Chasing you tightly

Let me begin by saying that I have the UTMOST respect for people who can communicate in more than one language.  I, sadly, am very 'mono-lingual' - and some days even have difficulties with English.  My family still mocks me for telling a bus driver in Mexico 'There are ocho of us'. 

I work for a large corporation that sells diagnostic laboratory equipment around the world.  This equipment is large and complex, and requires one of our engineers to actually install it at customer sites - usually large hospitals or labs.  We don't typically keep very much inventory, so we are usually building for customer orders.  We try to get a forecast from every region so that we have an idea of what to build, but the numbers don't always match up.  You can imagine this requires quite a lot of consolidation and coordination.   

One of the major parts of my job is to keep track of all of these orders and ship our products out per those orders and schedules that we receive.  This involves communicating with people around the world.  On any given day I have communications with people in Russia, India, Turkey, Korea, Argentina, France, etc.  For obvious reasons, the bulk of this communication is done via email.  (Mostly due to the time differential, and also for record keeping purposes, etc)

Thus, I get an emails from many people for whom English is not their first language.  (And again, let me stress that I admire and envy these people.)  But once in a while they say something in the email that tickles me.  This morning I got an email from someone in Korea who is trying to get an instrument faster than I can get it to her.  Their forecast was low, we weren't expecting the quantity of orders, and are scrambling to try to get her some instruments that weren't in the plan.  I've had a number of back and forth emails with her, explaining out predicament and also - to try to keep this from happening again - explaining the forecasting etc.  (not to bore you completely with  my job!) 

Her email response to me had to do with why she needed them.  We were already past the date the customer wanted them, etc   She concluded a paragraph with "Sorry for chasing you so tightly".  Of course I know what she really means - but it struck me as funny. 

It reminded me of instructions that one gets in products that are produced in other geographies.  I once bought a small water fountain for our porch.  (You know the kind - they sit on a table and have a little pump that processes water over rocks for a soothing sound.)  One of the instructions when we were setting it up said "Wet the roadway" - meaning - pour some water over the rocks before you start. 

I know there are lots of examples.  But I'll be smiling all day thinking of Clara apoligizing for chasing me so tightly.