Under Par

10 November 2004 20:09 blondelibrarian germany, that's life!

Man, oh man! Did I really mess up today!

I was sitting home this afternoon minding my own business when I got a telephone call. The caller ID said “Unbekannt” or “Unknown,” so I hesitated to pick up the phone. However, phone numbers from the US show up as “Unbekannt” so I picked up in case it was my family calling.

As it was, I was completely unprepared to speak German. And, of course, the man who called spoke German. In a low, barely audible voice he mumbled his name and asked if it was me. When I replied in the affirmative, he asked me if I was online; he wanted to send me something requiring feedback. He had my email address and I got the impression he was a customer service representative from my newly acquire web host looking for feedback.

Nope. After stumbling around a bit, it turns out he was a representative from somewhere where I had applied for a job. I don’t know why, but I was really having trouble understanding everything this man said. Unfortunately, he noticed that my German skills were… how shall we put it?… a little under par today. Once I finally figured out what he wanted I tried to cover up for horrible language skills, but alas it was too late. In true frank German fashion, he told me that they needed someone with better German skills. Therefore they were not interested and I could ignore the document (which turned out to be a job description) that he just sent me.

I wanted to scream “Really, I do speak German and usually better than this!” but after looking at the job description it doesn’t look like something I really wanted to do anyway.

One Response

  1. Murray Cumming Says:
    11 November 2004 at 11:44

    Yeah, I have the same problems. I can talk to them, but they always fire their name and company off at you so quickly as soon as you pick the phone up, and they often can’t be persuaded to say it slowly, as if “Gretschbobblejarnstiegl, shmibbleschmobble” should be easy to parse.