Fringe benefits

I’m really more of a work-to-live person than a live-to-work person, which is not to say that I don’t like to be productive, because I do. I feel good after a successful, busy day at work. But if I won the lottery today, I would not keep my job -- at least not after a month’s notice.

That being said, I’ve been noticing lately that I learn all sorts of miscellaneous things during my days in the office.

I swear I can almost read German. The trick is you have to read the words out loud with a German-type accent.

Go on, try it:

Dies ist eine automatisch erstellte Benachrichtigung über den Zustellstatus.
Übermittlung an folgende Empfänger fehlgeschlagen.
xxxxxxx@st-josef.de

You have to admit that you know exactly what the first four words say. Right? The rest you can learn by looking at its English counter-part:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Delivery to the following recipients failed.
xxxxxx@myneurologist.net

I think I’m going to say fehlgeschlagen in place of failed from now on. It’s so much more fun to say, isn’t it?

This week I ran into a problem when trying to renew one of our subscriber’s accounts. His card was repeatedly declined due to:

… an address or ZIP code mismatch with the address on file with the card issuing bank...

I contacted the subscriber and it turns out that his home does not have a house number, it has only a name. In this case, “Lilybank.” How quaint is that?

I would like a house with a name, wouldn’t you?

I’ve also learned that “cheers” really is a common salutation in Australia (even among physicians), Spaniards like to order things via subscription agencies even though they could subscribe themselves in 5 minutes online, and some people will continue to speak to you in a language you don’t understand somehow hoping that if they repeat the words louder and louder you’ll have a breakthrough. (Well maybe if it were German!)

Prost!