I’m glad to see this topic under discussion. I’ve been suspected of racism in the past, because I wanted the person cutting my hair to be able to communicate with me. After having an experience that left me in tears by having a non-English speaking person completely misunderstand what I was asking for (and leave me with a haircut that took a year to grow out), I am more wary now. But I still don’t consider myself a racist. I just want to be able to ask for the haircut I want to receive.
Well, maybe I am prejudiced, because I’m prejudging someone’s ability to communicate with me meaningfully if they can’t understand me and I can’t understand them. This seems to be really shaky ground here.
i used to work with a girl at Wal-Mart that had a horribly thick accent. She was from Brazil, and while she could carry on a conversation, she pronounced words very differently, even if we tried to tell her the correct pronunciation.
For example, when she was calling for customer courtesy in a certain department, she would holler “Customer coitesy in the shoe department!” over the p.a., which would send us into gales of laughter, thinking that someone was going to go boink a customer in the shoe department.
We also had this old lady named Gloria that worked at the returns counter. She had somewhat of a speech impediment, and she couldn’t always get the right words out when she was paging people. So, one day, I heard this page ring out across the store:
"Attention associates. I need someone from mens’ wear, boys, and shoes to the courtesy dick, oh fuckit, never mind!'
I understand your aggravation with the person you had to deal with, (to an extent) but I just wanted to add something to try to make you giggle for the day.
Well, at the risk of getting singed, let me offer a brief counterpoint… If you’re on the phone, tearing your hair out because the person on the other end can’t speak fluent English, it may be because the person was hired to be fluent in some other language.
And yes, I have a selfish reason for saying this – my wife works as a customer service rep for a subscription-based Chinese TV service. While she is fluent in at least three dialects of Chinese, her English is merely passable (maybe an 8th grade level), even after several years in ESL. That’s not usually a problem, though, because 95% of her calls are from Chinese-speaking customers … but if you’re one of the 5% English-speaking folks who call her up, you might get a bit frustrated.
And it’s not just her – almost all of the customer service reps the station has are in the same boat. Someone who’s fluently multilingual isn’t going to take a minimum-wage job as a customer service rep, after all.
No, it doesn’t excuse the rampant stutterer, but let’s remember that there are situations where English fluency is not a high requirement for a job.
That’s gotta hurt.
pkbytes, I wrote you a big long note hete, but I deleted it. What it boils down to is; yeah, the guy’s boss probably shouldn’t have put that guy in a position where he was representing their company to the public, but if that’s the worst thing you have to deal with today, you’re getting off pretty light. And the fact that the guy stutters doesn’t make him a slob.
Huh. I guess I’m the only one who, based solely on the title of the thread, thought this was gonna be about President Dubya.
Funny anyway, tho.
[rocky horror on]
“A weakling, weighing 98 pounds…”
[/rocky horror off]
Whew, had to do that, reading 97 was driving me bonkers.
You know, companies are screwy about stuff like this. I used to work for these folks and different departments would have these banquets for all sorts of stupid stuff and want photos taken. So, nobody wanted to give up an evening and go do this. But I was the lowest on the totem pole and usually got these jobs. And I couldn’t photograph for shit. I was the photographer with the LEAST experience, and they gave me the OLDEST camera, you know, the one with the most problems that nobody else wanted. I was so delighted to find that when you advanced the film the shutter speed changed. Delighted. The department head suggested that I put some tape on the shutter speed changer thingie.
It was bad. And I know when the people got their photos back, they were thinking the same things you were. I know it pissed them off, heck, it pissed me off, having to go and do this with not a lot of experience. So I know you had to be so pissed off with that guy.
**
I doubt it too, or else people who are lefties would fall into the same sort of “disablity” catogory. Both things present inconviences that need to be worked around, and some minor accomodation in the workplace (he shouldn’t have to talk to customers regularly, I ask not to be put on a at a table sitting to the right of a rightie) but it’s not as though either one would make getting a job more difficult for a person.
My God. Why assign a stutterer to a position where he has to talk all the time? Sheesh.
Eve, good’n! Still laughing!
Remind me to tell you about the time the boys at the bar were throwing darts at my fake leg. 
We had a lady from columbia who used to work here. We are an aircraft manufacturer and we were working on a joint project with Fokker. We had find and alternet name for her to refer to that company.
Actually you do, if you were hiring for University High School, Los Angeles, in the early 1970’s. Our Driver Ed teacher, Mr. Faulkner, was indeed blind, but Driver Ed in this instance meant only classroom instruction. Obviously
Mr. Faulkner must have become blind after some years of driving, since he was able to teach the class competently. He was also an English teacher and was generally well-liked by the students.