For a good three years now, I'd been lucky enough to be hidden from our most notorious client. From the few glances I'd managed to take of her without making myself visible some time last year, I vaguely recall Ms Sung looking like a typical si lai, except from what I hear, she's single and desperate.
"Pleasant, but in a creepy way" is how my chief describes her. She has a mental record of practically everyone in our company, by name, job duty and seating arrangement. She never hesitates to ask for help, either over the phone or in person, with things that are far out of our service range.
I was surrendered as the newest prisoner of war a couple of days ago. My guess is that she originally called for my chief, but because he was unavailable, asked to talk to someone who presumably knew enough to answer her English questions—our CEO, who then conveniently referred her to me. She had a long list of words she wanted to know how to pronounce. Under normal circumstances, teaching someone, anyone, the pronunciation of a few words isn't too much to ask of me, even in times like now when I'm up to my eyebrows with urgent/overdue work. The problem was that Ms Sung now knows of my existence, which my more considerate colleagues have made a point of concealing from her all this time.
The chain reaction has already kicked in. Before I've even digested my breakfast this morning I got Ms Sung on line 3 with yet another list of words, which is so random that it can’t possibly have anything to do with her work. Today’s vocabulary included "omen" and "furious". It was too bad she hadn't asked for usage examples. "I knew getting stuck in traffic this morning was bad omen…I’m furious that my boss sold me out."
It's obvious that what Ms Sung needs isn't our trade promotion services, an electronic dictionary or phonetics lessons, but human interaction. I feel sorry for her, especially knowing that one of these days, she's going to call me at the worst possible time, and I'm going to do what none of my colleagues have had the guts to do—hang up.
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I'd recommend you asking her if she is a frequent user of the world wide web or if she's even heard of such technology or not. Then maybe you can suggest to her to check out www.dictionary.com for pronounciation. This way you can tell her off by offering her a convenient alternative that could attend to her needs whenever she needs.
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