It's My Duty To Learn A New Language

I have been so busy this past week that I have not been able to spend any time with my family, even though I live at home with them. This morning, when I woke up, my sister suggested that we go get our nails done together. I told her that it was a great idea and I would meet her at the nail salon across the street from our house, but she had her own agenda. My sister works for Washington Mutual and her branch recently ran a contest that divided the employees into teams on the basis of gender. If the female employees reached a certain goal set by the management, with regards to how many checking accounts and credit cards they opened up, the male manager would pay for them to get pedicures. If the male employees reached that goal, they were awarded a set number of hours at a driving range at the expense of the female assistant manager. The ladies won, and they all went to a nail salon after work one day. My sister liked the salon so much that she wanted to go back there, and since I didn’t know how to get there, she asked me to meet her at home so she could take me (I have no sense of direction).

So we finally arrived at Lovely Nail in downtown Saratoga. When I saw the sign, I was somewhat confused. What did they mean by Lovely Nail? Do they only make one of your nails lovely? I quickly forgot about the sign though as soon as we walked in because the salon was beautiful, and the ladies were all very nice. I was immediately aware that they valued customer service because they ran up and asked, “What you like today? Whatever you like we do for you!” We requested two manicures and politely declined their offer for the “manicure & pedicure combo”. I must admit, however, that their persistence made it difficult.

As Annie was filing my nails she attempted to begin a casual conversation with me by asking “You have boyfriend?” to which I replied, “Not yet”. Then she posed her follow-up question “Why you no have boyfriend?” to which I couldn’t come up with an answer without getting too personal. Ironically, when she was done with my nails, all of them looked great except for one. I told her that she needed to file it down more because it looked crooked, but she attributed that crookedness to the shape of my finger. At this point, I decided I would have to be pushy and I asked her again to fix it. As she was fixing my nail, she began speaking in Vietnamese with the other employees. This made me quite uncomfortable because I inevitably assumed that they were talking about me. When she saw the expression on my face she turned to me and said “She say your hair so pretty.” Yeah, right.

Every time I get my nails done and the ladies start speaking Vietnamese, I get the feeling their talking about their customers. Once again, I wished I had taken Vietnamese for my foreign language classes in high school instead of Spanish. Most people know that Spanish is useful these days, but every girl who gets her nails done is conscious of the need to understand Vietnamese. It's my duty to learn that language and then go get my nails done. This task has definitely been placed on my list of things to do before I die.

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