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Dear S. Larson Of Citibank: You're Not Real, So Please Retire
I've had a Citibank credit card since I was in college. That's nearly two decades of being with them, which means that little table they stuck up one day at UC Irvine has provided pretty good ROI for the company. Over the years, I've had various letters from Citibank, usually signed by the hard-working S. Larson. I was thinking about S. today. I recently switched to electronic statements, and I got my first email from him or her telling me that my statement was ready. She or he ended the message with:
S., of course, is not a real person.
I can't recall when I figured that out, but it was many years ago. It annoyed me when that realization dawned on me, since like many others you can find on the web, I'd written on occasion to S. Larson as if they* were a real person. Why make up a pretend person? Either have someone real from customer service sign the messages or don't use a name at all. I don't need S. Larson to join (look away kids) the mythical characters of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. Tonight, I decided to see what I could find out about S. I'm not the only one. Over at Yahoo Answers, someone asked about them:
I love answer number two:
Like the original person asking the question, it's amazing how there's nothing definitive that's easily found about S. Larson. A Google search for "s. larson" citibank just comes back with lots of people referencing the ambiguous, non-gendered, never-aging, never-retiring customer service rep. Yahoo did a bit better. AT&T Universal Card, S. Larson, and Account "Upgrades" was in the first page of results for the same search and says:
FYI, Windows Live had that result not just on page one but also ranked first, compared to Google oddly listing this PDF file in the number one spot. OK, it's a funny letter, saying in part:
But come on, tops for all the things about S. Larson, on the basis of what seems to be one single link? Man, those .edu links from Harvard must be powerful. At least S. Larson gives proof to the fact that Wikipedia is not all powerful over Google. You know how normally a search there has you stumbling over a Wikipedia link that always shows up in the top results? Well, S. Larson doesn't trigger anything from Wikipedia. In fact, S. Larson doesn't warrant an entry at all at Wikipedia, something I hope will change. Stay tuned by monitoring the Wikipedia page about all Larsons here. Over at Citibank itself, you'd think a search might bring up something about good old S. Nope. Nothing using either the site's own search engine or a Google search for site:www.citibank.com larson. If the entire web has failed me in my quest for the origin of S. Larson, surely some newspaper has explored this over time. So I hit the Google News Archive, which supposedly goes back over 200 years of news material. I looked for "s. larson" citibank. Zilch. Well, one thing from 1994:
Was the Worcester Telegram & Gazette actually quoting S. Larson as a real person?!!! I wanted to know, but not enough to pay the $1.95 to find out. So I did the time tested method of searching for the words around the last words I could see, to get the snippet description to expand. This search got me an expanded description to the "front" of what I'd seen, the additional material in bold:
This search got me more to the back:
Working it more, I eventually got the rest of the question not shown here plus the answer. The person was charged $3 to call and verify her credit card was valid, causing her to write to the newspaper for help. That answer from the paper was:
Yes, the local paper for Worchester, Massachusetts quoting a non-existent person from Citibank. I don't blame the paper. I blame Citibank. It's time for S. Larson to be retired. They have worked long enough. They? Don't I mean he or she? I've long used they, a plural pronoun, as a substitute for the singular neuter pronoun that the English language lacks. It's very handy, and I hope more people do it. It's an easy way to make any sentence not favoring either males or females. Consider:
That's better than saying:
Of course, usually any sentence that references a single person -- and thus may require you to use the singular pronouns of he or she later in the sentence as an antecedent -- can usually be turned into a plural form. That allows you to use they and be grammatically correct:
See my past post, Sneaked Versus Snuck & Past Tense Versus Past Participle, for more fun with grammar. By Danny Sullivan on Sep. 29, 2006 | PermalinkSee related posts in: Rants, Writing
Next Post: Thumbs Up On Google Reader Comments Comment by skore Wow, Danny. You really DO have too much time on your hands these days! :) Comment by Jill LOL... Jill I was just thinking the same thing! Comment by Rob S. Larson in Wikipedia? You should have an entry yourself long before that happens! Comment by David danny, i found a pic of this guy http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2T8OCSO3GQ6EA?ie=UTF8
