No, not Ken. Ken’s awesome and a terrific cohost and collaborator. But I’m talking about a woman who works in a completely different division and has made the most incredible offer to me.
She has promised to be my Colleague Identifier. I can email her a description of a coworker and she will write back and tell me their name!
I’ve worked in this sprawling building for more than a year and there are still several people whose names I don’t know. Some I might see once a month. Some even less frequently than that. I always give a friendly hello as if we shared laughs in a boardroom just days earlier. But deep inside, I’m begging my eyes not to betray me by showing on the outside what’s happening on the inside: a mad scramble for their name.
It was summertime when I was taken on my introduction tour and many people were on vacation. The names of others I met slipped away within days of not seeing them again. I’d receive an email wishing someone well in their future endeavours, which is corporate-speak for telling you they’ve been fired, and wonder who that person was. Another colleague just had a baby and the newborn’s photo was circulated. I don’t even remember seeing a pregnant coworker. It’s all very puzzling. Part of it comes from working different hours. Part of it comes from not needing to interact with many of the office-type staff. Another part of it comes from terrible name retention.
So this colleague who I’ve made a point of going to visit briefly at least once a week, was also visited by a well-dressed and friendly man the last time I popped in to say Hi. I emailed her later and asked who he was. Turns out he’s a guy who was laid off a few years ago, back to fill in for the aforementioned woman on mat leave. Whew! I’ve never met him before. And then, full of understanding and compassion, she made the offer to identify people for me if I can describe them to her. No more will I have to pretend to recognize ol’ whats-his-name. What a relief!
I share your lack of memory retention which is challenging enough, but my challenge is further complicated in that I don’t have a visual image which I can share to help others identify who someone might or could be. I can only identify someone by their voice and that is nearly impossible to describe. Sometimes I can identify a person speaking to me if I recognize their voice or it happens to be a woman and I recognize her perfume, otherwise I have no idea whom I’m often talking to.
But there is a simple solution.
If when you approach a blind person to speak to them, treat it like your talking to them over the phone, introduce yourself such as: Hi Allan, it’s Lisa …
That’s useful info Allan. Thank you.
It’s called nominal aphasia when you can’t remember names. Of course I had to look that up because do you think I could remember the name of it?
haha I didn’t even know it had a name. Or did I? We’ll never be sure.