Language Barriers...tell your stories

[Retail Associate]

Victoria J's topic made me think of times when customers speak a totally different language and I've been completely useless trying to help them. I haven't encountered a lot of problems with language barriers at my store but there's been a few times it has happened.

Like one time when I was a cashier. I had rung up an order for two men who never said a word while I was checking them out. After handing one of them his receipt and thanking him he then said with a very heavy accent, "a tim?" (as in atim...what I assumed was one word).

Not knowing what he meant and realizing that they were foreigners I just nodded and smiled, mistakenly thinking he was saying thank-you. But once again he asked, "atim...you have atim?"

I was a lousy cashier because I was always a nervous wreck up there, which is why I tranferred to a different dept ASAP. Stuff like this just throws me into a panic attack. Stupid, I know, but it does. I wanted desperately to understand what he was asking but even after he'd repeated it 5-6 times I still had no idea what he needed.

"Atim...you have atim?"

Finally, after both men started saying it over and over, it dawned on me. They wanted to know if we had an ATM at the store.

Here in Michigan we have a lot of migrant workers during the Summer. Very few of them speak English but a lot of times their children do and will interpret for them. When I worked in Pet & Garden a Spanish speaking gentleman (minus an English speaking child) approached me with a packet of tomato seeds. He pointed at it and asked, "tomatoes?"

I nodded yes and replied, "tomatoes."

He continued to point at the packet and once again asked, "tomatoes?"

And once again I nodded and replied, "tomatoes."

Now this continued on for several minutes...by the time all was said and done, we were both laughing. I don't believe we ever did reach an understanding but I have to tell myself that he was at least assured that they were indeed tomato seeds.

Another incident happened about 2-3 years ago. I was folding some random clothes in my dept when a man and woman of Asian descent came up and the man asked, "Where you keep pow ohs?" (again, said as if one word).

By now you know that I had no clue what he wanted.

Me: "Pardon me?"

Man" "Pow-ohs...where you keep pow-ohs?"

Me: Completely confused, "Power to......?"

Man: "No, pow-ohs. Where you keep them?"

Me: "I'm sorry. I'm not sure what you're asking."

Man: "Pow-ohs....POW-OHS?" (as if speaking louder would help the situation."

Me: "Power........?????"

At this point the wife decides to help and says, "No, no, no....the pows-ohs!!!"

We finally had a meeting of the minds and got everything straightened out. And guess what they wanted:

Towels!

[Plaidman]

Ahh the greatness of langage barriers. Its hard to overcome. I've learned a few new words and sentences in different lanagages though, such as

Queries Uno Bosa (Spanish for do you want a bag?)
Knee how Mah ( Chinese, not sure if its Mandrian or the other one) for Hello. Well, it really means have you eaten today, but its used for a greeting. or something. My boss couldn't really explain it to me very well in english).

[mamawork]

Thanks to my three-year-old, I know three phrases in Chinese.

Ni-hao (pronounced KNEE-how) means hello.

Can't spell the other two, but I'll sound them out.

Ti-chien means goodbye.

Shi-sheie means thank you.

I can say thank you to Japanese folks without speaking. Just put your hands together, palm-to-palm, like prayer hands, and bow.

Also, in Japanese, moshi-mosh means hello.

I know several phrases in Spanish, which is the language I need most, other than English.

It's really frustrating with Indian and Arabic folks, because they tend to get angry very quickly.

[scruff]

Two of my department are French. One meeting they slipped into French, which was fine, as I knew they were trying to re-word our standard brochure for a French client. And they had asked me along to the meeting for the next stage of the project, so I didn't need to know the language.
So I'm calmly waiting for the second half of the meeting, when one of them turns round and asks me a question in French.
I look blank at her and reply: Pardon, Je ne comprend pas, Je suis Anglais.
(badly written 'sorry, I don't understand, I'm English.' which is pretty much the only phrase I can remember in another language.)
She literally fell off her chair laughing, appologised, got back into her chair again and switched back to English.
Although with the 'global economy', one of my bosses is now trying to learn Arabic. Rather him than me.

[Chrismor]

I remember a story (possibly local legend, as we could never verify it) from when I worked retail.

We would hold a lot of walk in interviews. A few people would bring English-foreign language dictionaries (this bit is true) but it goes that one person conducted the entire interview through an interpreter. They were not hired, for some reason.

As I said, this is not verified, so mods, if this should not be here feel free to delete.

C.

[Plaidman]

As I said, this is not verified, so mods, if this should not be here feel free to delete.

C.

o_O OK, yeah, don't worry. I'm pretty sure that's a very safe story to add to this thread.

[Nashida]

This should have gone in my other thread, but two weekends ago we had some Chinese exchange students from our off-campus dorm come visit our dining hall, and most of them came to my counter. Most of them pointed to what they wanted, because they had no idea how they were going to ask for things.

