Thursday 19 April 2012

Q is for Qucumber

Ok. I know I’m cheating here, but come on. It’s so hard to think of original ideas that begin with the letter Q. Besides I wanted to tell you my alphabet-related funny story:

The September after I finished school, I began working in this call centre where I was dealing with customers from all over the world. We often had to use the phonetic alphabet, for spelling out surnames and place names and that sort of thing. Anyway, remembering it in English isn’t too difficult and I got the hang of it pretty quickly. However, learning it in other languages is another story. I was using the French I had learnt in school for speaking with, well, French customers and I just could not seem to remember the French phonetic alphabet. It is surprisingly hard to think of words that begin with certain letters in another language and I often found myself stammering, desperately trying to think before embarrassingly squealing out “T pour Tour Eiffel!”, or “B pour Bonjour”, or “O pour Ou est la piscine?!”.

Anyways, my international colleagues were also struggling with this task. I overheard one guy speaking to a very old lady and saying “G as in Gangster” and another using “T for Two” (tea for two). These continued to make me laugh, but the funniest one was heard by my friend, who glanced across at her colleague who was obviously struggling with the letter Q for a good few seconds, before his brain-lightbulb gave him the word ‘cucumber’. “Q as in… Q as in.. as in… as… innnn….AS IN QUCUMBER!!”

This has nothing to do with Scandinavia. But do I get some points for not picking “Queen”, “Quebec” or “Queue”? 

inspire nordic

16 comments:

  1. I would have laughed too if I had heard that!

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  2. That's a funny anecdote! It totally makes sense why you picked Q for Qucumber, haha!

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  3. i will certainly give you points :)

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  4. If you can get/rent the movie, "Outsourced," you would enjoy the story of an American who is sent to India from his phone order catalog company to speed up the workers who take too long on the phone with customers, and of course he bumps up against the culture. It is such a wonderful film, sweet, sad and inspiring at the same time. Always enjoy reading your posts.

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  5. LOL Too funny! Love this post!

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  6. LOL!!! I never in a million years thought of Qucumber' before!!! And it's so OBVIOUS!!!

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  7. It's all you fault. I have a sudden craving for Qucumbers. :(


    Elizabeth
    A to Z co-host

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  8. Q for Qucumber is Qute - - You are so much better than me, I still have to do the letter "O". The hubs kind of glues himself to the computer, and since the poor babe has had a stress test, I wait until I fall asleep. Oops it is the next morning. I think today I will rush to the computer before he does.

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  9. Great story! You're forgiven for using 'Qucumber'! :)

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  10. Very fun! I think you should get bonus points.

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  11. Good one! Are you Canadian?

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  12. LOL. I have a hard time for french phonetic alphabet too!! This gets me laughing my heart out! :)

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  13. Very clever! I'll give you some points!

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