That wouldn’t exempt him from a sturdy ream job for leaving said nieces there, vulnerable and unable to properly do the job for which they were hired because he didn’t have the forethought to realize that communication is an inherent part of a service position. In fact, that he’d be so callous as to do something like that to newly immigrated family members would make him deserving of a double serving of ream job, as far as I’m concerned. How dare he?
I find it really, really hard to believe that the manager DELIBERATELY scheduled nothing but non-English speakers. The manager has to know that chaos will ensue, and that the till will end up nearly empty. It can’t be something they wanted to happen.
So…the english speaking aunt became ill at the last moment, something like that. Or, even more likely ime, the native born help scheduled for that stretch decided at the last moment to blow off the shift, leaving the others up a creek.
Anyway, I urge you all to cut them some slack. The time between not speaking ANY english and the level of proficiency that will allow basic communication between customer/help can’t be more than a week or two. Let’s see, you have to learn the names of everything on the menu, the numbers from one to 12, the variations that coffee comes in… what, a vocabulary of less than a hundred words and some rote phrases (Please speak slowly. Please point at the doughnut you want. How do you want your coffee?) will do in 90% of the cases.
God forbid immigrants make an effort to learn some english before moving here. It’s not like they are suddenly waking up in America, not knowing how they got here. Once the decision is made to move to another country, it is fairly reasonable to expect a person to spend a bit of time learning the language.
In my experience, it tends to be a problem for illegal “immigrants” much more often for the law-abiding.
I’m strongly in favor of immigration, but I believe “illegal immigrant” is an oxymoron. And as Brutus says, if you plan to move here you should at least try to learn English beforehand. It’s not like you don’t have time.
…much more often than for the law-abiding…
Sometimes my English ain’t so good either.
In my area there are quite a few businesses - some of which are, indeed, franchises with national chains - which are bought by immigrants. These immigrants learn enough from the current employees to run the place, then fire everyone and bring in their families to run it.
There’s a Bullet’s up the street where a lot of my stepsons’ friends used to work. It was bought by a Middle Eastern family, who now run and staff it. (One of them was an employee there for six months, learning the ropes while waiting to purchase it.) Two of them speak any English. One of them is there at all times to call out the orders in their native tongue so the line people will know what to make. It has increased wait time somewhat.
While the service isn’t as good as it used to be, I’m sure it will be up to specs pretty soon. So this ME family has saved or borrowed to buy its own business and carve themselves a niche, while the slacker 20-somethings who used to work there spend their nights playing video games, smoking dope, and bitching about “the foreigners taking all of [their] jobs.”
It was pretty shitty to have only one English speaker at the store when you got there - particularly a place which does a lot of drive-through business - but you have to admire what they’re (probably) doing as a whole.
Me, I’d’ve put the English speaker at the drive-through window, and had her call the orders in Greek. If she was in shorts, though, it sounds as though she was either off the clock or a family member who wasn’t actually employed there.
It sucks when you can’t get your coffee and doughnut (or Donut) because somebody doesn’t speak English, but don’t forget, nobody owes you the privilege of buying things from them any more than you owe them your business. If you want to be friendly to a new English speaker, maybe increase his/her confidence, and don’t mind sacrificing a little extra time, keep on going to that DD franchise. If you don’t have the time or inclination, nobody could blame you for getting your caffeine from somewhere else.
But I agree that people should be expected to learn the native language when they emigrate. It’s the least they can do for the land they intend to call their home. That’s why, when the Pilgrims stepped off the Mayflower, the first thing they did was learn fluent Algonkin, and they conducted business exclusively in that language from that day forward. It’s also why I won’t consider myself a true American until I learn Leni Lenape.
I’d say the “language thing” came before the “customer service thing”, but they go hand-in-hand, nonetheless.
I utterly HATE the level of miscommunication due to language barriers. If I was in the driver’s seat, I’d make all my employees take a functional English test before I’d hire them.
In my work place here on the Texas/Mexico border, we see many applicants who don’t speak English. We will not hire anyone who does not speak and read English, no exceptions. It is a safety requirement. People in situations where they must handle chemicals of any sort, read instructions, prepare recipes, interact with the public etc. cannot perform their jobs safely if they don’t read and speak English. I would not purchase food from any place that did not understand such requirements. It would not be safe. Here on the Border we understand that, why doesn’t the rest of the country understand the same thing. I think it is swell that new immigrants want to work but they must learn the language of their new country. I would expect to do the same if I immigrated to another country.
I encounter this problem so often since I moved the Southwest…
It’s infuriating, trying to order food at a restaurant where the staff can’t understand what I’m saying. I get it a lot at Asian restaurants, where often the wait staff doesn’t speak English, and I have a question about some of the menu items- I’m allergic to fish, so I have to be careful about what I order since many Asian dishes contain fish even though it isn’t part of the name. Usually, I end up talking to a manager and get the information I need, but really…
Then there are receptionist types who have accents so thick that you literally cannot understand a word they’re saying. They have a fairly decent grasp of the language, but are still unable to communicate with the English-speaking world because they will drop letters and even entire syllables from words…
And, really, that’s an easy fix. Just speak a bit more slowly and concentrate on your pronunciation.
I’m not going to argue that immigrants should not be able to work and make a living until they speak fluent English, that would be absurd. But I think employers have a responsibility to both the employees and the customers to not put them on the front line interacting with customers. Keep them in the back office, kitcchen, wherever, surrounded by English-speaking coworkers until they have a grasp of the language, then move them out front.