Comment by SEOprotege | October 2, 2006 7:57 PM Dear Danny, I enjoyed your post, and share your high regard for the tireless efforts of S. Larson over the decades. Sometime in the 1990s I decided S. is female. She is "of a certain age" but nonetheless hot, sort of Dana Carvey's church lady crossed with Pamela Anderson. (After all, it was the 90s.) Life in Sioux Falls isn't very exciting, but neither is S. She likes the company of her nieces and nephews and their children, and during the ten and a half months of South Dakota winter she lets the cat sleep in her bed. She is not smart. Last month I opted for Citibank's on-line credit card statements, and this Thursday S. sent me a letter via U.S. Mail telling me my on-line statement was ready for viewing. In this way she managed to continue cluttering my mailbox, except that now I also have to go on-line and log in before I can find out how much to pay. I'm not sure she gets e-commerce. (At least in your case she sent an e-mail.) That may be why, in all the time you and I have known her, she hasn't been promoted. That's what prompted me to Google her, and led me to your blog. It's always fun to make a new acquaintance through a mutual friend, especially one as unwavering as S. And I'm glad you like her too! Anytime I hear someone lamenting large, interpersonally inept conglomerates like Citibank, I think fondly of S., with her curling, unchanging signature, her remarkably stalled career, and her ferocious work ethic. It'll be a sad day if she takes your advice and retires, but I guess we both know it's time. Maybe we can have a party for her. Ken Comment by Smigglefutz | February 21, 2007 5:45 PM Dear Danny, Ken and Matthew of 28A Fresno Street, Let me thank you for a very enjoyable morning of reminiscing about dear old S. Larson. Like each of you, I have wondered greatly over her restricted corporate career. (I have always considered S. to be female, but perhaps that’s just because I once had a female friend with the same name.) On those occasions that I have needed to talk with someone from Citibank, I make a point of asking about her. I have always been assured she is real and in her office urgently scribing another letter for her customers. I finally decided that S. is just too good at her job to be dismissed or nudged into another position. Look at her unending diligence, her patient manner of responding to often irate customers, her simple prose that anyone can understand (even if it is occasionally condescending). Perhaps she finds pure joy in being the sole human face (so to speak) of Citibank’s customer service. Or perhaps she’s another victim of the glass ceiling. (Another reason to think S. is female.) If so, I mourn for the remarkable career she might have had. Anyone who has touched millions of individual lives from all around the globe, as she has, surely would have much to contribute to the otherwise impersonal corporate world of international banking. I do not expect S. will retire very soon. Yes, she has had a long stint (twenty-plus years, by my reckoning) but I believe she is still young – my age, in fact, 50. She came upon the scene not long after I started my own career and family and I have imagined she was then exuberant and filled with hope at her new responsibility. That she has persisted so many years attests to the endurance of that hope. My only qualm is the unchanging, child-like signature that accompanies every letter. Does this signify that her personality is arrested in some significant way? That maybe she really is a dull corporate robot, churning out corporate prose over and over again? I really had hoped that as she matured, her signature would become more bold and penned with a flourish. I suppose we never will know. It certainly is appropriate that Citibank protects her privacy despite how public her duties are. Again, I have enjoyed this camaraderie with you, and perhaps, as Ken suggested, we can party when S. Larson finally retires. regards, Comment by bruce | March 4, 2007 4:58 PM Dear Ken and company, How I envy you! At least S. Larson writes her name. I have received a couple of missives from a bank representative with both a first and a last name, but her name is never signed. The entire letter, short as it is, is printed from top to bottom. She does provide a phone number, but I can tell you from experience it doesn't go to her desk. I miss the days when companies issued their form letters with real signatures, however brief. Enjoy your S. Larson while you can. :-) Jean Comment by j4cats | March 14, 2007 1:42 AM Actually, I have a letter signed by S. Larson from Citi Cards. Someone should decypher his/her identity by studying the signature. Perhaps we will find interesting things. Comment by Freddy delgado | May 11, 2007 5:17 PM I was telling someone on the phone earlier today with amusement the story of the famed 'S. Larson'.. The reason behind my amusement was that after receiving a refund check for a credit balance on my Citi Card today, it was accompanied by a letter that went further to identify 'S. Larson'.. It was signed with the same signature of 'S. Larson', but underneath also included "Sandy Larson Customer Service".. Anyway, found your site in a search after my friend didn't believe me.. Thanks for the laugh! Comment by RickNY | August 17, 2007 4:34 AM Want to comment? If you are signed into TypeKey, you'll see a form below. No form? Click on the sign-in link below, and you can sign-in or sign-up for a free account. Sorry you have to use TypeKey, but I use it to avoid comment spam. All comments currently appear automatically after posting.
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Amazingly - Lycos has the Real Life Debt example that you stated at #1...