I enjoyed my career as a Procurement Specialist with a major electronics firm. I managed supplier relationships all over the world and got to do some extensive travel.
We had a plastics injection molding supplier in France that I was responsible for managing. The President of the company, Jacque, was a nice enough guy but although he spoke English he refused to speak English. Since I was working with this French Plastic Injection Molder it came under the jurisdiction of our factory in Barcelona. The team consisted of 4 of us. Myself and a Plastics Engineer from our U.S. office, Pete, and a Procurement Specialist and Plastics Engineer from Barcelona.
The meeting with the French Plastics Injection Molding company took an entire week. During this time, Jacque did not utter one word in English. Jacque ONLY spoke in French!
The Plastics Engineer from Barcelona spoke French and Spanish. The Procurement Specialist from Barcelona spoke Spanish and English. For an entire week Jacque spoke French to the Plastics Engineer who translated it into Spanish for the Procurement Specialist from Barcelona who translated it from Spanish to English for Pete’s and my benefit.
On our last day in France we had a magnificent meal with several bottles of French wine. We had finished our meal and Jacque looked at me and said in English, “So Michelle, how do you like the French wines?” I was highly frustrated with the fact that Jacque didn’t speak any English to me all week and picks NOW as the time to say something in English. So what could I say to piss him off? I smiled and said to Jacque, “The French wines are very good but personally I prefer Spanish wine!” Needless to say he was insulted.
My boss heard about that one and asked me… “What the hell were you thinking?”
Fast forward a year and I’m sitting at my desk in Portland, Oregon when my boss comes over to my desk and says, “Jacque is coming to the United States and this is his first visit and he will be here for 1 week. Jacque has requested that YOU be his HOST.”
On the last day of Jacques visit we went out to dinner with all of the people working on this project and my boss joined us. We went to a wonderful restaurant on the outskirts of Portland and had several bottles of Oregon wine from some of my favorite local wineries. When dinner was all done we were sitting there with several empty wine bottles when (not thinking) I said to Jacque, “So Jacque what do you think of our Oregon wines?”
A huge smile emerged on Jacque’s face and in excellent English with his heavy French accent Jacque said, “The Oregon wines are very good, but personally, I prefer California wine.”