It's All in the Accent

I work in an organization where employees are of different nationalities. It's fun and interesting because it's not the usual workplace. Although English is the language used at work, the different accents of people make it very interesting if sometimes challenging.

A consultant from New Zealand once asked me, "Are you hippy today?" I replied that I was not a hippy. Then he said that he would like to take a picture with me because it was his last day. Ohhhh....I realized then he was asking if I was HAPPY that day.

Then there's the boss from mainland China who was asking me to change some data in an excel spreadsheet. He kept saying, "vanish it, vanish it." Huh? It took a while for me to figure it out. He wanted me to use the VALUE SHEET.

It's been especially challenging to take minutes of meetings. Hard enough that sometimes attendees have already discussed issues by email before the meeting and seem to continue the email discussion at the meeting, but to deal with the different accents (Indian, French, Australian, Italian, Singaporean, etc.) really drives me nuts.

It all just makes each day interesting.