PR mistakes you don't want to make

So i got a nice email this morning from a PR guy in North Carolina. He welcomed me to my new job, told me he looks forward to working with me, blah blah blah, added a bunch of stuff about how much he likes Minnesota, said he used to live in Iowa and he misses snow and maybe some day he'll move back here, etc etc etc

A very nice friendly email.

Except for this: It started out, "Dear Ellen."

Not good.

So I wrote back to him. I wrote a nice email. I told him I love North Carolina, and I had a fellowship at Duke University a while back and while I was there I toured the place he works, and I said hey, maybe if you move out here we can just swap houses and I can move out there.

And then I added a PS. It said, "PS. My name is not Ellen. Actually, that's the name of my husband's ex-wife, so you might not want to call me that again."

(This is absolutely true.)

Within an hour, he had written again. He was full of apologies. He has no idea why he called me Ellen! He'll never make that mistake again! He wrote, "I don't know why I wrote that, because I know your name is Laura."

Hmmmm.

This time my response was much shorter. It was two words. I wrote, "It's Laurie."

Ha. See if I pay any attention to his pitches in the future!

(Actually, I will.)