Lost in Translation

On Friday we had the whole day kind of workshop in the office. There was a pretty long lunch break of 1,5hours and one of our western colleagues from the “downstairs” office ask us if we would like to order pizza. This is always a very welcomed change in food supply as our office surrounding is more or less a desert regarding delicious food for lunch. The small pizzeria offers really good pizzas, but they are amazingly slow, that’s why I asked our colleague to make sure that the pizza will be in the office on time- means at least in 1,5 hours. A few minutes later the phone ring and one of our Indonesian colleagues picked up, just recognizing the typical ya, oh ya, yah! But nothing happens so far. All colleagues ask us what we will have for lunch and we answered that we have to wait for our pizza.
After around one hour I got told that our colleague from downstairs who ordered the pizza for us was eating some fried noodles- no problem so far, because I thought she might was very hungry and starving for the pizza. Finally everybody got back to the workshop besides us, while telling them that we have to wait for our ordered pizza. It was already over 1,5 hours since we ordered so we asked our colleague downstairs, if there are any news: The simple answer was: No pizza today, because the pizzeria said it will takes two hours to deliver, that’s why she did not order and called immediately our colleague to inform us, that we won’t get any pizza today.
He simply “forgot” to deliver the given information to us!
I send our office boss a text message to inform her that we are not able to join the workshop again, because of this stupid guy- no answer!
We ordered again in our local food supplier to receive our lunch at 2.30pm. Later on my office boss ask me, that she did not understand the text message and what happens to us. I explained and she simply replied: lost in translation- he might not get the message correct.