Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Strange Call

Today I received one of those phone calls that come so infrequently that you never forget them.  I went through my opening script and the first thing out of this ladies mouth was "Do you speak German?"

OK folks.  Fasten your seat belts.  This is going to be fun.

I work for a large newspaper company and we only support employees of the company.  She was not an employee and must have called a lot of general company numbers before someone gave up and passed her to us.

Once I confirmed that we had no one on the desk that spoke German she said she would do her best with her poor English.  She struggled, but did pretty well. 

Evidently she has been following this Michael Jackson trial, from Munich Germany, and is very upset with the outcome.  Michael was a big boy and made his own choices.  Why should the doctor be punished for this?  It took her about 10 minutes to say all of this.  I listened very closely and added appropriate guttural noises when necessary (hmmm, mmmhmmm, oooo, etc...).  After she finished she repeated everything in rapid fire German. Then we talked about the time and weather in our respective cities and we parted ways.  I guess the only thing she wanted to do was vent her opinion, on this issue, to a citizen of the United States. I never did tell her that I had no opinion on the topic and didn't care in the slightest.

Now I have an amusing story to share with others.  That call was priceless.

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