FWIW, Sir is not gender neutral in Gamestop.

Sir is gender neutral in fictional militaries. Every woman holding a commission I ever encountered was ma'am. Didn't matter the country.

Sir hasn’t been gender neutral in my military for like 30 years at least

Not sure what military you served in, but the one I served in definitely didn’t call women sir until instructed otherwise. However, “mister” may be correct for all warrant officers.

Not really...

Like, yeah, probably in Star Trek, but that would have been a projected evolution of modern society, not a reflection of current reality.

Everyone would assume "sir" and if it's over an email no one is getting worked up about it.

But call a female officer "sir" to her face and I don't think it will go well

I've seen enough posts related to etymology or historical use of words where they, either misrepresent the facts to fit a narrative or just make shit up, that I try to look it up my self. I also find etymology fascinating so that helps.

In this case they are absolutely right.

Both Mr and. Mrs,ms are derived from master and mistress (teachers) and both of those words stem from the Latin word Magister.

Edit: fun fact the English verb stick is the same word as the noun stick and comes from the same origin the Germanic word stik which also meant a piece of wood and to pierce/adhere or sharp. But wait it's older than that the Latin word stigare also means pierce. And share the same ancestry, namely indo-european. Turns out we humans have been talking about sticks for a long time.

Also if you have to hand someone off to another colleague, I find you can just use "we", and it still feels polite. At least compared to calling them "the customer" (clumsy) or "they" (weird, when they're right next to you). 😃

"So, we're looking for [product], and we need it to be [thing]. Oh, and we have a budget of £25."

I just stopped using pronouns altogether.

“Excuse me” “Thank you” “I appreciate you” “Do you know the way to San Jose”

ALL of these have pronouns. At least one of them has multiple pronouns! Haha

But what if they are an MMA fighter?

I work in 911 dispatch, understandably once in a while I get a caller who is just absolutely losing their mind over whatever is going on that they're calling about

And sometimes pretty much the only thing I can do to grab my callers attention and bring them back around to listening to me is to just kind of repeat sir/ma'am until I get their attention they come back around to realizing I'm trying to talk to them.

If I can get their name, I use that instead and it's more effective, but that's not always a given.

Just sitting there in silence until they get their shit together on their own doesn't work, and more likely they're going to just hang up on me.

And repeating whatever question I need answered really just kind of goes in one ear and out the other while they continue going off.

Their name or sir/ma'am is punchier, it has a way of cutting through their panic and grabbing their attention saying "you are being addressed right now and the person addressing you needs your attention"

And I really wish we had a good, gender-neutral equivalent of that. It needs to be polite and professional, and maybe a bit authoritative-sounding, so something like "dude" obviously won't cut it.

And I need it both for trans/non-binary people, and people whose gender just isn't clear on the phone because they're in a panic, calling from a potato, and/or just have a somewhat ambiguous voice.

Normally I just have to pick one and go with it, and they'll either correct me (in some cases, choosing the wrong one might actually be more effective at grabbing their attention because astonishingly (/s) people don't enjoy being misgendered and they jump at the opportunity to correct that) or they also just roll with it.

But I'd really like to avoid that if I can, and I haven't really found a good option for it yet.

Honorifics are part of my culture and tradition. I've let go of a lot of other things from my culture that interfere with loving my neighbor, but there's certain social mores I don't want to abandon. Honorifics are a way of showing respect to others in my culture, it is as ingrained as taking off one's hat and standing for a funeral procession.

Korean is easier, just call everyone Teacher. Problem solved.

Got any of that good sarsaparilla?