No Barking

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While working in Middle East Asia, I came across a strange boss who had the inability to pronounce the alphabet “P” and would rather sound it like “B”. For example, if he is asking me to bring him a “bebsi”, I would bring him a Pepsi instead, since I knew his shortfall. Once we were in the process of producing and fixing sign boards across our office premises. At an instance, my boss had to directly communicate to the painter and instructed him to produce a huge sign board to be fixed just outside the main gate. Since the painter had not completed the job, we asked him to finish and fix it in the night, called it a day and went home. As I arrived at the office early next morning, I was completely taken aback by surprise to see a huge crowd that had gathered in front of the main gate. Making way through the crowd, I saw a puzzled man in front of our gate, who had come for morning walk along with his pet. More than him, the pet dog had a much more puzzled look in its face and was staring at the sign board with a total sense of amusement. My confusion and the mystery came to an end after I saw the sign board. It read “No Barking” and the dog was thoroughly confused as to whether it was really a barking-free area, or it was perhaps a spelling mistake of the painter. Then I realized that my boss in fact wanted to instruct the painter to produce a “No Parking” sign board to be fixed in front of the main gate. As usual, he had used the “B” sound instead of “P” and the painter had diligently obeyed the instructions of the boss.