Friday, February 13, 2009

Partially helpful

It's not often I have to answer the phone at the office, but there was a tiny window of around 5 minutes when all of my work colleagues were either in a meeting or power-walking around the block (I'm assuming it would have been brisk because it was pretty chilly today).

I answered the phone and stuttered through the greeting, which included the 17-syllable name of the place I am working for. Then I had to repeat myself 3 more times, because the caller was an old lady from Idaho, of all places. So she was probably a bit deaf and completely unused to the Kiwi accent and our unique way of runningourwordstogether (that's "running our words together", if you're blind and relying on voice thingy).

Well, I have no idea how she got our number, but she was definitely looking for someone in New Zealand to tell her about how to emigrate to New Zealand. We had a nice old chatter about how her son is fed up with life in the US, the fact that his dogs wouldn't be allowed into the country without several months in quarantine even though they are so nice and house-trained, and - that old nugget - what time is was over here.

And then I told her to go have a look at www.immigration.govt.nz, and she thanked me hung up.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Classic!

Of course, if she can ever work out the friggin' points system she'll probably find that she doesn't qualify.

Watson Woodworth said...

Idahoan?
Fed up with life in the U.S.?
Oh dear.
I think you just had a conversation with the mum of an Aryan Nations partisan.
Oh dear, oh dear.

Pollyanna_H said...

If she's an old lady, she definitely won't qualify ... but once her son has been a permanent resident for three years he can sponsor her. As long as she doesn't have too many other children in the US of course ....

Violet said...

Maybe she's the head of a potato empire - she'd qualify as an investor maybe?

Actually, she was probably ringing on his behalf, rather than wanting to come live here herself.

Angela said...

I wonder if it was my Grandma.
They do have good potatoes though.

thanks for the word seperation.