It's A Small World After All.

And in that small world we don't all speak the same language. Which can be a problem when you've gone through 17 years of school that prepared you to help the public while simultaneously pretending 100% of the public speaks English. 

Problems can be dealt with tough, in a variety of ways, some effective, some not so much. I have a rather.....um....non-keystone tech who chooses to deal with a language barrier by, and I'm totally not making this up, adding the letter "O" to every other word and speaking at twice her normal volume. I was on the phone this afternoon and heard this in the background:

PRESCRIPTIONO????

NUEVO CUSTOMER???

Um.....yeah....I appreciate your effort here...... But maybe we should call for José......

Which was done. In response one of 5 people on the planet who may be whiter than myself showed up. 

"No, we were calling José. We need a translator"

"I know. He 's out to lunch, but I had a year of Spanish in high school" 

My hopes were not high, but I let her take a shot. "Ask him if he's filled prescriptions here before or if this is the first time" This is what the translator said. Again, I am making nothing up:

"Ummm.....es usted Nuevo Customer?"

The main distinction that makes a person a translator in my store would seem to be one of volume only. The translator was dismissed, I spent a good 5 minutes looking for my "Spanish For Healthcare Professionals" book, and with a lot of pointing to various phrases, the prescription was filled. Which was fine this time, but made me realize that my lingual skills are not nearly cunning enough. I'm thinking of maybe taking some classes to become a more cunning linguist.

Although I've heard there is no substitute for practice if you wanna be a cunning linguist. I've also heard it's a lot of fun. I don't know what I'm waiting for.