Crazy People

In my line of work I meet all sorts of kooky and crazy characters. They come from all walks of life and sometimes they ask the most ridiculous nonsense.

Only an hour ago, I had a walk in customer come by and ask of we do translation services. In true fact, we don't really offer any translation service. I mean, we have or rather I have (seeing as how this is still a new company) offered translation services for my clients in the past but then it was only because I was doing a much bigger project for them and translation services came in the package.

Even then I would hire professional  translation services for my work. I personally can't translate anything for nuts, unless of course you wouldn't mind a hilarious interpretation of your work in a different language :D

So, today I get this customer walking in and asking us to translate a brochure for them into Afrikaans ... really, I kid you not. I stood there and stared at this lady for a full 30 seconds and not cos she was drop dead gorgeous or anything but because this was the first time anyone had asked me to translate something into a language I know nothing about.

After I stop staring at her, I tell her politely that we don't even do translation services to begin with and that she would need to look for some language translation services to help her. But that doesn't dissuade her, she looks at me with this questioning glare and says,

'But you're a printer and don't printers also do translations?'

I wanted to ask her which part of printer resembles the word translator but I decided to be polite and say,

'We're a printer and we print. You need a translation company for that' (with emphasis on the words printer and translation).


'But don't printers also do translations? I want this translated before you print!' She insists.

This goes on for a while and I finally get fed up and tell her to hold on a minute and that I will have to go in the back to check on how much it would cost. So I walk in the back of my office, take a sip of water, linger around a few minutes and come out and tell her it would cost RM6,500.00 to get her Afrikaans translation done.

She looks at me in shock and then raises her voice and says,

'You crazy idiot, ah? So expensive one? I find someone else!' and walks out.

 Like I said, in my line, I meet a lot of kooky characters and some of them takes the cake.
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