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Old 05-12-2007, 08:16 PM   #1
richlevy
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Why I will never be a US Ambassador

OK, the next President of the US might be a Democrat, so just in case someone offers, I should mention why I am probably unqualified to be an ambassador for the United States.

I swear that the following is a true story. The only name that has been changed is the first name.

It was at least 10 years ago. I was a consultant working at a large company. Normally, I just coded and supported software, but I was sort of the 'go to geek' in our group and occasionally the odd assignment ended up on my desk.

In this case, a report that came out of our system was not printing overseas. Someone thought that the problem might be in the operations center in Europe, so they wanted me to make a troubleshooting call. This would be my first international business call. I can't remember who gave me the index card with the name and number of the contact, the manager from the client or my team leader, but I remember getting the card and reading it for the first time.

And freezing.....

I went back to the guy who gave me the card to double check everything. I asked if he was sure about all of the contact information and if he really wanted me to make the call to Europe. He did, and so I got ready to make the call to the contact in Europe.

Whose name was Karl Schmuck.

Now for those of you who aren't Jewish, I should explain that the word 'schmuck' means penis in Yiddish, or more accurately someone who is a 'dork', and nothing else. It's not like saying 'dick', which could have many meanings. It's closest equivalent is 'dickhead', in that when you call someone that word there can only be one meaning.

So I was about to call Mr. Dickhead in Europe.

I was extremely nervous. I still wasn't sure that this wasn't some prank or that someone hadn't written the name down wrong. Even then, I wasn't sure if there wasn't some subtle pronunciation that kept the name from being what I thought it would sound like. Maybe the 'uck' was pronounced like the 'ook' in book or the 'uke' in fluke. And maybe this guy knew what the other pronunciation of his name meant and got really annoyed when someone said it wrong.

My first order of business was to determining this by asking him. So after introducing myself I asked him the correct pronunciation of his name.

"It's Schmuck".

To this day, I congratulate myself on getting the job done. For the next 15 minutes or half hour, I went through the steps and I might even have resolved the issue. I don't recall this for sure, but I do remember some of the thoughts I had while this was going on.

For one thing, I kept thinking of how cool it would be to take this guy to a delicatessen in Manhattan, one of the places where they call out names like "Goldberg, party of three!" "Finklestein, party of four!". I could imagine walking in and having the place become dead quiet to "Schmuck, party of two!".

The other thought that went through my head was about how names are given. The odds are that if your name is Baker, one of your ancestors baked bread; Smiths might be descended from blacksmiths, and Archers from archers. So I kept thinking to myself, what did this guys great great great great grandfather do to get the entire family named Schmuck!?

I think about that call to this day. And I keep kicking myself for not getting him to send me a business card.
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Last edited by richlevy; 05-12-2007 at 08:21 PM.
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Old 05-13-2007, 04:42 AM   #2
xoxoxoBruce
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My folks played cards with John and Harriet Schmuck every Saturday night.

Hey, I worked for the Lipshits brothers.
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Old 05-14-2007, 01:11 PM   #3
ferret88
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If I remember my couple of semesters of German from college ... years ago, schmuck is German for jewelry.
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Old 05-16-2007, 03:34 AM   #4
Urbane Guerrilla
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And where do the non-German-speaking find out for sure if there's anything to the Brooksian Schwanzstuecke? Spelled with its other E because this board doesn't support coding in umlaut characters.
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