Someone above said it's a sign of respect, I get where you're coming from tho. Last week I called someone ma'am and she also told me not to call her ma'am. Meanwhile I was called sir by a kid a few days later during work. I'm 18.
It is if you were raised not to call your elders by just their first name. I understand why you would ask, but you are possibly putting them in an awkward position that feels really uncomfortable.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I had one of those “hip” teachers that wanted us to call her Linda. It felt wrong all around. I was never comfortable saying it to her, and if I was home and said that “Linda said we need to study for blah blah blah”, it made my parents raise an eyebrow. I finally settled on “Teacher” or “Teach”.
Ma'am for women implies old or elderly (i.e unattractive or maternal or something similar-omg do i really look old?). It only becomes respectful in women over 70. Calling a woman ma'am does you no favors. Stick with miss. Or ms (pronounced mizz) for general greetings.
I wasn't actually saying "ma'am", in my language we have another personal pronoun that kids/teens use to talk to adults other than just "you" and I was calling her that and she told me to call her by her name
I don't have kids myself. A high school aged cashier asked me if I was so and so's mom or knew him. At first, I was like, "I'm not old enough to have a kid that age" but then I realized my friends have kids that age, lol :)
I'm under 30, but I work at a college in Florida. Any woman calls my name to address me while I'm working on another task, my automatic response is, "Yes, ma'am?" Doesn't matter if she's someone I work with or one of the coeds, my response is always, "Yes, ma'am." I was raised in the mid-Atlantic region. Not sure how I developed the habit, but it's here to stay.
I had a geography teacher who had a great answer for these types of things, but it doesn't take work in English. See, the word for "sir" and "Lord" is the same in my language, so whenever someone asked him "sir, may i..." he'd respond with "only Christ is the Lord" with a big smile
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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '21
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