An Atypical Appellation

Today at the office, the regular front-desk person was out, and there was a fill-in person that I had not seen or met before. She was about half my age, but when I spoke to her about something, she responded and ended her sentence with "hon." I was a little surprised; after all, it is 2015, and "hon" is the sort of thing you expect to hear spoken by a sixtyish diner waitress in a 1970s movie. But it was also charming in its own way, a note of familiarity used as a way to make people feel like their requests are being heard, to put them at ease.