Usually encounter it from waitresses in diners. Understand that in those circumstances it is neither -- just a convenient effort to personalize a passing impersonal encounter. I was thrown this week, though, when one of the waitresses who has been serving me for nearly a quarter century in one diner, calling me honey and sweetie, yelled at me as I was walking out: "Hey, what's your name?" So thrown I forgot common courtesy, and didn't ask hers in return. It got me to reflecting: most of the male staff and I know each other's names, I have known all the female staff an equally long time but the only one with whom I have a first name relationship is because she is a long-time friend of my son and daughter-in-law unrelated to her waitress job.
