Se Habla Inglés

I get all kinds of stories at work. I don’t post about them because… well, it’s work (I don’t want to get Dooced). But something happened last week that left me thinking. A Hispanic woman called the office, and the person who answered the phone didn’t even say hello. It was an automatic “Un momento, por favor.” and that called was transferred to me: “Bea, Spanish person, line 1.” Next thing I know, there was a lady almost yelling, and asking why the heck our CS rep didn’t talk to her in English.

The big deal about it is that some people will immediately assume someone doesn’t speak their language when they hear an accent. Wrong! We are, after all, in the United States of America, and while there are many immigrants who don’t acquire English as a second language, most of us learn to speak it. I could understand the lady’s frustration about it; I apologized several times, and the lady added something along the lines of “At least I can speak English. Does she speak Spanish?”

It also made me think about the countless times when I haven’t said more than just hello and I have people looking at me and saying “Pardon me?” — Dude! I just said hello, just because I don’t look American, doesn’t mean you can’t understand me. And it happens everywhere, but more so here in this melting pot where everyone comes to try to make a living.

And then, on another occasion, I will post about how much I disagree with moving to America and not making an effort to learn English. But what do I know? Nobody’s perfect.

many companies hired bilingual (not only Spanish) people just for that purpose and in many cases pay them little extra (my company pays maybe extra 50 cents/hr), nothing wrong with utilizing them without wasting someone else’s time.

Not my point, Meesha.

I was referring to the lady who was upset because someone assumed she could not speak the language.

This is very very common where I am! (TX) I think there is also a lot more tolerance here because so many people do speak Spanish. The percentage of bilingual people in my state is huge. We just also have the other end of the spectrum too, unfortunately. We have the people who seem offended when they run across someone with too thick of an accent and the people you mentioned who refuse to learn English because it takes away from their culture.

If I speak English and somebody has pronounced difficulty, I would consider handing them off. But for an accent? Americans from lots of parts of the country have what I would call a noticeable accent. Who the heck would I hand them off to?

When I was a Manager at a Video Store Chain, I was the only person with even a smattering of Spanish. We had one customer, the mother of a very good customer, who spoke almost no English. If I saw her come in I always made sure I waited on her. One day, after everybody knew I was leaving the daughter came in and told me that her Mom said my Spanish was terrible, but that she loved me for trying and wished me well wherever I went.

I guess my point is everybody should try. Some day you might have a communication impasse with somebody, but you won’t know if you write them off before taking a shot at talking to them.