Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview
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Nguyen, known as Win, had lived in a small town on the outskirts of Halifax for nearly two years. He had work in the city, friends, and life was pretty good. His English, however, was still poor, he felt—
native fluency being his standard. So, he took advantage of every opportunity to improve his English, and being a gregarious person, there were lots.
Early on, some of the locals sniggered. Win wasn't stupid, and he knew he was the butt of many silly jokes, but he didn't care. Over time, his persistence won over even the surliest, old postmaster Ferguson, and the burliest, Chief Taggert. A quick study, Win got to where he could verbally diagram sentences during conversations, and this impressed a few, then intimidated some more, and ultimately annoyed everyone. He kept on doing it but only in his head.
At the office, one of the favourite topics to bitch about was telemarketers. Hang-ups and call screening were the common solutions.
Win used to be polite, but now he hung up, too. Tony had tried bul-lying, but it took a lot more effort than he'd imagined, so he gave up. Ian had just set up a business line with a pay-per-call service and was collecting 10 cents a minute for telemarketing calls. She-lagh, the English expert with a Master's from Dalhousie, exasperated at playing thesaurus, got the messianic idea that Win should practice on telemarketers.
It was genius! In the evening, Win set up a dummy online account with a luring marketing profile—a St. Mary's undergrad working two jobs—and waited … but not long.
"Good evening, is Mr. N-GOO-YEN there?"
"Call me Win."