As some of you know, I currently reside in a nursing and rehabilitation home. The state is on management to hire more nurses and aides because it’s woefully understaffed, but it’s a shifty place to work so, rather than improving conditions so they can retain good help they are hiring people who almost entirely lack the ability to speak and understand English, to the extent that they are, I suspect, unable to order lunch at McDonald’s, and certainly not on the first try and without pointing and hand signals.
At a different job in a different industry that would not be that big of a deal, but here they are treating the elderly who are often deaf and/or demented and whose problems can be life threatening if they are unable to communicate with the staff. Today I was trying to work with three women, an RN and two CNAs, the complete day crew, who understood each other in Hindi but couldn’t understand me, speaking slowly and non-idiomatically. There are few of their co-workers and fewer residents who speak Hindi so you can see where the problem lies.
I feel sorry for these women who moved to another country to pursue their professions, only to be bitched about by some Yankee asshole, but this is a safety problem.
Not sure why you are pitting the nurses when the problem is conditions at the facility and the labor supply of people willing to work that job. If they didn’t apply for the job until they spoke fluent English, you think you’d have a fluent qualified RN for you?
You could maybe pick up a little espanol, too. Do you have any spare time? That wouldn’t be the end of the world. Sounds like you might as well, if your other option is to get pissed off and not be able to otherwise do anything about it.
When the state visits some of the staff, rather than getting new name tags printed, choose malicious compliance by writing their names on bandage tape or big, square Bandaids.
When I took a few years worth of Spanish in high school, there was one Mexican girl that I worked with at McDonalds wo would giggle and be quite impressed at how “proper” my Spanish was. Knock 'em dead!
Regarding Hindi/Spanish:
In my defense, I got bored a few sentences in and never made it to the Hindi part, and just assumed that if Dropzone couldn’t understand the nurses then they were speaking Spanish. It was either that, or Polish.
No, I can order lunch in Espanol. Polski requires my tongue to move in unnatural directions. Both, combined with passable English, would be helpful here.
