Waging a tiny war against daft corporate ‘intimacy’

THERE are so many things about modern living that could induce constant rage if you let them.

Instead you build up a kind of resistant glass wall around yourself so that the sheer stupidity of life outside your front door does not make you routinely lose the plot in your local Tesco (“unexpected item in the bagging area”) or every time you pick up a magazine (“now with alpha-hydroxy regenerist pro-retinol extract of foetal collagen scientifically proven to reverse the ageing process and make you 22 again, but better”).

No. You let all that stuff glide over you, because otherwise you would slide towards psychosis faster than a marble going down a hill. Instead we stoically accept that the world is run by a cabal of lizard people, where governments are mere puppets and the real rulers are those scaly shadowy figures nobody has ever voted for, hiding behind companies so vast and impenetrable their annual turnover outweighs the GNP of medium sized nations. And no, this is not the paranoid ravings of someone who hasn’t had their morning caffeine yet. If only.

But sometimes, a corporate irritant slips through, penetrating your detachment, and sending you completely over the edge. Something that to others may seem innocuous — like being asked at the till if you have a loyalty card. No you bloody haven’t. This question, however, you can generally ignore, by smiling vaguely and staring into the middle distance.

Equally, you can ignore the fact that a brand of fizzy pop has taken to printing first names on its labels, perhaps thinking that consumers will see their name on a bottle of pop, and joyfully grab it. This idea that meaningless corporate personalisation will make you buy more stuff works especially well with teenagers and delusional narcissists.

It’s only when corporate policy makes its minions force a fake intimacy that cracks through my deflector shield. I speak, of course, of the policy of asking coffee shop customers their first name so that the coffee shop worker can write it in marker on your takeaway cup. You go in, dead eyed, request your usual whatever, and the over-caffeinated employee squeaks brightly, “Sure! And what’s your name?”

The first time this happened to me I thought I was in the midst of some kind of cultural misunderstanding. Repeating my caffeine request, I got asked my name again. “Why?” I demanded. The minimum wage coffee worker seemed unsure. “To personalise your handcrafted beverage?” she wondered. Oh god. Kill me now.

These days, on the rare occasions I purchase my caffeine hit from this particular chain, and the poor sap behind the counter chirps, “And may I take your name?” I always tell them very loudly and clearly that it’s Brian. Then I watch closely as they write B-R-I-A-N on my cup. It’s my little fight-back.