PontifiKate

“HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

As a language lover, one of the joys of my daily life last year was helping Audrey (17) with her English homework. I had never really cared for English as a subject myself, though the further I got in college, the more I began to realize that I actually love it, in a way.

So anyway, the other day I was pleased to receive an e-mail from Audrey with a subject line of, “HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” It was nice to know that in addition to being missed as a sister, I am still considered a resource for her tougher English assignments. :o)

This assignment was a “put the sentence together in the correct order” exercise. For example:
city/is/the/Scotland/capital/Edinburgh/of
Edinburg is the capital city of Scotland.

Audrey did four out of five of these things on her own with only incidental mistakes, but one of them came to me like this:
stands/on/Liffey/a/surrounded/plain/Dublin/along/hills/the/River/by
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is today’s Quick Quiz for Grammar Buffs. Brother Joe and I did the best we could (even involving a side geography lesson of our own) and sent back our best guess. I, for one, would like to see your best guess. And no peeking at the other responses before you try! So, can we English speakers come to a consensus on the sentence order, or am I going to have to ask Audrey for the answer key? ;o)

Well, whether I was right or wrong, Audrey sent me a follow-up e-mail to say, “MERCI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I know, I know, I yem zuh best. [Possibly my favorite French catch phrase. The French don't even try to put on an English accent for this one, and I like it that way.]

posted by Kate @ 11:16 PM 16 comments

Five Seven?

At work this week, I left the training environment and began "transition". (Again, I work in a call center answering client questions about annuities.) During transition, we begin taking real calls from real customers -- with real finances that we could potentially really screw up. Proceed with caution? You betcha! Therefore, my fellow trainees and I have a supervisor available at all times to answer any questions we're bound to have (1 trainer per 4-6 trainees). I'm actually liking it all quite a bit. I think it brings out a few of my strengths, and it's nice to have some practical application after the three weeks we spent in tax training and the like (yawn!).

I think I do well with the whole customer-service-on-the-phone thing. I've answered phones for previous jobs and feel generally good about my professionalism and friendliness, though there’s room for growth, no doubt. The company is big on having us try to connect with the clients or agents we speak to, but only to keep business running smoothly, of course.

SO, one call I got this week was from, let’s just say “Dan”, the rapport of the call being what I’d call a normal good. A couple minutes in, I was loading some requested information when he said, “Five seven?” like it was part of the conversation we’d been having. Pause. “I’m sorry?” I responded. “Five seven?” Dan repeated. I had no idea where those numbers came into things and asked again for clarification. “Are you five seven?” he said, finally spelling it out for me. PAUSE. Okay, let’s take this the comic direction, since it is that, whatever else it may be. “Heh, that’s really funny. Uh. NO,” and I chuckled as I revealed that I am, in fact, five one. Then I promptly picked up again with the information he’d originally called to ask about.

So… I guess I sound tall. Or at least not short. :o)

posted by Kate @ 11:08 PM 2 comments