As mentioned in a previous post, I assisted someone at work in getting their laptop connected to our wireless network. The user was Chinese, and I greeted her with a friendly nihau.
A few weeks later I was assisting a user in Personnel.
“I heard you are a valuable asset to our company,” she said.
That made me kind of nervous for some reason.
“How so?” I asked.
“I heard that you were able to help an employee recently because you spoke Chinese.”
I saw way too many sitcoms growing up to know what happens when you let this kind of thing go:
“Mr. CEO–the Prime Minister of China is here to donate several billion dollars, but we can’t find any of our Chinese-speaking users! What should we do?”
“I heard there’s this guy in I.T. who speaks perfect Mandarin. I’ll go get him!”
I’d rather they find out now that I only know how to say ‘hello,’ ‘beer,’ and ‘where is the bathroom?’ than wait until I’m in that meeting.
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