Originally Posted by Kay27
I too hate being called Ma'am, and have to agree with one of my female clients in her belief that, "it should be a curse word". Or, as I've seen else where, "Ma'am isn't just a four letter word..it's a four letter word with an apostrophe in the middle."
First off, to correct the response above, every etiquette book asserts that "Ma'am" IS the female equivalent of "Sir". Where you are mixed up is that there is no MALE equivalent of MISS.
The confusion here, is that all our lives women are addressed as "Miss". "How can I help you, Miss?" "Can I get that for you, Miss". Then women pass an Invisible Barrier, and MARRIED OR NOT, people everywhere start calling us Ma'am. We notice it, and wonder why.
People UNCONSCIOUSLY call "older" women Ma'am and "younger" women Miss. It happens all the time. I can tell you of plenty of times I've gone to the store, and a woman not more than 10 years younger than I, also "unmarried", gets addressed as Miss, while the same clerk addresses me as Ma'am. That hurts. I have also purposely taken notice, that if I fix my hair nicely, and wear makeup, and dress more sexily - I am usually NOT called Ma'am when I go shopping! You should try it!!
The solution, I suggest, is what many clerks do - just be pleasant, and polite and attentive and say, "Can I get that for you?", or "Excuse me, I can help you over here,", or "How was your dinner tonight?" Did anyone see anything wrong with any of those? I don't. But, when I get a "Can I get that for you, Ma'am" or "I can help you over here, Ma'am" etc , I just want to scream. It's just not necessary to add the Ma'am or even the Miss. I don't think any stranger has the right to make assumptions about my age or marital status.
Society is too complicated these days to assume WHO everyone is, how old they are, what address makes them comfortable, or whether or not they want to be addressed at all. We can leave the 'titles' and 'addresses' for the people we know, and leave them off for strangers.
