Can’t stand them. Mostly they amount to ignorance… like this last one I overheard today…
Some woman is talking about her recent trip to Mexico, Mexico City in particular and I can tell by her tone she was not impressed…
Woman A: “…And you would not believe how hard it is to get a bottle of water in downtown Mexico city!”
Woman B: “Oh? Why is that? Do they not sell water in stores?”
Woman A: “No, that’s not it. It’s just that they DON’T SPEAK THE LANGUAGE!” (bold caps are mine).
At which point I am absolutely incensed by her ignorance and I pipe up… “You mean they don’t speak spanish in Mexico?!”…
Silence as I exit the room.
Why are people so fucking stupid?
Heehee, what a dumb fuck! My entire education in Spanish was through Sesame Street, and I know how to ask for a friggin bottle of water! Just repeat after the guy crawling through the desert: AGUA!
But I had a year of Spanish and my phrase book with me, and I almost starved in Monterrey Mexico.
My accent confused them and nothing could get past that.
I could point to something on the menu, say it correctly, but with an accent, and they still wouldn’t serve things to me until there was someone found to translate the concept “Give me what I’m pointing to, the #2 plate.”
I’ll stick to border towns, thank you.
QuickSilver, walk around the office and get everyone to talk to this woman only in Spanish. It doesn’t matter how badly they speak it, get them to do it. It’s your duty!
I get this all the time working in the grocery store. Especially from the babbling old people.
Sheesh. I don’t think I’ve heard anything that arrogant for some time. Imagine those darn foreighners not learnin’ English. I get POed when people refuse to learn English for a generation in this country, and I get just as POed at those who go abroad and expect everyone to bend over backwards to accomodate them.
On a slight side note, in the many trips I’ve taken to Mexico, I found that quite a few people in the hospitality industry are multi-lingual, much bigger percentage than the Average American. I’ve heard english spoken in most stores, restaurants, etc. That’s among people who most likely did not get the chance to learn it in schools, either.
I was chatting with a guy from work today as I leafed through a Microsquish manual. It was a small book with 8 pages written in english, then about 150 more pages all written in every different language known to man. I commented that it was a waste to send me a whole book full of that stuff when they could have just printed a few english pages and sent it or put it on disk. (my point was, wow- it must be expensive to print a manual like that instead of just printing separate ones for each language).
He says “Yeah, I know what you mean. If they don’t speak the language they should get the hell out of this country”. I was in shock and just commented “That wasn’t at all what I meant, but never mind”.
Wow!
Zette