That’s an AWESOME story!! I love it! Hahaha!
Thank you so much for sharing it
You rock!

For many, many, years only my bank could handle a one-name entry in a computer system. No Information Technology worries, frantic backroom scenes, or blood on the carpet. I was impressed. One day I receive a statement and there’s an extra R in there. Where the normally absent forename entry field is.

The bank has altered my bank details without notification or permission. I realise, instantly, what has happened. The entire bank has had a software upgrade. In the history of the software upgrade, there is a hard and fast law. No upgrade is ever an improvement on what went before. That is a lie, designed to appease Microsoft customers.

Someone, somewhere, in the usual IT cave or blast-proof bunker, has made an executive decision. Here’s a customer. We’ve changed the system. Our upgrade now demands a forename entry which is mandatory. What will we do about this customer?

Well, we can’t cut the guy off dead while we think up a solution. Poor bastard’s probably using our facilities right now. So…we’ll do this temporary thing. And just let the transactions continue without interruption.

An elegant solution. But now I’m banking in another name. Not one I signed up for. You’d think banks wouldn’t do that. (This was before the Banking Crisis, when there was some sliver of faith in banks.) Coincidentally, I am invited to the bank for a chat about using more banking products.

I use the appointment as my excuse to slip in on a covert raid and ask what the bank will do about this unexpected IT problem. In I go. Explain the situation. The woman behind the desk confirms that the bank has upgraded software.

What wasn’t a problem before is a problem now – for the Data Protection angle if nothing else. My transactions aren’t affected. Only the name on the statements – nowhere else in the system. Curious quirk, but there you go.

How do we fix this? Because they know that they have to. This entire conversation is conducted in a friendly manner. Until we burst out laughing. So we go through the usual dodges. Blank space in the forename entry field. No. Try a dash in the forename entry field. Some systems accept that. No.

The old standby. Why not just type MR in the forename entry field? Ah. What does she mean by that? She tells me that we have a title field. So MR would go in the title field, leading to MR MR before my name if we go down that route, and she’s not sure she’d get away with that as…there’s an extensive title field.

She shows me the screen. A drop-down menu appears, allowing bank employees to save time when adding titles. MR. MRS. MS. DR. And then, all the rest. We scroll down to FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY, and collapse into laughter.

Some poor bastard slotted this into the drop-down menu, to save bank staff the trouble of typing that long title into the machine every time the one and only First Lord decided to choose that bank to open an account in.

Of course, we found a way through the problem in the end. But that was the day I was tempted to use the title for myself, so that FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY came before MR. Just to satisfy a computer requirement. I don’t think the actual FIRST LORD would have noticed.

Do you have any weird/funny/odd stories about what you go through with your name?

Publishing on Amazon was the only place I ended up being listed in the forename entry field.

It’s the surname entry field every time, elsewhere. With a whole bunch of ways of working around the matter.

Good for you, I say. But then, dealing with the same computer problems, I would say that wouldn’t I.

Welcome to the party