When I take a flight, the flight attendant comes over and asks me what type of drink I want, and I tell her. And when I tell her, I answer with the name of the drink I want. Seeing as how this is a proper noun, it isn’t really an English word or a French word. Is drink service different on this airline? Either this guy translated the name into French, in which case he is being unreasonable (if I were to order a “crescent”, wouldn’t it be pretty stupid of me to expect the server to know I want a croissant?), or else he ordered using the phrase “7-Up”, in which the response “I don’t understand” makes no sense.
matt_mcl
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If you were flying from Calgary to Winnipeg, and you asked for something in English, and you found that the flight attendant would speak to you only in French, wouldn’t you be just a little bit cheesed?
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If I encountered someone who spoke only French, I would politely ask for someone who speaks English. You wouldn’t? I’ve walked into fast food restaurants in the US where the order taker barely speaks English. I don’t get angry. I don’t scream at them. I understand that they aren’t doing this as some sort of conspiracy against me. They just don’t understand English very well.
BTW, you do realize that expecting non-English speakers to all learn English is nowhere near as unreasonable as expecting English speakers to learn all non-English languages, don’t you?
Do you have a cite for your version of events? The article does not say what you say it says. At least not explicitly.
I recently flew from Los Angeles to Seoul… I sat next to two Korean women who had about 3 carry-ons each, stacked around them like packing peanuts. The stewardess came by and said, in English, “These will have to be stowed in the bins.” The Koreans women nodded and smiled… and ignored the stewardess. The stewardess told them 2 more times, before finally calling over another stewardess to tell them to stow their carry-ons in Japanese (the flight was stopping over in Tokyo… so they assumed that these two women were Japanese). The Korean women didn’t understand Japanese… Finally, I intervened. I leaned over and said “Chay-song Habnida! Ku kabang-dul…” (I’m sorry! These bags…) One of the Korean women turned to me and said, in PERFECTLY servicable English, “Yeah, I know.”
Well, if you fucking know, why don’t you fucking DO IT instead of wasting the poor stewardess’s time (and mine), you lazy bitch? Jeeezus!:mad:
The point? This: are you entitled to have the expectation that an airline will speak your language of choice? No. And DOUBLY NO when you DO speak the language of choice of the crew, and refuse to do so!
I hope the court gives this guy his 7-UP… preferably shoved up his backside without the benefit of a lubricant! We have enough problems in this world without people deliberately setting out to make more!:mad:
You can buy shares in Air Canada, it’s a publicly traded and owned company, but you’d be nuts to buy shares in that dog loser. If it wasn’t for infusions of hundreds of millions of tax dollars it would have been bankrupt a dozen times over. Now they’ll probably drop about half a million on legal fees for this nutty lawsuit, by some disgruntled Quebec freedom fighter who decided to ruin some flight attendant’s day. Don’t worry, soon that joke of an airline, that black suckhole of tax dollars, that insanely over-regulated and unionized dinosaur, will be wiped off the map and foreign carriers allowed in to pick up the Canadian domestic market. How many American flight attendants speak French?
No, employees in every company are not required to speak French. Most companies operate in English, although some, mostly in Quebec, operate in French. Even in the English-speaking companies though, there are usually a few French speakers who deal with Quebec offices or customers. And if a company has a branch office in Quebec, that office will be French-speaking.
Air Canada is not a special case, at least not in the way I’m assuming you might think it is. Originally owned by the Canadian government, it used both official languages, just as federal government offices and services use both official languages. Now that it is no longer a government enterprise, offering service (and because it’s Air Canada, I’m using the term “service” loosely) in both English and French is just good business sense. After all, as Matt points out, it is a national airline serving a bilingual nation.
However, hiccups do occur, and I’m not exactly sure if this man should have been as upset as he was. I’ve encountered federal government employees in Toronto who either do not or will not speak English, and I’ve taken a few Air Canada flights where the flight attendant’s knowledge of English was not what I would consider to be proficient enough. No problem; there is always somebody who speaks English at a nearby desk or another flight attendant to help out. Perhaps if this fellow had looked at it that way, it wouldn’t be news.
But hey, he’s asking for it in Canadian dollars, right? Tell him I’ll write him a check…
Sorry about that.
Seriously, if Air Canada is no longer a part of the Canadian government can they be expected to provide bi-lingual service? Not ‘is it a good idea to maintain market share’ but ‘required to by law’ expected, if you know what I mean.
Because if they’re not actually a government owned national flag carrier and other private enterprises aren’t required to function bi-lingually then why should they?
And the cynical part of me (it comes of living in Washington DC) says this could have easily been a planned incident to raise awareness or force a judgement. I’m not saying that’s so, but it’s certainly playing out like one.