Claritza Abreu (CA) and Gerardo Villacres (GV)

CA: When I came here, I thought I spoke English, um, so I took a job as a receptionist. English was easy for me to understand if you have the person right in front of you, because you can read the lips, you can read, you know, the body language. But when you take a job as a receptionist you’re pretty much on the phone.

GV: [chuckle], yeah.

CA: So over the phone is, is completely different story. And the biggest struggle was to take messages because if you pronounce a word in Spanish or a name in Spanish you write it exact same way. In English is completely different. So I had to be, you know, picking up the spelling of the names, so that was very hard. And I have a very very demanding boss. She will stand in front of me just to hear how I answer the phone. So what I did was, I sat down with my ten-years-old niece and pick up the, uh white pages, the phone book, and I said you’re going to dictate names to me, (he chuckles) and I was spelling those names. So I sat down every night for a week. (he says something I can’t understand) And I got to be an expert in picking up names and spelling the names and numbers. It was really challenging for me to do that but I, one thing that I like to do is work hard for what I want. And um, it sounds funny now, but at the time it was scary because I really needed the job and I was able to keep it because I was able to practice my (laughs) spelling.