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Back in 2014, I was working as an IT Helpdesk for a call center company. Our job was to basically be tech support for employees and agents working from home. We’d also handle initial troubleshooting if any issues for any branches that say had an entire call floor that couldn’t take calls before escalating the issue to the team that handles those kinds of issues. In this line of work, it isn’t odd to get a call from any major department head or vice president as they also call us regarding password resets(we always tell them they need to open a ticket for security reasons) or any assistance they needed. So one SVP was on a business trip in Japan, but he didn’t have his company cell with him and only had his personal. He calls the helpdesk using the phone in his hotel room and I get the call. He tells me to call him back at his hotel room phone so he doesn’t get charged for calling long distance.
As I wasn’t exactly sure if the front desk would speak straight English with me, I decided to use some of my Japanese lessons. I had a friend from high school who took Japanese as an elective in college and he taught me how to speak to an extent. I’m still Japanese illiterate as I never really practiced writing but I can to an extent do casual conversation. So I put the SVP on hold, call the front desk at the number he gave me and spoke in fluent Japanese. My colleague who was sitting next to me was shocked I was suddenly speaking in another language. The front desk tells me the hotel room line was busy (he was on hold with me on my other line) so I told the front desk I’d put them on hold, got back to my boss to tell him to drop the call we were in, got back to front desk phone and told them to connect me.
After I finished assisting the SVP and ended the call. My colleagues were asking me what was up, I told them the story and they one just laughed coz he got a good kick out of it. I mean, some of us in the team were weebs but they never expected me to be fluent enough to carry a conversation. Still one of the best memories I have of that job (even though it sucked 90% of the time).
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