Last night I got a call asking me to take a political survey. Since I'm interested in politics, I agreed—after getting the young woman to swear she wasn't selling anything and that the call wouldn't turn into a pitch for something.
But after I agreed, she asked if there were a male in the house who could take the survey instead of me. "Not right now," I said, annoyed. I'd been so magnanimous in agreeing to take her survey, and now she wanted a guy? "Why does it have to be a male?" I asked. Was the assumption that a man would know more about politics? I wondered to myself. How unfair.
"We're supposed to get a male if we can....but I'll take you." The young woman was not endearing herself to me.
She started asking the questions, and many involved the European Union and NATO—only she pronounced it NATTO with a short "a." The first time I heard her use NATTO, I had no idea what she was talking about. I had her repeat the question.
"Oh.....do you mean NATO?"
"Yes....well, maybe....N-A-T-O," she spelled.
"Yes, that's NATO."
Twice more she asked me questions involving NATTO. Twice more I repeated the word correctly.
Then she did it again. I found myself stopping the survey and saying, "If you're going to do this job, you really need to learn to pronounce the word correctly so we know what you are saying. It's NATO."
From then on, the questions would start out, "What do you think about N-N-N-N-NATO'S role in....." She was careful, but the correct pronunciation was clearly very hard for her. Unfortunately, there were a lot of N-N-N-NATO questions. I started to regret ever agreeing to the survey. I also started to regret that it turns out I really don't know a whole lot about either the European Union or NATO.
But what I regretted the most was the thought that came to my mind next: My husband—a male—would probably know a lot more about the EU and NATO than I do.
Comments