Me, Myself & I

I sometimes feel like many different people, and probably most can relate to that. You have your work self, your real self, your family self, etc. I have never been so confused that I actually referred to myself in the third person, but I have a customer who does.

Now, for the sake of anonymity we will call him "Mr. Smith". The first time I went to his office, I got the usual "Mr. Smith will be with you shortly". This is a sign, that his staff refers to him as "Mr. Smith" and not by his first name. I'm all about manners, but Mr. Smith is relatively young, so this is a clue that I should call him Mr. Smith, which I normally would anyway, so just an observation.

Then a fellow emerges and says, "Mr. Smith is ready to meet with you". Great, okay, now he has an entourage of office people who announce his presence and lead guests back and forth, that's also interesting. I walk back to a conference room, get out my notebook and think that this tour guide will now go and get Mr. Smith for our meeting to begin. Not so. This guy sits down at the table. Interesting. Okay, so this is some staff person Mr. Smith has asked to sit in with us, I guess.

I'm about to try to clarify this by saying something vague like, "And what is your role here at the office?", but my mystery guest launches right in. "Mr. Smith has several concerns about his contract that he would like to discuss with you." Pause. "Great" I say "I'm ready to discuss those". "The concerns Mr. Smith has are...." and we are pretty much launching the meeting without Mr. Smith.

This is all very curious to me, and I start thinking that Mr. Smith has these "handlers" who I guess conduct his business for him and I'm starting to think he's as elusive as Willy Wonka or something and at any minute we are going to enter a secret world of pure imagination. I'm also starting to think that I know Mr. Smith himself signs our contracts, so perhaps this is a huge waste of my time.

We continue our discussion and I have several items of follow up written down. I am about to ask, "Do you think it would be possible for me to run this by Mr. Smith, is he here today?". Then my table mate stands up rather abruptly and says "Mr. Smith has really enjoyed meeting you, but Mr. Smith must attend to another matter at this time".

Yep, that was Mr. Smith, referring to himself in the THIRD PERSON for the entire meeting. For a minute it completely freaked me out, like watching the Sixth Sense or something. Okay, certainly not that dramatic but I have to take excitement & intrigue where I can get it. I have since worked with him several times, and it happens every time. I even took colleagues in to witness it.

As hilarious as we find it, maybe he's on to something. Maybe it would clear up confusion if we all acknowledged the different people we are in different situations.