At the end of my eldest son’s first month at the nursery, I received an alarmingly steep bill. I didn’t know what had hit me. Was childcare that expensive? When I took a closer look, I saw the names of three Osinga girls. Osinga is my surname, but not my son’s. I had been accidentally linked to the children of another WUR employee who also happened to be called Osinga.
That was nearly 25 years ago, but it is still deceptively easy to mix up names. Every teacher knows how you have to bend over backwards to record your students’ grades accurately. All the more so when you have to combine grades from various assignments that have been recorded differently.
But you can even make a mess of it with something as mundane as an email. As soon as you type in the first few letters of someone’s name, suggestions immediately appear. Microsoft Outlook gives you the names of people you have recently corresponded with, as well as the names of other WUR account-holders – including people you have never exchanged emails with. Convenient, when you click on someone’s name and their email address appears.
You can even make a mess of it with something as mundane as an email
Or inconvenient, if you accidentally click on the wrong person. If the email goes to multiple recipients, the person who shouldn’t be getting it can end up being plagued for a long time by all the subsequent reply-all responses. Worse still, someone might unintentionally share information that is not meant for their eyes at all.
I know this from personal experience. For about four months, there has been a WUR employee, someone fairly high up in the hierarchy, who happens to have the same first name as me. When I alerted an equally high-ranking sender to his mistake, namely that I am another Sjoukje but that I would obviously delete the mail, I received friendly apologies. But the apology was a second reply to the very email I had just deleted. So I got it again.
Sjoukje Osinga (55) is an assistant professor of Information Technology. She sings alto in the Wageningen chamber choir Musica Vocale, has three sons who are students and enjoys birdwatching with her husband in the Binnenveldse Hooilanden.
