Was that English?

I hate phone calls at work. In part because I'm stuck with MassMutual's phone system that doesn't have caller ID on it. And I've been blindsided too many times by our clients' employees just calling up randomly because their HR person gave them my number....asking stuff I can't answer.

(The worst part is that I'm NOT a MassMutual employee. My boss is, but I manage his side business for him, and the deal is that I have to work in this stupid insurance agency surrounded by a bunch of Willy Loman types pestering people on the phone to be their financial planners....)

Anyway, another reason I hate the phone is when you get somebody that doesn't speak English well, or natively. Through no fault of their own, I am absolutely ABYSMAL at trying to parse together broken English or English with thick accents when it's spoken to me. If you want to write down your message, I'll figure it out, no problem. But I'm awful when someone stands there and tries to say something with a thick accent.

For instance, one of the back-office people from MassMutual's headquarters is a nice little old lady from Russia. And when she calls me, I panic, because I'll understand about 40% of what she says. So almost all the time, she emails me, and it works great.

Today, a woman called, and I think she says she's trying to fill out the paperwork to get her just-died husband's 401(k) money paid out to her. I had her repeat full sentences. The phone line was crystal clear, but I swear, I had no idea what she said. Maybe it's a learning disability on my end or something.....I certainly tip the scales heavy in some other categories on the good side, this could be something to balance me out?! Because I was tempted to say, "Was that English?" I had no reason to think it was bad grammar....she certainly sounded confident in whatever the chirp-like quality to her voice was explaining to me. So it wasn't like she was fumbling for words -- I had no idea what the words were, that's all.

So how does this manifest itself in me? Maybe a slight trepidation towards phone calls -- although that's mostly the blindsided-by-angry-people-without-warning effect. The real effect is that even though I got straight A's in Spanish classes four years in high school (and a couple of courses in college), I will do anything to avoid actually trying to speak it. I would be too ashamed to sound as incomprehensible and wrongly-accented in their language, as others sound in mine.

I always have thought that I'm going to vacation somewhere that speaks Spanish, and I'm going to bring along a pad of paper to write all my requests in perfect grammar, like some sort of mute. Anything that shows a weakness in my own person, must be avoided!