Ten minutes later, Lin Yao and Lin Yun walked out of the office.
As a follow-up to the foreigner's call previously, Lin Yun proposed that Jian Wen help return the call to the foreigner.
It wasn't reasonable for Lin Yao to make such a request, but it was reasonable for Lin Yun to make it.
Jian Wen wasn't a rookie like Lin Yao, so she wouldn't be bothered by a challenge of this level.
Jian Wen didn't procrastinate. She walked over there with a poker face, then pressed the callback button on Lin Yao's landline and put it on speaker.
Soon, the foreigner's voice sounded on the other end of the phone, "Hello?"
Jian Wen had already thought out what she was going to say, "Hello, this is Jian from Lingyun Industry, calling for…"
She introduced herself in a self-confident manner, then quietly waited for the other person's response.
According to normal business procedure, both parties on the phone should introduce themselves and explain the purpose of their call. Then they would propose a solution for a compromise so that the purpose of the call could be achieved.
Unfortunately, the foreigner on the other end of the phone didn't play by the handbook, and he appeared to have a short temper. He spoke very quickly and babbled away on his own.
Since she had an expert as backup, Lin Yao was no longer so anxious. She felt that she could vaguely discern some terms she understood, but she still couldn't link these words together to understand what the foreigner wanted to express.
In reality, everyone, including Jian Wen, had difficulty understanding.
Gradually, Jian Wen became affected by the foreigner's speech pattern, and she constantly repeated, "Pardon?"
"Excuse me?"
"Could you say that again?"
As a result, none of them could effectively communicate with each other, so without reaching any progress, the foreigner hung up again in exasperation.
There was a sudden silence in the office.
No one expected this to happen!
Lin Yao pondered over how if the person who made the call was herself, she would be furious and ashamed at the moment.
After all, as someone with a CET-4 certificate, she already wanted to dig a hole in the ground to hide in because she couldn't understand the foreigner's call. If even someone with a CET-8 certificate couldn't understand, shouldn't she be even more ashamed?
However, Jian Wen's level of mental endurance wasn't something a rookie like Lin Yao could imagine.
The expression on Jian Wen's face remained the same, and speaking Mandarin in a Northeast accent, she commented aloofly, "That foreigner's English was horrible."
Boom—!
Lin Yao's fragile heart was greatly affected.
The shock was even greater than when Lin Yun said she would "teach" her.
******
After work, Lin Yao didn't immediately leave the company. She sat in her seat and carefully recalled what the foreigner said in those two calls.
Lin Yao personally believed that her English wasn't that terrible, yet why couldn't she understand him at all? And it wasn't just her. None of the six salespeople in the company could understand what he was saying!
Although on the surface, this was an unthinkable incident, if she thought about it more carefully, she could pinpoint the reasons for it happening. There were a couple, and one of them was that she was simply too nervous.
Since the previous phone call had been the first time Lin Yao received a call from a foreigner, she had no mental preparation at all. Plus, she was also sitting across from a poker-faced expert.
The extreme anxiety made her brain freeze, and as a result, she couldn't take in what the other person was saying.
The second reason was that she just couldn't understand.
For the second phone call, since Jian Wen led the way in the front, Lin Yao didn't panic, and she was able to discern individual words, but she still couldn't understand what the foreigner wanted to express.
What Lin Yao didn't quite understand this time was why the others couldn't understand either. What she didn't know was that even if the foreigner had asked these questions in Chinese, as a rookie in this industry, they still wouldn't have a single clue as to what he was saying.
The third reason was that it was simply too hard to hear him.
Sometimes, the sound quality of international long-distance phone calls wasn't stable. For example, during this phone call, you could hear static in the background.
The foreigner was an impatient man who spoke like a cannonball, and at a very fast speed. Furthermore, the foreigner had a heavy accent when he spoke English, and this was why Jian Wen had said that his English was horrible.
...
What left the greatest impression on Lin Yao was Jian Wen commenting that the foreigner's English was "horrible."
Under the circumstances just now, imagine if Lin Yao was the one who commented on the foreigner's poor English, then everyone would probably think that she wanted to use this absurd excuse to divert attention from her own issues.
Or perhaps everyone would think of it as a poorly disguised, blatantly flawed attempt at kissing someone's ass.
Then they might have laughed it off or perhaps would even mock her directly, or even burst out laughing at her... In short, no one would agree with her.
When Jian Wen said this, the effect was completely different.
What level of English would someone with a CET-8 certificate have?
Lin Yao had no idea, but she did know that many of the English professors at the university she was studying at didn't even have a CET-8 certificate.
Since an expert of this level had already said that the foreigner's English was "horrible," his English must really be poor.
Thus she concluded this matter with this sort of mindset.
From the attitudes of Jian Wen and everyone else regarding this matter, Lin Yao discovered that if her abilities reached a high enough level, then no matter what she did, she would still have enough confidence whether she was successful or not.
Because if she couldn't understand, then others wouldn't be able to understand either! What she couldn't do, no one else could do either!
This was the confidence that only an expert with authority could rightfully have.
Since childhood, Lin Yao had always been a girl that had gone with the flow. She went to school when she should have and took exams when she should have as well.
Although she demanded very little of herself and didn't perform well, there were always people who had even lower standards and performed even worse than her.
So she never felt that there was anything wrong with herself or her way of doing things, but she did not know what ambition was.
The situation was different now. Lin Yao had become the least capable person at Lingyun Industry, and she didn't want to stay at the bottom!
That's right, she was still a girl with no ambitions, but at least she had a sense of shame.