Work and Other Foibles

I need to start this one out with a story about Dave. (Note to people who don't work with me: Dave is the supervisor from Iowa City who came here a week before I did. His stay overlapped with the first week and a half I was here.) Dave drinks Dr Pepper almost exclusively. Who can blame him? Dr Pepper is apparently not sold anywhere in India. Vikram told Debbie, who had come here previously, that they were trying to find some for him but couldn't. So Debbie and I planned on me bringing some along to surprise him. I, fortunately, am a bit more malicious than that.

I brought a 6-pack of 16-ounce bottles along in my suitcase. After I was here a few days I brought in one of the bottles to work in a bag and hid it in my locker. With Vikram's help to make sure Dave was occupied, I left the bottle on his desk and went back to the training room. Dave found it and was overjoyed. Everyone here who knew he'd been looking for Dr Pepper was surprised to see him drinking it, and when the training class had their next break he asked Vikram where he found it. Vikram, of course, pleaded innocence and asked Dave where he got it. This continued for a while, Dave just insisting that Vikram had to have found someplace that could send away for it and that he just wanted to know where so he could get more, and Vikram truthfully saying that he didn't know where it had come from and hadn't left it on the desk.

Now, I'd figured this gambit couldn't last long. After all, it would have to occur to Dave that I could have brought the Dr Pepper along and he'd start in on me. But here's the beautiful part: Almost everywhere in America sells pop in 20-ounce bottles. Several times Dave actually argued with other people that it couldn't have been me because it was a 16-ounce bottle and you can't get those in the US! It was hilarious. We watched him get crazier and crazier over the course of the night. One of the best parts was when I pointed out that he shared his desk with a daytime sup, so it could have just been somebody else's Dr Pepper left on the desk. Without the slightest moment of hesitation or decrease in his smile he said "I don't care. If this is someone else's I'm drinking it anyway. I hope they bring another one tomorrow, I'll drink that too."

So if anyone wants to leave some Dr Pepper on Dave's desk when he gets back, that'd be just great.

Actual work: I'm starting to learn the reps' names and they're starting to learn what e-Customer Service is really like. We're still in the absolutely-constant-stream-of-questions phase of the training, where I bounce around the bay like a ping-pong ball and hear my name echo from all sides. It's a little early to judge how well I think they'll do on their own, as every new team is like this for that first week. It wasn't all that long ago that some of you were the ones making me run circles around the bay, so you know how that goes. Next week we'll see if things start to settle down a little or if we're in trouble. When we get to where I can concentrate more on fixing their grammar than fixing their resolution, I'll say we're doing pretty good. Most of the things that I'm beating into everyone's skulls are the things that ever set of newbies really needs drilled in before it becomes automatic. (Can anyone say "Canceled Acct Inquiry from Non-Secure" letter? Gooooood.) But for the most part the reps here try very hard, so I think most of them will get it eventually.

Being the odd one out here (well, even more so here) has made me fairly popular. On breaks and lunchtime several of the reps make a point of offering me the Indian snack foods and various traditional dishes. They definitely are aware that their food is spicier than what americans are used to, so whenever I'm about to put something spicier in my mouth I'm rewarded with a bunch of shocked expressions and then concerned questions as I'm eating it. For the record, I like Indian-spicy a lot better than Mexican-spicy. Not a jalepaneo fan, but ginger and curry and whatever else has been in some of these things is mostly really good. One of the stranger things I've had is a snack called "Pani-Pudi" It's like the junkfood equivalent of doing shots. You get a small cup of very runny, very spicy hot sauce and four or five little thin pastry shells, like egg roll crusts. Each shell is a hollow sphere with a large hole in the top and inside the shell is a small lump of... okay I have absolutely no idea what that stuff was. I think it was potatoes and ground ham mashed together. Anyway, you pour some of the hot sauce into the shell and before it soaks through the shell you pop the whole thing in your mouth. As soon as you close your mouth the sauce and the stuff inside oozes out of the shell and then pretty much your head blows up.

Head-explodey is as good a note to end on as any.