Operation Call French Offices

First of all, before I go into "Operation Call French Offices," please realize that about 96% of the previous two posts were entirely farcical. While there really was a strike, I was neither cold nor hungry. I know nothing of Miss Cleo or Nostradamus's predictions. Please stop sending me food and mittens, and stop calling my lawyers about wanting to sue me for liable. Nothing said in any of the posts should be taken as fact, rather, it is advisable to assume that all things mentioned in these posts are quite the opposite. Thus, you are advised to read at your own risk. Thank you.

Moving upward and onward. My project for R. R. Donnelly consists of very simply finding the contact of information of the directors of communication the biggest 100 companies in France and Belgium. This project is not nearly as easy as it sounds. The information is kept in a secret lock box. It's lodged right next to the secret of how to pronounce "r's" in French. Only the French know where it is, and they'll never tell their secret.

Apparently, however, there's another way to discover this information and that is by calling the general operators at the companies, putting on your most charming French accent and begging for the desired information. As my deadline approaches, I decided to attempt the impossible: convince beautiful (this is assumed and not to be considered fact, for example) operators that I'm worthy of the name, email address and phone number of their director of communications.

Step 1: Write, rewrite, and learn my preamble. I become Thomas Jefferson for a moment and write my opening couple of lines. I pass these off to a colleagues who reads them and shakes her head. She decides to makes this more interesting, and dictates what she wants me to say. For those of you who are not familiar with French dictations, the level of difficulty is quite comparable to that of dictations in Chinese (believe me, I've done both). People seem to think that French is easy, but the words parler, parle (w/ and accent), parlai, parlait, parlais and parlaient are all pronounced in exactly the same way. And that is a fact. It's also extremely normal and this list could be formed for basically every verb in the French language. Needless to say I bombed the dictation test. (That's at least partly untrue). Eventually I understood what I was saying and how to say it.

Step 2: Make the calls. Call number one: I dial the number. It turns out that I don't need to dial +33. Apparently, I'm already in France. It takes me a couple of tries (exaggeration) but the phone starts to ring. "Hallo, oui?" Shit. She's more beautiful sounding than I could have possibly imagined. I remain cool and recite my lines. She responds... with something that sounds like the information was searching. I return to my desk (I had walked into another room to make the phone calls so as to avoid the embarrassment of calling in front of my co-workers) grinning wildly. I was very impressed with my colleagues preamble, and I let her know.

Step 3: Repeat multiple times. While I'm not going to go into each phone call with detail, I will say that I was rather impressed with how nice most of operators were with me. There was one who's eyes I could hear rolling as I stumbled goofily in French, but for the most part, they were really nice and patient. Only once did someone say, "You know I speak English too." I was more flustered when I was addressed in English than I had been the whole time in French.

As it turns out, it's not that I don't speak French that was the problem, it's that I don't speak business relationship. That's the hardest language around. I hear Middlebury has some really intense summer programs though...