“Piso . . . CUATRO.”
It was the third time the dude at the security desk had said that.
He was trying to be patient with me.
Trying.
“Si. Comprendo. Pero . . .” I was struggling, hard.
The words I needed were totally eluding me.
“Uh . . . como se llama? Uh . . .”
Damn you, high school Spanish! You failed me.
And at a totally inopportune time.
The CEO, standing behind me, looked mildly amused.
The CFO, standing to my right, had his phone out and was thumbing through Google Translate, trying to rescue me from what was fast becoming an awkward situation.
If I’d learned anything through the years about working with and around senior people, it’s that you avoid awkwardness. Always.
And I typically do.
Whenever I travel internationally, I like to keep a few simple phrases in whatever the native language in my back pocket.
Hello. Goodbye. Please. Thank you.
I’ve found these to be invaluable while navigating a variety of circumstances overseas.
And when those don’t work, some combination of pointing, gesturing, and charades usually does.
And cash. Always cash.
Of course, English is so widely spoken, one rarely has to resort to such measures.
But, then, sometimes one does.
As I was then in Mexico City.
We were there for a meeting with the CEO of a competing company and members of his executive team to discuss a possible deal.
An important deal.
As such, I’d personally managed all the logistics.
Planes, cars, hotels, meeting agendas . . . everything had fallen neatly into place.
Until we got to the office building in which the meeting was to be held and encountered the guy at the security desk.
Who didn’t speak a lick of English.
Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have bothered me.
In fact, I would have welcomed the opportunity to habla a little espanol.
While I have no proficiency in any foreign language, I feel I could almost get by with Spanish.
Like most people I know, I took it in high school.
And maybe because my brain was still in its formative stages, some of it stuck.
Plus, I got to use it a fair amount when I was stationed in Puerto Rico.
It was my first official Navy duty station. I was eighteen.
There were several native Puerto Ricans in my squadron who spoke Spanish almost exclusively.
Unless there were officers around.
The Leading Petty Officer of my division – my boss – was among the natives.
His parents and extended family lived on the island. Some weekends, he’d take me to hang out with them in his hometown.
It was great fun, even though I couldn’t understand most of what they were saying.
But then, eventually, without even realizing it, I started to pick it up.
I owed a lot of that to Vilmary. She was my boss’s cousin.
When the Navy Ball rolled around later that year, I was informed I would be cutting the cake with the base Commanding Officer.
It was a tradition.
He was the oldest active service member on the base, and I was the youngest.
So, together, we had to cut the cake.
Given the prominent role I’d be playing, I didn’t want to seem a loser and go stag.
So, my boss offered to set me up with Vilmary.
Who didn’t speak a word of English.
I accepted his offer, but doubted she would.
I was wrong.
My status as an official cake-cutter apparently convinced her of my merits as a date.
And, I have to say, she played the part of date-of-cake-cutter brilliantly.
At one point, I got to introduce her to my squadron Commanding Officer.
Not wanting to be rude to Vilmary, who was vastly out-numbered by English-only speakers, I made the introduction in Spanish.
It was an improved version of my high school Spanish.
I had to up my game as an official cake-cutter, after all.
Upon hearing me converse with Vilmary en espanol, my Commanding Officer looked over at the Executive Officer, standing nearby, and said, “Hey, XO, get this: He speaks Spanish, too!”
Which, of course, I didn’t.
But I wasn’t going to stop the Skipper from thinking I was some kind of boy genius.
Anyway.
Back at the security desk in Mexico City, I was still flailing.
The whole problem started when I had to fill out the building’s guest registry.
Most of the column headings in the registry were familiar.
Nombre. Yup.
Fecha. Got it.
Para ver, or “to see.” Okay.
But then I got stuck on the fourth column, labeled “Piso.”
I couldn’t for the life of me remember what that word meant.
I told the security guy in my very rusty high school Spanish the name of the company we were there to visit and that I didn’t know exactly where in the building it resided.
“Piso cuatro,” he replied.
Yes, I know, I had to write down the piso in the fourth column of the registry.
But I still didn’t know what the hell a piso was.
“Piso cuatro,” he said again.
Okay, I thought. This guy’s just being a wise ass.
So, I repeated, in my still-shitty Spanish, that I didn’t know where in the building we were supposed to go or what the hell a piso was.
“Piso . . . CUATRO,” he said for the third time.
I was getting nowhere.
Finally, our CFO chimed in, “Piso means floor. He’s telling you the office is on the fourth floor.”
Oh. Okay.
I smiled awkwardly at the security guy and managed a meek, defeated, “Gracias,” and made my way to the elevator.
We sat down at the meeting with the CEO and others.
I pulled the manilla folder out of my briefcase that contained all the details of the various topics on our agenda.
As I did so, a portion of an email I had printed caught my eye.
“When you get to the building, check in with the security guard and then head up to the fourth floor. Our offices are there.”
Shit. There it was.
Piso cuatro.
Sorry, security dude.
And damn you, high school Spanish!