"So what did you do today?" I ask Francis.
Prelimary welcome home bickering is over and done with and we're enjoying a temporary lull before child, cat, dog or Martha the sardine problems raise their ugly, furry and scaly little heads respectively and usher in the next round of fights.
"I've been talking to potential suppliers," says Francis. "At least, I think so. Here, read this." He hands me a printed out e-mail:
'Anyways, back to business as mentioned to you we distribute ecommerce packages/pick and pack them through our various distribution contracts throughout the UK/Europe and World Wide, including Air/Sea operations.
'Also do direct marketing mailing campaigns as well fulfilment but if you can provide me some scope of what you may need I will certainly be happy to assist.'
"What's 'well fulfilment'?" I ask.
"I was rather hoping you'd know," he says.
"I don't know what they've told you about my life here when you're in the office, but, as a music teacher, I encounter fewer boreholes than you might suppose."
"Discontented artesian wells?"
"Not so far. Though it could just be that I'm incredibly unobservant and I've simply overlooked the fact that the cupboard under the stairs is crawling with dowsers and Jack and Jill lookalikes."
I take another look at the e-mail.
"Can't you just ask him?"
"I did," says Francis, grimly, "and I couldn't make out a world he said."
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8 comments:
Welcome back OM!
Filling up a well until it's full filled - fish optional. All the healthy fish oils are clearly not benefitting this chap's brain.
Mya x
Stickler for coherent syntax that I am, I have puzzled and puzzled over this one. Not the boreholes or the artesian wells, though I was once on nodding terms with a very nice septic tank (nodding, here, being something of a euphemism you understand)...
No, it was the well fulfilment bit that got me going too. It could of course have pertained to the fulfilment of wells,which has a vaguely poetic sound and sends the imagination flying - though if this were the case I think it should probably have been hyphenated....
Or it could be a simple case of bad punctuation. You know, the sort of thing that Lynn Truss would have picked up on at once..
Problem is, for me, that if I try to go back to the original post to see precisely what it said, I'll lose this comment - but at a stab, do you think he was trying to say something like " a marketing campaign.... and, well, fulfilment thereof"?
Highly unlikely it seems to me, and whichever way you look at it, it's a pretty crappy sentence. Is it a campaign being mounted in Mumbai (?sp), by any chance?
It all adds to the general gaiety of life of course - though not perhaps for poor Francis!
Well fulfilment??! Havent a clue!
Lol! Scary! Nice to see you are posting again.
It's fine. You don't need to know. Could just be extreme fulfilment (I'm always getting emails about that) or wish fulfilment (would pay good money to anyone promising that if only I could overcome my natural inability to believe the salesman) or something altruistic happening in Africa in advance of the water wars which will inevitably follow climate change.
Maya: It's supposed to do wonders for arthritis, though. Perhaps I should suggest he contracts it so he can see some benefit of the stuff
IB: I'm glad you struggled as well - it makes me feel less stupid, especially as it seemed to make such sense to him!
Casdok: Do you think it could be some NHS target?
Elizabethm: The sane approach. I think you're right.
Maybe it was supposed to say, "as well as fulfillment," but then I still wouldn't know what he was talking about, as I am not alphabetic enough in the language of direct marketing and suppliers.
I can imagine Francis' frustration at not understanding this, as the one thing you want in business is clarity, especially when it comes to the oily industry of sardine products.
I think it's wish fulfillment. It can't be anything else. Unless I'm thinking wish fulfillment that the message is understood. It's happening everywhere now - "carbon footprints" instead of "belching out poisonous gases" and the best I saw in the NHS - something about a "hub of a wheel" (the core group of professionals I think) and the "spokes" (the outreach people I think). I wouldn't want to be either.
Good luck with translation. I'd try Klingon.
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