religion makes people do funny things

Today at work my manager was attempting to speak with one of our suppliers, an orthodox Jew living in Israel, about an urgent request for some import documents. Because my manager Mike is also Jewish (non-practicing), Daniel, the supplier, has on occasion refused to talk to or email him on certain Jewish holidays where they were forbidden to do business with other Jews. However he has no problem talking to me. Today happens to be one of those days, the last day of Sukkot (don't ask me what that is), and when my manager called Daniel, he said, "I can't talk to you right now. Hang up the phone and I'll call Diane. Don't pass the phone to her. You can listen but don't talk cause I can't respond to you."

And so I put him on the speaker phone while Mike sits next to me whispering his responses to the supplier so I can repeat them (since I wasn't kept in the loop on this issue). Of course I wasn't familiar with the terms and procedures, so I missed a word here or there and then some. After a while, the supplier was like, "don't ever become a translator for the U.N."

So the conversation ended with Daniel saying he's going to yell at Mike and beat him with a (Jewish word I didn't get). And Mike said he was going to throw dreidels at him. One of our VP's overheard the conversation and said that was one of the weirdest conference calls he's ever heard.