Gladys

I went this evening. It seemed quiet from the road, but was directed to the drive through queue starting behind Starbucks. In 15 minutes I hadn't moved much so went back in to the car park to go in on foot. There was a queue out of the door so I left. Going past McDonalds it looked very busy too. Neither were queuing on the road, possibly at KFC because they have someone at the entrance directing traffic. I am guessing people are going to KFC, seeing the queue then going on the McDonalds. I went to the Terrace Chippy.

Not about badges?

Quite, and it is also to help the colleagues of trans. Just makes everyone's life easier and allows people some respect and courtesy.

To me, it is no more of an issue or offensive than someone asking you to pronounce their name correctly.

Is it a choice? I was equally sceptical until I was on that Zoom call, but it was a great event, with no great angst about referring to the person by their pronoun preference, and they had a great event too. Even their cat, who was the star actually.

The point is with it on a badge you don't need to ask. What about if you go into the bank, speak to Dave first, clock his badge but Dave refers you to another staff member. You explain to the new staff member, starting with Dave's name having been referred to them by him/her/them you then go on to say "As I said to ?". It would be good to give the right pronoun, particularly if Dave is witnessing the conversation, but also for the other staff member who will be accustomed to referring to Dave in a particular way. It isn’t a huge issue, but handling it in the right way helps Dave and their colleague. It is only a matter of courtesy and respect for everyone you deal with.

That is the reason. Re heating oil, asked to increase my SO by 40% earlier this week. The lady from EVF who called had obviously had many difficult conversations with other people, I felt really sorry for her.

Exactly that apparently. So the question is why hasn't it always been cheaper than the UK?

The difference, according to the OFT on MR, is due to our petrol not containing some additive.

Yes but he was funny.

Do you exclusively use their names? Most people use the name first to identify who they are talking about, then pronouns.

Only that you need to know how to address them without their name he, she or they. I was on a staff Zoom (a comedian was doing an online gig) thing earlier this year. Everyone's preferred pronoun was next to their name. There was someone online whose preferred pronoun was not obvious from their physical presentation. Given it was a social event and meant to be a pleasure and do some team building and morale boosting , it was easy just to take note and refer to them by their preference.

It isn’t actually.

So, which would you prefer, staff do it in their working time (at the employer's cost) or in their own time?

I haven't seen any coercion to do it in employees' own time by my current employer or previous employers. I know the UK legislation doesn't apply here, but I was giving context for Halifax and also hoped that the IOM would either voluntarily follow the same route, or legislate. TBH, a lot of the bigger private sector employers here will be part of a group that will have adopted these policies at group level anyway.