Sorry, I am not required to speak every language of the world...

[donruss]

as an American company we only communicate in English or Spanish.

This is part of why we have Entitlement Whores as customers. Speak English only please if you live in the US, Great Britain, or Austrailia. Not to sound like a bigot because my best friend is from South America and he agrees with me also. He took the time to learn the language and nothing makes him madder than when someone has been here for 20 years and doesn't even make an effort. No offense to anyone here I hope.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

If she was putting me on she was doing a damned good job because she sounded very genuine and even like she was about to cry after having tried so many times to get assistance.

[PuckishOne]

Typical Mod Pronouncement to please keep this to the specific SC mentioned in the OP and not anyone who speaks a language different to yours or what you believe they may or may not be doing. Thanks.

[Whyme]

Living in AZ I have learned enough Spanish to get through a transaction. There's only a few essential words I normally need to understand what they want. To me it's no big deal, I don't mind learning another language. Except for one lady who was speaking a language I couldn't identify. I did feel bad for her. She wasn't sucky, a little frustrating due to the language barrier but that's it.

The only English she knew was "EBT (food stamps/cash assistance), Cash back". I tried explaining to her and showing her how to use the cash back option, she messed it up each time, then I escorted her to the ATM (they can get cash back at the ATM) and showed her the steps on how to use it. She looked at the machine in fear and wouldn't even put in her pin number. I was happy I had successfully conveyed the fact it needed a pin number and I thought we were good to go. She wouldn't put it in and made me do it. For cash back amount, she kind of waved a pointed finger at the screen. The first one I thought she wanted was too much, so I shook my head no. Then she waved a finger at the general direction of the screen again and I put in a different amount and $ came out. When the cash came out she wouldn't count it but made me count it. She came in for about 3 weeks, all with same results. The last time she came in and I just didn't have time to help her at the ATM (because of course she didn't understand the cash back option at the register even when I tried to explain it to her before it was too late). I saw her crying by the ATM a few minutes later. She seemed genuinely scared of it. A regular customer whose very nice helped her out with it. After that I never saw her again. I go with my gut and she wasn't trying to scam us or anything. She wasn't rude either, she just didn't know enough English to even manuever the debit machine correctly. I also wondered if she couldn't read. I guess obviously she couldn't read English, but I was wondering if she couldn't read period and that was part of the fear?

I really didn't understand why whoever at the Food Stamp office didn't write down instructions for her in her language so she would know how to use the cash back option correctly.

Then there's the little old Russian (I guess it's not important that they're Russian, except it's one of the most terrifying languages that has ever been yelled at me and I've been emotionally scarred for life since my first encounter with them) ladies who like to demand and yell until you ask them a genuine question challenging an ad match (.50 cents for a gallon of milk? I don't think so) or a refund then suddenly say "No speak English!". Them I don't have much sympathy for especially when they try to scam the store.

So, I don't think all non English speakers are scammers. The first lady in my post might have just moved here and hadn't taken English classes yet. It could be the same for the lady in the OP's post. It's not a language that's learned overnight. Just my opinion.

[crazylegs]

We're lucky at work, we have access to a telephone translation service with around 70 languages available to translate, you just pass the telephone from one person to the other while the translator listens and you have your conversation one stilted phrase at a time.

[RetailWorkhorse]

So you can speak Polish?

Not very well, but it's in my heritage (3rd gen. Polish/German on my father's side, he's actually a full-blood from that little region that always changes depending on which map you're looking at).

[Pixagi]

The store I work (worked? might not be working there much longer) gets a lot of folks from out the the States, as well as people who just recently moved to the country. There are also people who've lived her over a year and still can't speak a lick of English, and get disappointed when I can't speak their language (usually Spanish).

Given, I'm often mistaken for being Hispanic or West Indian, but I'm not, and even if I was, doesn't mean I'll definitely know the language.

What I really love are the folks who are insulted that I don't know the language they think I should know.

[PaRaGaS]

Not very well, but it's in my heritage (3rd gen. Polish/German on my father's side, he's actually a full-blood from that little region that always changes depending on which map you're looking at).

That would be Silesia.
Originally Polish, got many German settlers after the Mongolian invasion of 1240s.
Been an issue ever since.
Tho you might mean Pomerania.

[Victoria J]

Not to say that every person out there does this, but I wonder how much of it was genuine inability and how much of it was them using the fact that they speak a language you don't understand to your advantage.

My job is to give people advice (on subjects like housing, employment rights, benefit entitlement etc.) and I work in an area with a very diverse population, with many people speaking different first languages. Most people have good English as well - though some of the larger communities have older people who don't speak much English.

While I have had people pretend they can't understand when they just don't like what is being said I find it much more common that people pretend to have better English skills. I'd much rather deal with someone trying to get a second opinion by insisting they can't speak to me than someone who politely nods smiles and says they understand perfectly - who clearly can't understand a thing. You ask questions and get random pieces of information back ("When did you start your job ?" "I work 6 days a week"...)

We do have people who come in and act shocked we can't understand them. The largest communities I can just about see that - and we do have workers speaking say 5 of the 7 most common languages (we can cover Somali, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali but not Polish, or Turkish) but people come in with really unusual languages. We had a Tamil speaker recently who was outraged we couldn't understand them - not many local people speak that, and they were the only one I've met who didn't also speak excellent English, and I had a very polite but sad woman who couldn't speak English and even when she wrote her language down I'd never heard of it (it was an African language, but not one I'd heard of).

This is part of why we have Entitlement Whores as customers. Speak English only please if you live in the US, Great Britain, or Austrailia. Not to sound like a bigot because my best friend is from

I do believe that people should learn English - if only because I know how much it hurts them if they don't (so much more likely to get ripped off and mistreated), but you're being a bit broad. And I don't see how anyone's in any position to judge those speaking native languages (including Welsh in the UK which has legal status within Wales) - though I don't think you'd get by very well with just that. If English speakers had bothered learning other people's languages there'd be an awful lot less English speakers in the world.

(Though I do love my language - and the way that while we never learnt other people's languages we always ripped off the best words).

ETA - I also recently had a Polish client I helped call the Gas company. Amazingly we got a representative who spoke Polish ! After he had talked to her I said "Isn't it lucky we got someone who speaks your language ?" and he just said "She's a total bitch". When I spoke to her I actually agreed a bit.

Victoria J

[TryNotToBeThatOne]

One of my mother's friend's was a nurse with the county health department. Since she had taken Spanish, French & Latin in high school & college, she could puzzle out any Romance language, with a little help from a dictionary. She also learned to recognize the other common non-English languages in the area so she knew which translator to ask for, ie Cambodian, etc. And had some translation dictionaries to handle simple stuff.

Result? Anytime the rest of the staff got a client who spoke any language other than English, they'd call M. Cool, huh.

Funny was when they called her to handle a woman who some language that none of them recognized. Turns out she was speaking New Jersey.

Personally, I've never travelled outside the US. If I ever travel to a country whose primary language is not English, I plan to 1) learn at least a few phrases & 2) get a phrase book.