Monday, November 15, 2010

"Is this your customer? I can't understand what she is saying."

A memo came out from BossMan to all the coordinators inquiring about a voice mail that came to the general mailbox.

A flurry of responses from my colleagues resulted and I then sent a tongue-in-cheek email to just BossMan:

"Uh, that is my customer. Thank you for parading my shame to my colleagues!"

He sent back an email indicating extreamusement and that the message could not possibly have been English. I responded that I'd secretly feared without listening that the hogwash message came from Ms. Punjab, but I'd employed a cheat and plugged the origin phone number into the dashboard and it pulled up Our Favorite Customer.

Then came a "reply to all" from a superb lady saying "that customer belongs to Operator[not Phlegmmy], but I don't think she's speaking English at all."

My "Reply to All" said "Actually, this is my customer. She was not speaking English. She was speaking Crazy. I have been a Crazy-magnet all my life, and I am fluent in Crazy. Me speak Crazy very well."

Thus resulting in general responses of mirth and relief, for they all get the crazy customers too, as much as it seems I have cornered the market.

I have to say that I get something like an endorphin rush when I send out a Reply To All and hear a murmur of delight tittering throughout the department. This I would liken to the post-tattoo experience, though slightly less painful and with a deficit of its attendant hepatitic paranoia and no outlay of cash at the conclusion.

[All that is by way of saying that one should not refrain from getting a tattoo based on hepatitic paranoia: one shops around and one finds a reputable artist who is fastidious in hygiene and exacting in method. One recommends not acquiring said tattoo in the clink. One is just saying...]

4 comments:

Barbara Bruederlin said...

It's good to have a second language. Crazy is one of the more useful ones.

Rabbit said...

Welcome to my world. Half of my phone calls are from people whose first language is not Engrish. For that matter, neither is mine, as I grew up in East Texas.

Lagniappe: while I'm writing this, they're testing the public announcement system system in my office. The tester is counting down from ten to one in some unmentionable, indistinguishable dialect, and the only reason I know they're doing that is because of the actual number of pauses in his speech pattern.

Old NFO said...

Multiple good points! :-)

Matt G said...

Phlegmmy, having a crazy magnet is really much better than the doo doo magnet that I have installed. It wouldn't be so terribly bad, except that the installation is in the ceter of my cranium, with no way for the User to access that part.

For example, that Reply All message? I would have sent it, but a misplaced word or comma, or forgotten association between someone in the office and the subject of my email, would mean that I would be the recipient of a short silence, followed by a quiet admonishment. Oops. ;)