diff --git a/confluent_server/confluent/selfservice.py b/confluent_server/confluent/selfservice.py
index fbc0f61f..2c203c46 100644
--- a/confluent_server/confluent/selfservice.py
+++ b/confluent_server/confluent/selfservice.py
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ import time
 import yaml
 
 currtz = None
-currlocale = en_US.UTF-8
+currlocale = 'en_US.UTF-8'
 currtzvintage = None