I worry sometimes about the amount of people at work that read this. I’m out of the closet about it, which means I edit myself slightly, but it is hard when you have an anecdote that you really, really, really wanna tell and you know it could bite you.
Oh well.
Super Uber American Trainer. The HI HOW ARE YA GUY. I bring in a couple of people that are attending the class. One gentleman is from Liverpool and the other is French but is now living in Germany.
I am in the middle of introductions when HI HOW ARE YA says, “SO! YOU’RE THE FORIGNERS!”
I look down to the ground for an Acme escape hatch.
The French gentleman says, “Excuse me?”
I mumble, “He’s making a joke.”
I apologized to one colleague later and he said it wasn’t a problem.
Later, I gave HI HOW ARE YA feedback that that wasn’t the best thing to say as an American in Europe because there were only two foreigners in the room and it wasn’t the Scouser or the Frog. . . That you need to warm people up a bit rather than beat them up with your personality.
He took that on board admitting that he could tell the joke bombed immediately. But as he was making excuses to me why the training didn’t go that well, I felt like I was hearing an actor saying the performance was shit because of the audience.
March 12th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Knowing the players makes this twice as funny…