Rant: Alphabetism

All my life I have been subjected to a pernicious form of discrimination, which in this politically correct age of enlightenment should be eradicated by zealous HR professionals - alphabetism.

The discrimination manifests itself by my surname, which begins with the 20th letter of the alphabet. This means that when anything is distributed I am trailing behind around 80% of the population in order of receipt of whatever that something is.

This would be OK if good stuff and bad stuff were evenly distributed, but there are rules against bad stuff like redundancy being decided on this basis, so there is little in the way of compensation.

Besides, there is the mental anguish caused by others getting bad stuff ahead of me and knowing that it is heading my way.

Even death notices in newspapers are printed alphabetically, so I am resigned to dying at the bottom of the page too.

I have considered changing my name to Aaron Aabrams. I also have huge sympathy for my wife, who had a maiden name at the number two position until she married me.

Here are a couple of alternative suggestions that might help me and others like me. We could either distribute stuff on the basis of a random order, or rotatethe start point startingfrom A today, B tomorrow,and so on.

All the 'isms' - racism, sexism, ageism - are being eradicated in these PC times. Yet alphabetism disadvantages 50% of the population, and it is the same people - named after 'M' - who suffer.