Voices, Sounds, and Images

„Grrrr,“ said my colleague in way of greeting on Friday morning outside our hotel.

“Morning,” I mumbled just as deeply, though it was more of a grunt.

Said colleague was with me on my very first day of work about five weeks ago, and we discovered almost immediately that neither one of us is particularly chatty in the morning, each requiring a bit of time (not to mention a coffee or two) before we are able to fully function.

I do have my moments, though, when I feel a bit inclined to make conversation, and because of my experiences just minutes before at the checkout desk, I did feel compelled to relate the story despite the early hour.

At the checkout desk, the service agent had greeted me cheerily, but was somewhat drowned out by the noisy alarm that was sounding from the mobile phone behind the counter. She was doing her best to ignore it, but I recognized the sound, because my mobile has the same alarm. In fact, I initially thought it was mine, so had quickly checked my pockets and confirmed that I was not the culprit.

As alarms go, it actually starts out kind of soothing, in a funky, synthesizer sort of way, then quickly, albeit gradually, launches into a noise not unlike the sound of the Jägermeister machine from my local pub, a pulsating, grinding machine sound that forces a quick reaction to switch the alarm off. It is one of the most annoying sounds I have heard.

There was someone being served ahead of me, and during the few minute wait this alarm went off multiple times, each time for about a minute, then a minute’s pause, then back to the, er, grind. I was sort of confused as to why the hotel agent hadn’t already simply reached over and switched the mobile off.

“Very sorry about the annoying noise coming from the phone, “ she said apologetically. “The phone was left somewhere in the lobby (presumably by a forgetful guest) and we do not know how to switch it off, as it is in German.”

I kind of smiled in response, as things became clear. “Perhaps I can assist,” I said, “my phone is also in German, I have the same device, and I might have a good idea as to who the phone belongs to.”

“That would be oh so lovely,” she breathed with relief. “This alarm has been going off for the past hour.”

An hour? (perhaps hotel protocol is such that one cannot simply eject the battery or, worse case scenario, throw the device onto the ground outside in the carpark so that a car can accidentally run over it)

With a quick press of the button, I disabled the alarm, and also pointed out that in future, should this happen again, just press the button on the screen that says, “beenden.”

I paid up, then headed outside, grunted my greeting to my colleague, then asked, “Wo ist dein Handy?”

He reached in his pocket, pulled out his phone, and I went on to say that one of our colleagues from Germany was probably looking for his device at that moment. As if on cue, I looked inside to the hotel restaurant and noticed another colleague going through his jacket pockets as if he were looking for something.

“Er, I think the mystery is already solved,” I laughed, but upon holding up my own phone and mouthing the question, “where is yours?” to the guy inside, he held up his own device.

My outside colleague quickly sent a text message to one of the other members of our group, and within a few minutes we had identified the co-worker who had been ransacking his own room in search of his device. We had a bit of a chuckle as the guy sheepishly collected his mobile, and that was pretty much the way we started our workday.

The fact that all of us were carrying identical German phones was not too surprising. Everyone from the German office of our department was in Glasgow for a meeting with our entire European team.

In all, there were to be about 40 people in attendance, including the higher level managers from the North American corporate offices, who were there to present to us the plans and strategies for the coming fiscal year. A bit of a rah rah team session, if you will. More on that in a minute.

Due to some local personal business that was pretty important for me, I had worked from home during the first part of the week, and, realized how necessary that had been as I made my way to the airport Wednesday morning, very much glad to have made that decision.

I flew from Frankfurt to Amsterdam, then hung out for a couple of hours as I waited for my (grunting) colleague to arrive. He and I then flew on to Glasgow and met up with our Scottish colleagues, as well as a few others from around Europe.

Thursday we worked out of our Glasgow office, and during the afternoon other colleagues from the team arrived from Germany, Spain, Italy, and England.

That evening, we all gathered at a Japanese restaurant, one of those where you sit around the cook top and watch the chef delight and amaze the diners. The dinner gathering itself was very new to me. Such things were very rare during my time in the states, partly because of my career position at the time, and partly because that just was not the work culture.

On the way to the restaurant, a couple of colleagues had described the last team gathering, the company Christmas party. Again, my stateside boss had just not ever done a Christmas party or dinner, and for the four Decembers that I worked in Germany up until this point, I had always been travelling, thus missing the team Christmas outing. (note – I am not trying to say woe as me, just simply stating the facts and setting the stage).

We walked into the restaurant, met several new colleagues, then grabbed a seat next to my Scottish colleague. (For the sake of clarification, I have several Scottish colleagues with whom I work very closely. Likewise, I have several German colleagues that I will be working closely with, assuming that I start spending some time in the German office at some point in the future)

This particular colleague is quite humorous, likes to laugh, and I am glad to be working with him. He gave me a bit of a run down on the new faces sitting around the table, as well as giving a bit of a description of the antics of the particular restaurant.

Drinks were ordered, as were our main dishes, then, the chefs came out and got to work. They started by frying up some potato discs, and I understood that the chef would soon be tossing bits to the guests, who would attempt to catch a piece in their mouth.

As we were on the end of the table, we got to start, and I willed myself to catch the piece thrown at me; perhaps a way of redeeming myself from the wine spilling incident that I had created a few weeks before in Hungary. Sure enough, I caught mine first try, and on around the table the game went until it reached a couple of the women who had arrived from North America. First, one declined with a shake of her head, then a second, and then the third woman sort of shook her head and gave a bit of an “Don’t even think about it,” kind of look.

