My first reminder was when Russell Brand completely destroyed the morning news crew on MSNBC. Brand looks disheveled (for transparency, before I looked up how to spell "disheveled" I thought it was "bisheveled". I undoubtedly have said that before. Anyway...) and acts crudely. However he sounded absolutely brilliant as he mocked the news crew for their lack of professionalism (see below link)
My second experience was at a training class I attended in Toronto. I was teamed up with 3 other people for the two day seminar. One of the attendants was from London. Putting a Texan and a Brit at the same table made for some serious comprehension issues. I even had to apologize that English was my second language as he had to tell me his job title 6 times before I could understand him (Media Trader). He was one second away from doing one of those loud over exaggerated pronunciations with hand movements.
What I noticed is that everyone hung on his every word. The instructor deferred to him, one woman let very crude comments slide without even a glance of disapproval and the men thought his stories were awesome. They were by the way. He told one story about going on a jolly (like a boondoggle) to Vegas with a very wealthy friend that had wired $500k to the casino for their play money. There were tales of $10,000 bottles of Cristal, a $185,000 bar tab and making it rain at Crazy Horse.
He was even wearing the $30,000 watch that he bought after winning at the blackjack tables.
If I told that story everyone would have called bullshit, but when he told it we laughed our asses off thinking that he must be the most fun guy in the world to hang out with.
He even got away with cussing in a formal business setting... A lot. He would mix in "bloody fuck" like he learned it in grade school (example: How the bloody fuck are we supposed to calculate the profit margin if we don't have visibility to the direct costs mate?). People either couldn't understand him or they simply didn't care. Either way it was fascinating.
On the other hand, my Texas accent (slight) seems to draw the opposite reaction. People don't expect me to be smart or even be able to complete a sentence (thanks W). Even my instructor tried to poke fun at me for how she assumed I would pronounce the word "creek". I told her, "I reckoned you are right, ma'am..."
Are you ever swayed by accents (good or bad)? Leave me a bloody F'ing comment.
