Playing Fair and Being Kind

TEMP WORKER

I had a job offer the other day. The online dictionaries hire people with pleasant voices to be their “pronouncer” for words that are posted in response to search engine inquiries. I’ve been told that I have a good reading voice by an educated friend of mine. She likes my mid-Atlantic drawl. I spent a lot of time in Tidewater, Virginia which is on the border with North Carolina. I was in the Navy and picked up the regional drawl of many of my shipmates who were from south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

While on that ship I worked as a mess cook for Jim Lowery the chief cook. He was from Alabama and his deep southern accent caused he and I a lot of difficulty understanding each other’s regional dialect. I hailed from Boston. Bostonians talk a hundred miles per hour. I don’t think either of us understood more than fifteen percent of the words we said to each other.

I remember Lowery telling me that there were “fruit pahs” up on the pier waiting to be brought aboard. I was to retrieve them. They were for dessert. That was the first I ever heard that term. I’ve only known “pie” for desert up until then. Later I became quite able to understand and even repeat some of his dialect. I incorporated fruit pah into my vocabulary within a few days. In fact, fruit pah is pronounced as one word; froo-pah with a very soft ‘t’. Fruit pahs had things like peaches in them. We ate a lot of fruit pah.

Anyway, I was being hired to be a word pronouncer for one of the bigger dictionary online sites. I understood that I was to be in the office before 10 A.M. ready to repeat words back to the manager. I was to speak into a microphone that hung about my neck. They instructed me to make sure that my voice was lubricated sufficiently. I was to arise early enough to have the gruff gone from my voice by ‘show time’.

The morning of my first day at work I arose at my usual time of six o’clock and began my routine of coffee and slowly waking up by playing solitaire on my laptop. I could get a few games in with one large cup of coffee. I changed my habit a little bit. I was feeling a little anxious about being able to pronounce clearly and loudly enough. We hadn’t bothered with any training sessions. I guess it was assumed from the interview that my delightful mid-Atlantic accent was going to be a dream come true for them. To ensure that I was not only lubricated with dark roast coffee I got out the Jameson’s Irish whiskey bottle and poured a shot for myself. Right away I felt better. My confidence was returning.

I drank another cup of dark roast and the old vocal cords were sweetening. I played another game of solitaire and deeply hummed a rendition of “Where the Blue of the Night meets the Gold of the Day”. Man, alive! Dean Martin had nothing on me! Mr. Confidence finished his coffee. I felt like a new man! The new man poured another shot of Jameson’s. I finished dressing and drove the ten minutes to the online dictionary office. My imagination was spinning through all the scenarios it could…well, imagine! I was more than ready!

The sound technician was the woman I had met briefly at the interview. We prepared ourselves in the recording room. She attached the small microphone around my neck and clipped it to my t-shirt… the one that read “Peace” in several languages. “Salaam, Shalom, Peace”! I observed her nose wrinkle a little but she said nothing. Silence. A little tense in the room. She had me sit on one side of a conference table while she stationed herself on the opposite side with her list of words that I was going to say clearly into my microphone. I waited proudly. The Jameson’s was working perfectly. She looked at her list and then at me. Her eyes scanned my face and it appeared as if her nose did that little wrinkle thing again. She looked like she smelled something and her eyes squinted more. She then said what I thought was my first word.

“Fuck!” she whispered.

Wait…what the hell…? Did she intend that I say “Fuck”? I was confused. My face must have displayed my muddled and disorganized state. Her expression said volumes.

“Fuck?”, I repeated into the microphone.

“Fuuuck”, she croaked.

I again said, “Fuck?”.

“Oh, FUUUUUUCK…”, she sang.

Me. “FUU-HUUK” directly into the mike.

I repeated it for clarity. “FUU-AH-UUUUCK!”

Oddly my accent had reverted to clear Bostonian. Dorchester to be exact.

FAAAHHHCK!

She got up and came around to my side of the table and unwrapped the microphone. While she was in the process of taking it off my neck I said, “Froo-pah”?

She didn’t need to tell me anything. I was fired.  

On the drive home I practiced a few other words in my sweet mid-Atlantic croon. “Fuck”. “Shit”. “Damn”. All those good ones.

G. M. Goodwin
July 2, 2024