Or, they could work in an ethnic restaurant.
Only speak Greek? Work in a gyro shop.
Then I can come in, order my souvalaki and spanikopita, get what I ordered, and we’ll all live happily ever after.
In principle I agree with the remark that people hired to be in direct contact with the clients must be able to understand the client.
Yet I must ask the US or other English speaking members posting on this thread and saying that “immigrant must know the language before they immigrate” :
How many English speaking people work all over the globe and have no clue about the language of the nation they go to for earning their money?
There are a few others who are located in Japan. I have the impression they at least speak the language or are making the effort to learn it.
There is one member (that I know of) located in Germany and (I think) studies there and is learning German.
There are for a few US members here who seem to be located in Saudi Arabia or elswhere in the ME. Do they speak Arabic or make the effort learning it?
I know many others who have no clue about the language of the country they go to, yet expect everyone there to be able to speak theirs. I encounter such people very regularly.
Do you think such people should be prevented from entering these nations if they don’t know the language or do you think the whole world needs to leanr English. They surely do and some of them are even arrogant enough to say it people’s face.
Salaam. A
Nah. I think the world should have to learn Latin and koine Greek.
And Slavonic.
No, I agree totally that many immigrants are being exploited. I just wanted to make sure that was what aurelian was implying before I said that I’m pretty tired of hearing about how all the poor helpless immigrants are being exploited. The American economy unfortunately exploits whoever it can, not just immigrants. If it doesn’t look like a good deal, immigrants certainly have the option of going back home.
It’s interesting that you bring up Japan. I worked for a Japanese company that wanted to send me to Japan to work for two years. I declined, partly because my Japanese is terrible, and I already knew that there would be very little accommodation of my lack of Japanese. It’s their country, so if they don’t want to speak English, that’s up to them. They also tend to be extremely suspicious of foreigners and it is almost impossible to immigrate to Japan. These attitudes stem from a feeling that Japan has a special culture and character that is worth protecting from foreign influences. While I think Japan could probably benefit from a little more openness, I can certainly respect their viewpoint and I wish one could hold such views about America without being immediately ostracized as a racist.
If you’re talking about travelers, then no – they shouldn’t need to know the language to merely enter the country.
Otherwise, I don’t think there’s a valid comparison between American professionals working overseas and low-wage immigrants working with an English-speaking public. Speaking Arabic is not necessarily a job requirement for, say, an American petroleum engineer in Bahrain (though knowledge of Arabic makes the overseas experience immeasurably richer).
But the situation with the Greek donut shop employees is completely different. Occupational competency (not necessarily fluency) in English is a de facto, fundamental requirement of customer service in the U.S.
Lastly, those that have written that “an immigrant should learn English” before coming to America do not mean that those who are not fluent in English should be shut out by law. Should, in this case, is an expression of suggestion, making the sentiment more like: “It would benefit future immigrants to the U.S. to begin learning English – for a variety of reasons”.
Consider how the sense of “an immigrant should learn English before coming to America” is different from “an immigrant should be required to learn English before coming to America”.
Yes, Japanese do not like it that foreigners learn their language.
When I got interested in the language I heard that from my teacher and I ordered my books via a Japanese friend because even the univ’s own bookstores were not able to get everything in time for all the students.
Yet that was when I just reached the age of wisdom - which is 17 - so maybe in 14 years time something changed in this attitude. I think to have read here that members who are in Japan learn the language there.
Salaam. A
[QUOTE=bordelond]
If you’re talking about travelers, then no – they shouldn’t need to know the language to merely enter the country.
I don’t speak about tourists.
I speak about people going to an other nation for making money.
I don’t see why someone “low-wage” should be “required” to know English in the USA and someone born in the USA “being allowed to stick to English” when he is in an other nation and making a lot of more money out of that.
If that person comes in contact with clients then they can with the same right expect from him to know their language then a client from a coffeeshop in the USA can expect someone who works there to know English.
Salaam. A
Hyperelastic, sorry if I overreacted.
Eh… I don’t mean to sound rude, but can you please explain the use of quotes and italics in your reference to illegal immigrants?
This is because you haven’t given the matter even one moment of actual thought.
A service job really has one requirement – to please the customer. If you don’t, they don’t return. That sort of involves actually being able to communicate with the customer.
Let us contrast this to a professional job. Communicating with the customer would be nice. However there are other requirements. For example, knowing how to engineer a bridge, or identify oil-bearing shales, program a database, or manufacture a computer chip. Not only are these somewhat language-free tasks, but it’s often inefficient to have your highly-trained help spending their time learning a language instead of doing what you’re paying them for. This is particularly true for difficult languages such as Japanese and cases where the professional is not intending to stay permanently.
Yes, it’s courteous to know enough of the language to navigate, and it would make the employee even more valuable in the long run to learn the language. Certainly, if I were to get a job overseas, I’d do my best to learn the local language. But I wouldn’t need it to get my job done, unless they couldn’t find me an ASCII keyboard.
It depends completely on the job, and what is required. I don’t think there’s any one covering rule that can apply to all situations. There are low-wage jobs in the U.S. that don’t require any knowledge of English. Similarly, there are overseas jobs for English speakers that require no knowledge of the local language.
Naturally, in a client-driven job overseas in a non-English-speaking nation, an American should be required to ave some competency (if not fluency) the native language. It only stands to reason.