They cannot be serious.
Using someone’s preferred pronoun is a simple way to show respect…so the driver should say “Where do them want to go?”
Ask the passenger what their pronoun is. Do not assume someone’s pronoun because of their appearance or name on the app. If you do not want to ask, you can ask what they prefer to be called –
So if you do not want to ask, ask. Mkay.
Introduce yourself and share your pronouns.
What planet are these people on? A taxi trip isn’t a long-term relationship, it’s a transaction in which A drives B to point C for $X.xx. That’s it. The pronouns involved are I/we, and you. The end. Third person pronouns don’t come into it. Even if the precious passenger with the lemonade hair and the lemur-skin boots does have a bespoke pronoun, there is not going to be any occasion to use it for that transaction.
And even if there were…again, it’s a short-lived relationship, and it really doesn’t need to be anxiously hand-clutchingly inclooosiv in that way. It doesn’t. Even if the driver does use a “wrong” pronoun for some weird reason…it doesn’t matter. Passenger can deal with it.
These poor pathetic narcissistic dweebs must be horribly jealous of us older dweebs who lived in the distant past when we had to struggle to get basic respect for women and black people. They must feel left out of a giant party, and the only way they can think of to have their own party is to run around screeching about their pronouns.
But that’s ok. Trump is destroying everything, the Tories will destroy whatever’s left, the Arctic is melting, Australia is on fire – but please please please do tell us more about your Special Pronouns.
Comments
12 responses to “A simple way to show respect”
“Introduce yourself and share your pronouns”?! They are actually encouraging cab drivers to do this?
It’s all academic, of course. I can imagine that about 0.1% of cab drivers would do this.
And to think, someone got paid to come up with this crap.
Driver: Where to?
Me: Gives address.
Driver: OK.
Time passes.
Driver: That’s $10.50
Me: Here Ya go. See ya.
Not hard, is it?
How about a descriptive approach to pronouns? Based on my observations, my taxi pronoun is “yiz.”
Tsk tsk, Roj Blake, You could at least have included a trigger-warning…
I can certainly imagine the taxi driver sharing pronouns all right.
“I had this total nutter in the cab today. Said his pronouns were they and their. I told him, sure, buddy, and I have to say his tip was pretty good.”
On the other hand, I have heard the formal grammar is neglected at schools these days, so this is a start to learning about nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
“Take me to (address). I’m Joe, I use he/him. What are your pronouns?”
“My what?”
“Your pronouns.”
“An-der-son, just like it’s spelled.”
No, see, it’s the driver who’s supposed to ask. Because that’s going to go down SO well with 99% of passengers…
At this point I find it amusing how frequently the Woke advocate the importance of learning someone’s pronouns when speaking to them without realizing, as Ophelia points out, that third-person pronouns do not even apply in those situations.
It’s bad enough when it’s just some random person on Twitter, but for a big-city regulator to do it…
And, really, the advice is to just start dropping “ze” on customers? Most people don’t even know what that is.
Re #8
Yeah, I know, and I probably should have worked my joke around the other way. Sorry ’bout that.
If I get asked my pronouns, I plan to channel Jerri Blank from Strangers With Candy:
Principal Blackman: What’s your IQ?
Jerri: Aries.
My special pronoun is ‘god’. Deal with it.:)