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Sometimes it's the little things.
The young woman behind the counter was chatting in Polish with her coworker as she deftly tossed my salad.
She threw in the bits of diced grilled chicken, the sunflower seeds, the sliced hardboiled egg, and the Caesar dressing, expertly manning the tongs in giving it all a light toss.
She then transferred it from the mixing bowl into a plastic serving bowl, snapped a lid onto it, and handed it to me.
"Dziękują bardzo," I said -- Polish for "Thank you very much."
The young woman fairly beamed. "You're very welcome," I'm pretty sure she said -- also in Polish.
Mind you, she speaks English. I've heard her. And my command of Polish is extremely limited -- "please" and "thank you," basically.
In my bartending days, I worked for a while with a Polish barback (sort of a busboy for the bar). He, too, spoke a reasonable amount of English, but I figured it'd be nice for him to hear his native tongue spoken (albeit poorly) every now and then, so I learned how to say "please" and "thank you" in Polish. He seemed to appreciate the effort.
As did my salad maker. No more than my pidgin Polish was needed. She got a little lift from the encounter, and I was the recipient of a lovely smile and two stamps instead of one on my "buy nine, get the tenth salad free" card.
Like I said, sometimes it's the little things.
Posted by brett at 03:30 PM | TrackBack