Life is full of bloggables

I woke up this morning from a bad dream about having to move my family to China because I was going to be put in a Chinese prison. I don’t remember some of the detail, but it must have been bad because JL woke me up from crying out loud in my sleep to find out what was wrong with me. I told him what I could remember of it. Then I told him that I must have fallen asleep thinking about something that happened at work Friday and my brain just spun it all wonky. He asked me if I was going to write about Friday and I said “Probably not, but why?”
His simplistic answer; “Life is full of bloggables”.
So here it is:

Frequently, the Chinese guy (that speaks the most English- which ain’t much!) at the restaurant across the hall from where I work brings things over to me that he can’t deal with in his lack of grasping the English language. Sometimes it’s a FAX, sometimes it’s an order of fire inspection, sometimes it’s an advertisement collection, etc.
Friday, Hey (I call him “Hey”) came over with his cordless (no, not cell… cordless) phone and just handed it to me. Then he did the little charade move of pretending to talk on the phone; letting me know that someone was actually on the other end waiting.
I put the phone to my ear and said, “Hello”? The voice on the other end said, “Hi, this is EcoLab in Chicago and we seem to be having a language barrier problem. Can you speak Chinese to translate? (No but I can count to 10, sing “Three blind mice”, ask you how you are, tell you I’m tired, call you a monkey’s butt, say “Please & Thank you”, and let you know I don’t eat dog)
So I let her know that I do not speak Chinese, and ask if there’s something I can help with. Turns out she thinks that the Chinese restaurant is trying to order soap. OK, now we’re getting somewhere. I pantomime “soap” in a questioning manner to ‘Hey’. (This consists of washing fake dishes and then my hands). He emphatically nods his head in the affirmative. I ask the EcoLab lady if they keep records of previous purchases so they could just duplicate it. OK, so now they send me to “customer service”. I’m connected with a person who has no idea about what’s going on, so I have to explain the entire event. Yes they keep record, yes they can duplicate it, how do I want it billed (records for order part numbers don’t show billing info.)?
Oh, brother.
Now I get connected to purchasing and accounting, another set of people who have no idea what’s going on. I recount the entire story to them. First they need the name of the restaurant and the address (no problem, the address is the mall – same as ours). Now they need the restaurant contact.
How to verbally address this one… well… um … it’s Phuc Ho. Yep, just like it sounds. (now you know why I just call him “Hey.” :p)
So I delicately try to give the name for the account without sounding like I’ve called a 976 phone number and of course I have to repeat it about four times. I think they were just messing with me and I was on speaker phone!
So then things settle down and they ask me how they should expect payment.
Oh boy.
I look at Hey and do the pantomime “money” thing by rubbing fingers and thumb together and say “Money?”
He whips out his check book and hands it over to me. Now that’s trusting.
I ask the billing lady if checks are acceptable and they are.
I take a Post-it note and write the address down and then fill out the check with the amount, the invoice number in the memo section, their account number at the top, everything but the signature.
Done deal. Everybody is happy. The restaurant gets its soap, EcoLab got jollies from me repeatedly saying “Phuc Ho”, I got paid while doing a good deed, and all is right with the world.
Except that ‘Hey’ really needs to balance his checkbook.