I am sure that most of the chefs have had to put up with this sort of thing before, where someone refuses to participate in the fun, and while I can appreciate both sides, I do realize that sometimes you just have to join in, despite your character. (pardon the brief tangent: my father once related a story where he had done Karaoke in a Japanese bar simply because it was the expected thing to do while on a business trip with the Japanese hosts. I was horrified at the thought, as my father is completely tone deaf, but finally understood that singing ability was totally irrelevant to the situation. I put the lesson learned into practice soon after when I attended a wedding in Boston. I knew absolutely no one, save for the bride, who I had met a couple of times, as she was a friend of my sister’s. At the reception, we had to get up and dance around the dinner table and sing a song. Somehow, I rose to that occasion, and flamboyantly reenacted a David Lee Roth song with such enthusiasm that I amazed the other wedding guests, as well as myself. )
Anyway, the chef took this in stride and finished rounding the table. Fortunately, all the other guests did partake in the food throwing. The chef then went back to work preparing the entrees, slicing, dicing, adding oils and sauces. At one point, he grabbed a plastic ketchup bottle, turned to the grumpy woman who had glared so defiantly when refusing to catch a potato, pointed the bottle in her direction, and squeezed .

Well, the effect was astounding. Turns out that it was one of those fake ketchup things, where red string sort of shoots out, startling the unsuspecting person. The woman reacted as you might expect, shooting back from the table with a start, horrified that she might have just had tomato sauce spilled on her. She almost spilled her wine glass (been there, done that) and struggled for a few moments to regain her composure as we all laughed at the joke.

Because my colleague and I have already had a few moments where we have laughed so hard that one or the both of us have almost choked, we could not believe our luck; we were sitting directly across from the woman, and her facial expression before, during, and after were so extreme that we could not stop laughing. Her eyes bored into the prankster chef with such severity that I actually feared for his safety. She simply was a very serious person, who unfortunately does not like to joke about.

My buddy and I laughed about it for the remainder of the evening, and again the following morning as we arrived at work. Not only was the evening enjoyable and entertaining, I got a glimpse into the types of people I would be working with.

So, Friday morning, we gathered in the conference center, and various people, including the woman from the ketchup incident, presented the details of what we have to accomplish over the next year. I did learn a lot, and confirmed that I now work for a very large organization: lots of different departments, different people, and different locations. All of this adds to the challenge of the job.

As I listened to each person presenting, I noticed that all of them had the habit of ending each statement as if they were asking a question; the tone of their voice went up. It soon started to annoy me a little bit, because it was EVERY statement, but I made a mental note to discuss it later with a German colleague, and focused on the subject matter.

The experience was educational. Indeed, I have a better understanding about our direction, but also have a better understanding on how people from different regions work with one another. It is the human nature element that is of particular interest, especially since I am knee deep into a multi-national, multi-cultural professional and personal life, now.

The meeting wrapped up in the middle of Friday afternoon, and I said farewell to some colleagues rushing off to the airport to catch their flights home. Those of us not needing to get out of town went back to the office, where we proceeded to chat about the events of the day (and laugh about those events that were humorous) and do a bit of work.

My grunting colleague and I transferred to a hotel in downtown Glasgow, checked in, and then headed off in search of something to eat. He was due to fly back to Germany very early Saturday morning, while I would be staying through the weekend, before flying to London Monday afternoon, and on to a meeting in France during the first part of the week. (It did not make sense to fly back to Germany from the UK on Saturday, then turn around Monday and fly right back to the UK, where I can (ironically as it ma y seem) then get back to the continent. Travel logistics were way too complicated and time consuming.)

Well, the weather Friday morning in Glasgow was cold, rain/snow, and pretty much crap. The rain/snow mixture kept up throughout the day and into the evening, with a forecast of about 30 centimeters of snow due in the area by Saturday afternoon. Turns out that the snow never really accumulated, but the weather has remained quite crap.

Friday night, we walked 20 minutes or so to a part of the city with a variety of restaurants. As we walked through the cold, we joked about the fact that both of our voices are quite deep (particularly in the morning) and quite the contrast to the voices we had heard during the presentations. My colleague was equally aggravated by the way each statement sounded like a question. Though we had been trying to find an Indian restaurant, we came across a Brazilian tapas bar that looked interesting. My German colleague had done some work (and subsequent vacationing) in Brazil, and immediately steered us over for a closer look.

What was going to be a quick mojito became a 5 hour session. The tapas were great, the drinks tasty, and the scene pretty groovy. For those of you who have ever done the Gloria’s or Monica’s Aca y Alli salsa nights, you know what I am talking about.

Around 1am, we called it a night. I was tired from the week, as was my buddy, who also had the unpleasant task of getting up three hours later to go catch his flight. Then, he was faced with another couple hours drive home from Amsterdam.

Thus, Saturday morning I had a nice lie in. I looked outside, saw that it was still snowing and sleeting in a way that makes you kind of want to stay inside with a book and a cup of cocoa, and realized I had no book. I took advantage of the breakfast buffet, then braved the elements and walked to the high street, found a bookshop, and picked up a few things to tie me over for the weekend.

The weather has really been rotten, so I have taken advantage of the fact that I have no obligations and caught up on some reading and movie watching. True, may be a bit quiet for a weekend get away, but hey ho, I have enjoyed it.

It is hard to believe how quickly things are moving. I am about to begin my sixth week in this new job, which will soon enable me to simply say job. The experiences have all been interesting and very much worthwhile. I like having the multi-cultural professional relationships, as that adds greatly to the experience, the learning, and the humor.

Fake ketchup bottles and annoying mobile telephone alarms are optional, but they certainly help.

Keep the faith
bryan