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.