When I went to work for my most recent company, there was already someone named Sandy. In general, when there were repeat names at the company, the newer people got nicknames. We had 3 Chucks, 4 Chris's, 2 Mikes and now I was the new guy who needed a nickname. Most of the time, the nickname was a variation on the last name, but sometimes it was based on an action or event that occurred. For example, one gentleman who's nickname was Crunch did not have that as his last name. . .
Anyway, I was brought in to replace a particular employee (didn't know at the time) and the boss asked me to work with him for my training purposes for a month or so. Bottom line, I was learning what he was supposed to be doing and what the status of his projects were, even though I was unaware of the long game.
The engineering department was very interactive at the time. It wasn't uncommon for the boss to walk into the middle of the floor and say 'who is working on this fiasco' or something like that - keeping it PG. Anyway, one day, that happened and the gentleman who I had been working with stood up when the question came up (standard procedure) and while explaining why some particular problem was occurring in front of the entire department (standard procedure), he blamed me - I'd been there about 2 months and had nothing to do with anything related to the problem.
I stood up and said - still to this day, not sure why - "What you talkin 'bout?" and then explained why I had nothing to do with the issue.
My nickname became 'Willis' that day and has been maintained for at least 20 years. If you are a friend, you probably call me Willis, if we're just OK (or forum friends etc.) you call me Sandy. I think I might be more of a Willis than Sandy, but whatever.
Ironically, it would have been Arnold who said the line I repeated, but I left off the word Willis and the other guys in the room filled in the blank in their own head and that was the day I earned my nickname. Soooo glad it wasn't Arnold. . . don't think I would have happily accepted it and that would have been bad. . .
Willis.