Tina from Peppermaster shared a great story with us about some of the fun stuff she has to deal with selling hot sauce in her native Quebec. We have had experience with the French while living in Belgium, both of the people from France and the French-speaking Wallons from Belgium. The one truism was that 98% of people with French as their primary language were stubborn, obnoxious, difficult to deal with, and essentially were…well, you get the idea. We theorize that it’s something genetic, and is inescapably printed in their genetic code. Years of behavorial therapy, shock treatments, and intensive pharmacologic therapy can help, but who needs that sort of aggravation??? Tina’s story shows her encounter with one of her fellow Canucks. This woman may not have been French per se or even a Quebecer, but it sure sounds like she fits into one of those 98%…

It’s so great getting kudos from folks like you guys, it makes up for the times when we run into the rare people who leave a bad taste in our mouths. I got an email this afternoon from someone here in Quebec who hadn’t bought a jar of my sauce since she bought the first one back at one of our first shows in 2004. She lit a strip into me in her email for not having a bilingual website. She ended the note by saying that until our site was bilingual she would no longer be purchasing our product and instead would buy the imports. She has no choice, [since] there aren’t many folks up here doing hot sauce.

Although her email really upset me, I was very gracious. I asked her why, rather than take the business away from all of the Quebecers who contribute to our products and give them to someone on the other side of the world, she didn’t simply offer to translate our site.

I told her that she was right, but that as much as it bothered me that my site wasn’t in French, I didn’t have the means to consecrate as much money as it would cost to translate for what constitued less than 10% of my market.

Then I thanked her for her criticism and told her we looked forward to seeing her once the translations were completed.

hehe.

Nothing if not a gracious wordsmith.

Touché, Tina. Touché indeed.