Walter, Walter Everywhere

I've talked about this before, but there is a large Filipino contingent in my office. One gentleman in particular has a rather thick accent. A really funny guy, everyone in the office likes him, but it can take a few seconds sometimes to understand exactly what he is saying. For instance...

One morning, while casing mail in the office, a rare lull came over our aisle. This is apparently not such a rare occurence when I'm not there; not really sure what to make of that (insert knowing grin here). Regardless, in the midst of all this quiet, suddenly this man starts screaming quite loudly, "Water! Water!" We all stop dead in our tracks. There doesn't appear to be any panic in his behavior, other than the repeatedly loud screaming of "Water!"

In my mind, and I'm sure in the minds of my fellow carriers, (judging by the confused and perplexed looks on their faces) ran the following choices; 1) he ate something really hot and badly needs a drink of water, 2) he spilled some water and needs it cleaned up, 3) he spilled some coffee (which he's done before) and needs water to clean it up, 4) he has somehow injured or burned himself and needs water to soothe or cool the injury, or 5) he's finally reached the breaking point of working too damn long for the Post Office and repeatedly shouting "Water!" is the outward manifestation of it. There may have been other scenarios envisioned by my co-workers, but I didn't have enough time to come up with more than those.

As those options ran thru my mind, we all froze in our tracks wide-eyed and ignorant of what was actually going on, fearful that the slightest movement may detonate something somewhere (logic tends to be abandoned in situations like these). I happened to notice that he was staring past me as he was having his onset of Tourette's syndrome, so I slowly turned to follow his gaze, and instantly let out a "you've got to be kidding" sigh of relief, followed immediately by laughter, as I figured out what the hell all the shouting was about.

Turns out the Filipino gentleman had been preparing a route that was going to be split and carried by a number of different people. One of the people who was going to be carrying a piece of that route was at the other end of the aisle, and this man was desperatley trying to get the attention of WALTER.

I do seem to recall asking at one point, "Does he come with subtitles?"