Thursday 16 April 2009

The Fool Monty

The Boss : "How much should I add on for Vladdy-Stock?"

Here's me : "Where?"

The Boss : "Vladdy-Stock"

I'm gonna hold fire from being a smartarse on this, because while I'm 99% sure we're talking about Vladivostok, I'm not at all sure that there isn't also a Vladistok somewhere in Russia.

Here's me : "Spell that one out for me".

OK, so it's Vladivostok. I've always had a bit of an issue with people unable to look at an Anglicized word and deliver it phonetically, partly because I think it's often mental laziness I suppose. Maybe I'm just a cunt though.

Here's me : "OK, what are we shipping?"

The Boss : "A crane... a Monty Crane"

Here's me : "A Mantis Crane?"

The Boss : "No, a Monty.. Mon..."

Here's me : "A Manitou Crane?"

The Boss : "A Kato."

Here's me : "A Kato? What's 'Monty' all about?"

The Boss : "From Monty Fid.."

Here's me : "Montevideo?"

The Boss : "Monty Fid Dido"

Here's me : "Mont-eh-vid-AY-o"

The Boss : "Mont-EE-fid-DIE-doh"

blah blah blah

See it's just annoying me. It's just annoying the shite out of me. How much mental effort is it, really, to just look at the word on the page and read it? I mean fair enough, there's a bunch of subtleties and so on, easy mistakes to make, but stop taking out and inserting whole bloody syllables. By extension, how much mental effort is it, REALLY, to break an outburst into two or three sentences without swapping every fucking noun for a randomly chosen word, I mean, just so that it makes a tiny bit of sense? It seems like a small thing to be wound up over perhaps, but you try being on the receiving end of this non-conversation for 45 hours a week, I swear to fuck it's like the linguistic equivalent of Chinese Water Torture.

Rant over. I know I'm being petty. I didn't sleep well.

5 comments:

  1. it's amazing how far people get without basic reading skills.

    i think i've spoken to about a thousand of your bosses in tech support. i don't think i can be responsible for what happens to the next person i hear say 'inscription' instead encryption or 'authorization' instead of authentication.

    on the bright side, i did learn something from people like your boss : until a similar conversation to one mentioned in this blog, i had no idea a piece of software like firefox could have an ethernet port...

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  2. See also http://goodaftermornings.blogspot.com/2009/04/digikal.html

    Another favourite round here is "Pacific". You might think "Pacific" refers to the world's largest body of water, but in here it means "particular", as in "I need the pacifics on this" or "I need that pacific one".

    Thankfully the need has never arisen for the word "nuclear" to be used in this office, but I'm pretty sure we could all guess how it would turn out...

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  3. I read this a while ago, I dont know if it's true; but apparently for years they taught kids to read by looking at the first few letters and then guessing the word. So people grew up not being able to read any word they don't already know.

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  4. My boss routinely calls the company firewall a "fireball".

    Now, I know that not all IT jargon makes sense to non-IT people but "firewall" is a rare example of a well chosen name in IT. A firewall is an impermeable barrier for protection and that is exactly what a network firewall is; a protective barrier. It actually makes sense.

    A fireball, on the other hand, is a not something I want anywhere near my beloved server room. It was bad enough when some bozo drove a cherry picker through the window without Jerry Lee Lewis and his bloody fireballs to contend with.

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  5. "Pacific"? Oh sweet lord, she's dropping the s from specific.

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