Does anyone hate when people go "who?"

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Joe90
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12 Jan 2020, 9:21 am

One time I called work to say I was not coming in that day because I was sick, and when I said to my boss "hello, this is Joe90 here..." (I didn't literally say my username :) ), and my boss went, "who?" In a tone that meant "who the hell is she?" I hate when people say who in that way. It would have been more polite to say "sorry, who is this?" or something like that. Do you know what I mean?

Also some people never seem to hear a name in a sentence (a name of a FAMILIAR person). You could say "I'm meeting Jane Tuesday in London", and they go "you're meeting who?" But they never say "you're meeting where/when?" Why is it the name people don't hear when they clearly heard all the other nouns in the sentence?


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Fireblossom
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12 Jan 2020, 11:49 am

For the former, I think people just don't pay attention so much to polite language these days. Times change.

As for the later, they might be asking "who" for various reasons. While it's really possible that they sometimes miss the name, it's more likely that they're asking for some kind of clarification. As in, if you just say you're meeting Matt, they might be wondering which Matt if they know you know more than one. Or if you know people with very similiar names to each other, like Jane and Jade, the one asking might want to confirm just in case that they heard the name right. Or by asking "who" they might mean who that person is to you, where do you know each other from. Or they might think that you meeting that person is weird for one reason or other, so it's like asking "are you serious?"



Fnord
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12 Jan 2020, 11:57 am

Joe90 wrote:
Does anyone hate when people go "who?"
Huh?


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