If you call me Sandy, please deposit a dollar into my Island Getaway fund…

So my biggest pet peeve is that people call me Sandy, which is not my name. When I was born, my parents wanted to give me a name that would not have a nickname. They wanted me to just be me and not short for something else. So I was named Stacey Elissa Sandoe. Pretty unique they thought. Right? A week after I was born, a lady in the grocery store asked my mother if Stacey was short for Anastacia! My Mom just shook her head and said “No , it’s short for STACEY.” Never did she believe that my name would be screwed up in other ways much later in life.

I became a Realtor in 2009 after 5 years appraising property, and suddenly EVERYONE calls me Sandy. Never mind that STACEY SANDOE is advertised all over the place but in emails, in texts, on the phone, people start with… “Hi Sandy!”… to which some days I feel like this…

Even my Transaction Coordinator, Shelby, is amused by the confusion. She sees a lot of the emails between different agents, lenders, and escrow & title officers to me, and some days she says 5 or 6 people address the email to me as “Hi Sandy”. Totally baffling as these people had to type in my email address which starts with Stacey.Sandoe… I guess it is the SANDOE that is confusing these poor people? Is my name really that hard? Sandoe is a rare name, mostly found in the Pennsylvania area of the country. My parents used to tell everyone each time we moved again (my Dad was in the U.S. Air Force for 20 years) that we were the only Sandoe’s in the phonebook in you were near wherever we had moved that time. So if you meet a Sandoe elsewhere, they are probably related somehow to my family.

I try REALLY hard not to call anyone by the wrong name but I get it, it happens to everyone… just not multiple times a day! I had a client that at the very end of the transaction, he informed me that I had his last name spelled wrong! Thankfully I was able to correct it before the lender docs went out but you can’t you tell me that as soon as you notice it? I felt like an idiot because I didn’t catch it earlier. He and his family are still very happy in the house we found for them despite the name mixup. But at least I didn’t call him the wrong name for 2 months…

My Mom thinks I should put a jar at my desk and every time someone calls me Sandy, they be required to deposit $1 into an Island Getaway fund! It may be harder to get that money from the emails but the idea is nice. I think my Mom just wants to revisit our vacation to St. Maarten and the French cabana boys who catered to us by the pool! I have to admit it was a very nice vacation…

So in closing, just know that my name is STACEY and I’m here to assist you with all your Real Estate needs. And I’ll even be there if you mess up and call me Sandy… but I may subtract a dollar from you!