Grill Glove Love

 

Generally speaking, I'm one of the easiest people to get along with you'll ever meet. I do, however, have a sense of humour, and that means that just sometimes, I can be a pain in the posterior. This was one of those moments.

I sometimes work in the kitchen at my place of employment. Favourite post is working on the grill. Most of the other work stations are less than perfect for my tall, skinny frame. I can work them, but my lower back will start protesting.

Grill gloves are plastic disposable hand gear with some heat resistance for handling raw meat. After handling the raw meat, they're peeled off and thrown away. This is to avoid contamination of the finished product. If you take them off just right, you can trap a significant amount of air in the glove, especially the fingers, and then pop them. I've gotten rather good at it.

One of my co-workers finds the pop sound annoying, and I find his reaction amusing. I was having fun popping the gloves when I was finished with them. Anyone who's ever gotten into popping bubble wrap can understand my mindset. Hey, it's therapeutic. Don't knock it.

I managed to get three pops out of one glove, three separate fingers, a personal best. This was when my co-worker's requests for me to stop went from polite to more hostile demands.

“Pop! Pop! Pop!”

“Arrgh! Just stop already!”

I gave it a rest for a little while. Didn't want to rile him up too much or too fast. I waited for him to forget about it before doing it again.

“Pop!”

“Hey! What did I say to you? Don't do that anymore!”

“It was just a thumb. Relax.”

“Just stop. Okay!”

I knew I was starting to push his buttons, but I had a great way to finish this, and I had to have one more go.

“Pop!”

He turns, glaring at me, but before he can say another word, I say, “That was the middle finger.”

The rest of us laughed our heads off over that.

Note: I did eventually succeed in popping all five fingers on both gloves before I started working somewhere else. How's that for a completely useless skill?

No Translation Needed

 

Trying Too Hard

I worked for eight and a half years for a rocking chair manufacturer in Quebec. I was the only anglophone, and my French was not the greatest. I did try to learn at every opportunity.

My assignment at work was the manual shaper, a potentially dangerous machine. My machine used cutter heads with changeable carbide knives. Carbide is quite brittle, so there was a different support backplate with each different profile knife.

One of my sets of backplates was damaged, and I was tired of making hand gestures to explain what I was talking about. I asked the lead hand what backplates were called in French. He said, "C'est un backplate." - I could've gotten that.

I Get My Comeback

Being the only anglophone in a French work environment usually worked to my disadvantage. Usually, but not always.

A special order was coming through the shop, and part of that order had to be cut on a little-used shaper with a plunging table. It's a complicated American-built beast, but it could cut profiles in really long pieces of work beyond any other machine in the shop.

Because of my experience, I got the call. For the sake of safety, the lead hand had to give me a thorough orientation before I could begin the job. This orientation included a very long list of safety rules specific to this particular machine. The lead hand plunged into this list with some skepticism. When he finished, he asked me if I understood and then if I was sure I understood. I put him at ease by showing him that the entire list was written on the side of the machine in English. We both had a good laugh over that.

The Art of Mumbling

 

Speak loud enough but not too loud. Don't speak too quickly or too slowly. Enunciate your words carefully. Seven years of public speaking training from high school through college. Spoke at church, filled in as a worship leader, etc. Then I got a job in a call centre and had to relearn to mumble.

You read right. There is a time to mumble.

As a representative, we are expected to greet our customers in a friendly manner, and as soon as they tell us who they are, we are expected to use their name. If we don't, our quality scores suffer. I want good quality scores. I get good quality scores.

Sounds easy, right? Wrong. A taxicab driver who barely speaks English is calling to apply for a credit card from his taxi on a cheap cell phone with poor reception while serving customers, trying to talk over his dispatch radio. No insult intended, these guys hustle their butts off to make a living, but...

"Could I have your first and last name, please?"

"Marfinerfemerb Haberfinerpinshab."

Saying, "Pardon, could you repeat that?" will get you nowhere. It could hurt your quality score. It'll definitely screw up your call handle time. My advice is just respond back confidently with a very garbled, "And how can I help you today, Mr. Marfinefefeemra Hebefindmaminav?" Trail off at the end of your words, and you almost can't lose. In my experience, only the first couple of letters of each perceived word are important. Fifteen years in call centres, and I think I can still count the number of times a customer has interrupted me to correct my pronunciation on my fingers. I've never been marked down for it. Even when the quality agents knew about my infamous trailing mumble.

I think it works because I sound confident, and people hear what they want to hear. The customer wants to hear their name. Quality wants to hear me say it. Kind of sounds like I did, so everybody gives me the benefit of the doubt. Everybody is happy, and I can move right on to taking care of the customer's questions or concerns.

My current employer wants us to build rapport with our customers, and you would not believe how far an agreeable-sounding mumbled conversation will get you. Got to be careful there, though. Most of the time, you do need to know what the customer is talking about.

Mumble on all you mumblers!

Fred Is Dead

 

Groundhog Day is kind of a fun sort of thing in this part of the world. Several different towns in Canada and the US have official Groundhogs for the occasion. Supposedly, if the groundhog sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter; if not, spring is around the corner.

Well, Quebec's official groundhog was Fred la Marmotte. The official festivities were all ready, and they opened his cage, and Fred was dead. So instead of announcing his prediction, they announced his sudden death.

Now let's give the little varmint some credit. If he'd croaked even a day earlier, they would have gotten a replacement. This is the ultimate groundhog troll move. What does it portend? Endless winter? The end of the world?

Or is this something sinister? Was Fred assassinated? Was it COVID? Was it the booster? Did he overdose on Fentanyl? Wow, this could be big.

In any case, RIP, little guy. I salute your style.