One day in 1995, back when the land line and the postage stamp were enjoying their last hurrah, I put in a call to directory inquiries. In those days, if you didn’t know a phone number, you dialled 192 and a human being looked it up and read it out to you. On that particular day, the woman at the other end answered the phone with: “Directories, Michelle speaking.”

Perplexed, I asked why she had just told me her name. She said it was a new policy designed to make the service more personal. How vulgar, I thought. How gratuitously chummy. How American. I turned to the hulking cathode ray tube that sat on my desk and bashed out a column protesting that I didn’t want personal. I just wanted a phone number.

After nearly two decades spent bobbing about on the rising tide of gratuitous chumminess, I no longer especially mind when people like Michelle introduce themselves. There are bigger things to worry about.