I had a former friend, liberal axe, and she insisted her psychologist husband be called Dr. I always cringed at it since he was a wine swishing bearded psychologist trouble maker
This Dr. stuff - I heard a story that I know to be true.
It seems there was this cardiologist married to a humanities PhD of some flavor or other. Let’s call him Dr. Beeper.
Well it seems that other doctors and the hospital would from time to time, call Dr. Beeper in the middle of the night and into the wee hours of the morn.
The wife, the English PhD or comparative religion PhD or whatever, was in the habit of answering the phone. When asked to speak to Dr. Beeper she would invariably respond with “Which Dr. Beeper do you want to speak to?”.
True story.
What a tool. I’ve known a number of PhDs socially and none of them used the Dr. in their name. Heck I knew one guy who was a friend of my parents for years. I knew he was smart and made good money but had no idea he had a PhD in Nuclear Physics until my father told me.