Larry - CP4

Met with Dolores Buchanan on July 23rd for 2 hours. Dolores is a former co-worker at Home Depot. She is from Spain and is in her mid 50's. Actually, Dolores and I have talked for at least 100 hours over the past year. She has been disenchanted with her employment and feels she has been passed over for promotions because of her heavy Spanish accent. It admittedly is difficult to understand her. Consequently, she applied for a different position at a different business, where she could possibly use her bi-lingual ability. She was accepted. The 23rd was her last day, and we went out for lunch after we both finished working. We talked about the normal things; overseas work, on-the-job difficulties, different people at work, old age problems, and our "significant others". I had told her I needed a conversation partner and she had agreed. I therefore corrected her pronunciation, sentence structure, and grammar. We got a good laugh out of my corrections or her mistakes. I tried to give her a bit of motivation to concentrate on my corrections by telling her she would need to rely to a greater extent on her pronunciation as she would be in sales. She agreed and made corrections accordingly as we talked. We decided to go over to a local mall and walk a circuit of the mall. The purpose was to talk about things that would relate to her new job. I tried to get her to go into Victoria Secrets, but she pushed me along saying something about it being ridiculous. We talked about selling and finding customers' needs, financial selling points, appealing to personal egos, etc. It was a good two hours of conversation, and I think it did both of us a lot of good. She seemed glad that we did it and agreed it probably would help her in her new job. Her major weakness is pronunciation. She actually speaks rapidly and has a very good vocabulary. I appreciated her willingness to go with me and she appreciated my assistance. She agreed to go another time if needed.