Guys And Dollies

(I work in a vet’s office. My coworker Meredith and I have been friends since we were small children. She is not, and never has been, a feminine woman. She has short, spiked hair and almost no curves on her body, and could without much effort pass as a teenage boy. I work the front desk and she works in the exam rooms, so I am used to clients checking out and saying things like, “That young man in the room was so nice,” or, “Tell the doctor that I loved the way that gentleman handled my cat.” Meredith knows they don’t mean anything by it, so she says to not bother correcting them. If they ask directly something like, “What was that nice man’s name?” I won’t lie, because I enjoy the looks on people’s faces. One day we have a new client come in, and on his way out we have the following conversation.)

Client: “Hey, that ‘girl’–” *he actually does air quotes* “–in the room, what was ‘her’ name?”

Me: “You mean Meredith?”

Client: “Yeah, ‘Meredith.’ Is that the legal name, or just what you call ‘her’?”

Me: “Legal.”

Client: “So ‘she’ had it changed then?”

Me: “Yes.”

Client: *turns to his wife* “See? I told you; I can always spot them. That one wasn’t even all that hard.”

Me: *interjects* “It was Dolly.”

Client: “What?”

Me: “The name on her birth certificate is Dolly. But she said that made it hard to be taken seriously, so she had it legally changed about ten years ago.”

(The man turned multiple shades of red and stormed off, while his wife started laughing.)