Brazil

A few months ago, my office hired a part-time guy from Brazil. Yes, Brazil the country. Carnival, bossa nova and all of that. We brought him in partly because in addition to Portuguese, he also speaks Spanish. He turned down an offer to work at Ambercrombie & Fitch to take the office job.

He came in just as nice as could be. Nobody could understand a word that he was saying -- one of our customers, after talking to him on the phone, thought that he was Middle Eastern, and tried to relay back to me what he thought was said...wholly unsuccessfully -- but he said it in a very pleasant tone.

Then we started to learn a little more about him. About how he had been a bee keeper in Hawaii and Florida while studying in the United States. How he has a degree in agronomy that he hasn't figured out anything to do with. How he dragged his young wife to Brazil so that he could finish college, only to have her drag him back to the comparatively frigid Midwest.

All of that was normal. Sort of. I mean, the bee keeping stuff was kind of odd, but if you're an agronomy major there's only so many internships available to you probably.

Our first clue that there was more to him, though, was during an early staff meeting I asked if there were any additional questions or comments. He raised his hand. "Yes, he said, in his lilting accented English and pointing at two coworkers, "I don't like them."

He was joking (we're pretty sure), but it caused us to start paying attention to the gibberish that was coming out of his mouth. Turns out that once you can decipher it, there's a lot of stuff like that. It's like having a South American Latka Gravas in a shirt and tie.

He told one story about when he tried to buy toothpaste when he first came to the U.S. in Florida. He translated the Portuguese "pasta de dente" into paste for teeth. However, he struggled a little with the "th" sound, so he went into the store and said to the lady behind the counter, "I need paste for my teets." We're not clear on exactly what he was given, but apparently he can run a marathon without chafing.

Then, we found out that he's actually a published children's storybook writer in his native country. The story is about a frog and a fly that fall in love with each other. After reading it in both Portuguese and English, I told him that it was better in Portuguese. I wasn't trying to be insulting...it actually did flow better in the language in which it was written. He acknowledged that trying to get words about frog on fly love to translate wasn't as easy as he thought it would be.

All of that was great, but then came this...his You Tube work. We're honestly not sure what to make of it, but it did make the other manager in our area laugh so hard that he hyperventilated.

Lord knows what's coming next. Were he Argentinian, I'd probably be worried that something might come out about his lineage, but being Brazillian he seems safe with that. The biggest worry is finding out that he's got another name...he's already got too many to fit on a business card. It's like 10 or 11 words, if you count all the de's.

One thing my sitcom life was missing was the truly wacky character. Sometimes if you just stay patient, inspiration comes walking in the door...fresh off an Ambercrombie & Fitch employee orientation.