr, Miss, Mrs, Ms, Dr, Sir.

This is a screenshot of the Contact Us form to which you are directed if you tell them that you have a problem with a Redelivery or paying a fee. Again, title is an obligatory field. It offers ten options, which are given (in order) as: Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss, Mx, Dr, Lady, Rev, Lord, Sir.

I. CANNOT. EVEN.

Comments

Re: On the embarrassment of bein a man in address

[naath]

Quite; there are a long list of titles in use, and of course many people opt for none. A free text field where you can type in your title-of-choice would seem better than trying to make a full and complete list so as not to offend anyone.

But as with google and names it seems that many people simply haven't bothered to think outside the very small boxes that they live in. Everyone *they* know is a Mr or Mrs so obviously *everyone* *everywhere* must be (when I was booking a hotel in Amsterdam I had to choose Mr or Mrs; apparently the unmarried form is no longer in use for adult women in the Netherlands. Fortunately the mis-match with my bank details didn't cause me to not be able to pay by card).

Re: On the embarrassment of bein a man in address

[kaberett]

These is also true of a lot of Scandinavia!

Re: On the embarrassment of bein a man in address

[naath]

Yeah, I think it's a pretty good alternative to coming up with a "no marriage info" title for women; although I do like "Ms".

But lots of people are neither Mr nor Mrs (surely the Netherlands has *doctors* at least...) and people should realise this when they make forms! It's the quiet bigotry of people not even bothering to realise you exist :( :( :(

Re: On the embarrassment of bein a man in address

[kaberett]

I suspect this is the thing where Germanic languages/societies concatenate titles? so someone can end up being e.g. "Mr Dr Professor" (Herr Doktor Professor") and _all_ of them are their titles. Dunno for definite, though.