At Disney’s theme parks, name tags “only list a cast member’s first name and their hometown.” Disney’s careers website calls the company a “first-name organization.”
Jack Spence trained new hires at Disneyland. He began each class by “telling my pupils that everyone in the company goes by their first name.” He also worked at Club 33, where he often met company executives. “I was expected to call them by their first name.” According to Spence, Walt Disney had a reason: “He wanted a casual informality at Disneyland.”