Where's that accent from?

Hi

Hows it goin?

Another tale from my time in New York.

It was another fun filled day at Luigi's, (by fun filled I mean dull) after Labor day, the restaurant is dead. You go from being packed out the door with a waiting list to being lucky if you can fill half the restaurant.

So on this particular day we were very slow, this meant I was forced to speak to the customers. When it comes to chatting to customers I have about 7 standard jokes or crappy stories I usually tell, most of these have been adapted to be told quickly and not to cause any offense. We had a table of 6 in for lunch, and they seemed like a decent bunch of people. This was a rarity at the time so I enjoyed talking to them as they seemed to be genuinely nice people.

One of the older women on the table asked me,

"Now where's that accent from?"

This happens to me a lot. I've never had a particularly strong scottish accent, and I spent nearly 3 years dealing with hundreds of different nationalities while I was working on the ship, so my accent has almost disappeared. At this point in time I had been working in New York for over 4 months and I am told I had picked up a slight american twang. So it is understandable that it may be difficult to detect the Scottish in my voice. Anytime this happens with customers I usually do the same thing.

"If any of you can guess where I'm from, you'll get a round of drinks on the house!"

This usually gets a good response and leads to decent banter with the table, which usually leads to a decent tip, which is all that really matters in the end. And they very rarely guess correctly.

So we go around the the table, and everyone ventures a guess. And I heard the most random group of countries ever uttered since I've been playing this stupid game with customers, and I've played this a lot.

"Australia?"

"Germany?"

"Brooklyn?"

"Ireland?"

"New Jersey?"

"Sweden?"

What the fuck?

I stood there in a state of disbelief. Was my accent really that faded?

Time to start watching some vintage James Bond movies.

I promise you this is a true story. These are the genuine answers I received when I asked this table of 6. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I do appreciate the fact that I may not sound overly scottish, but what the fuck?

How could they be this wrong?

And how do any of those accents sound anything like mine?

It would be very difficult to pick out a more random selection of countries. And everyone at the table was serious. They really thought they had guessed correctly.

And the stupidest thing was, I had the fucking flag on my shirt!

I bought a St Andrews Flag pin to wear on my shirt, whenever I am out of the country I always feel very patriotic.

I told them they were all wrong and pointed to the flag pin on my shirt. At this point they all looked confused, then one guy said,

"That's weird, you don't look Jamacian."

Thats All For Now

Until Next Time

Have A Nice

Andy G

If you want to get all the crap I write delivered straight to your inbox then go to www.TheBlogOfAndyG.com and put your email address in the wee box that says "subscribe."

If you don't subscribe then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!