The funniest and saddest thing was one of them got all excited when I had roast beef, so they ordered that. The next 5 ordered roast beef, until I ran out and didn't have any more. I then spent 10 minutes trying to tell the group of kids that came up I didn't have any more, and they just didn't understand.

[fireheart]

I can say thank you to Japanese folks without speaking. Just put your hands together, palm-to-palm, like prayer hands, and bow.

Also, in Japanese, moshi-mosh means hello.

Partially right there. Moshi-moshi is the phone greeting. There's three greetings depending on the time of day.

Ohayo gozaimasu (o-hi-o go-zay-ee-mass): Good morning. (friends just use ohayo)
Konnichiwa (kon-nee-chee-wah): Good day.
Konbawa (Kon-bah-wah): Good evening.

[Victoria J]

I envy people who are good with languages so much.

My coworker was winding me up the other day. She was complaining about being stuck seeing the last customer. She'd seen the most but the other two of us working couldn't help this person because they needed someone who spoke my language. I asked her who had made the mistake - had she not seen the person was down for her, or had the receptionist not marked them down. She said it was my mistake ! What mistake ? Apparently my mistake that I don't speak Urdu I admit this mistake but have to say I think it may be my parents mistake too...

My favourite is still the person who bought a friend to "interpret" - the friend listened to the adviser and then repeated it. In english just a bit louder and slower

Also a Spanish colleague helped me out by interpretting, and got confused. He started speaking to the customer in English and me in Spanish.

And someone once phoned me up, and was actually a wrong number, but due to language mismatch we spent 5 minutes talking. They believed I was the boiler repair service, I believed they wanted consumer advice about boilers.

My favourite language story ever though was one I read about the painter David Hockney. Apparently he was in (I think) Greece and went to a cafe. He and the person he was travelling with wanted a boiled egg, but they just could not communicate it. They didn't speak Greek, the Cafe didn't speak English. Mime didn't work. So eventually he pulled out a pencil and drew an egg. The waiter smiled and seemed hugely relieved to finally understand. And came back a few minutes later with some ice cream.

Possibly there is something about Greece and eggs, because a friend of my mother put the fear of God into most of the shop keepers on a small Greek island. She was trying to buy eggs (uncooked). She struggled in the first shop, but eventually they worked out what she wanted. The worker suddenly realised, shook her head and said a single Greek word. So this woman went to all the other shops in town - proudly (and loudly) saying this newly learned word in the belief that it meant "egg". Everyone just looked terrified.

She later learned that (a) the first shop was out of eggs but getting a delivery the next day, and (b) that she had walked into all the other shops and just shouted "TOMORROW" at them...

Victoria J

[Broomjockey]

As I said, this is not verified, so mods, if this should not be here feel free to delete.

C.

Unless there's something to it I'm not seeing, seems fine to me. Story told around your work place, and it's on topic. *shrug*

It's really frustrating with Indian and Arabic folks, because they tend to get angry very quickly.

This however, is close to the knuckle, folks. Generalizing should be avoided as much as possible. Thanks.

[Mr Hero]

At this point the wife decides to help and says, "No, no, no....the pows-ohs!!!"

We finally had a meeting of the minds and got everything straightened out. And guess what they wanted:

Towels!

Don't forget to bring a pows-oh!

[Spork4pedro]

I work in an area that is very heavily Spanish speaking (well...technically that's all of Southern Cal but i digress..) so I have learned to pick up on a few words so I can actually make what they want. Since I work in a smoothie place I can figure out almost any fruit now!

Usually my non English speaking customers have a kid that can order for them or we have to play the point to the menu/pictures of fruit game. The other night was the only time I couldn't figure out what fruit a customer wanted. He came in with a young girl who was ordering for him. They ordered fresh squeezed oj and carrot juice (the only juices we fresh squeeze) but he wanted something different. I guess the girl didn't know the name of the fruit in english but it was bigger than an orange and I presume was somewhat close to an orange cuz he kept saying "narranja" So I asked if he was looking for grapefruit juice (which we don't have) but that wasn't it. Sadly he didn't get what he was looking for and settled for an oj/carrot blend. But what else is like an orange but bigger? a Pumelo maybe?

Anyhoo, it's always fun to try to guess the order. The only time it's a pain is when the customer sends their (usually very young) child in to order and the child orders the wrong thing and then the customer gets mad at us!

[Cloudy Sky]

Still my favourite retail story

Working by myself one day at the area convenience store (many moons ago), I was on the floor alone when a middle-eastern gentleman came in the store. He wandered around for several minutes, then finally approached the counter. He spoke in very heavily accented broken English. It took several repeats before I began understanding what he was saying. Basically, the convo went like this :

Him: Haff dinks for vimin? (as he blushed deeper then I've ever seen a man blush)
Me: (lightbulb turns on- feminine products!!) Yes! We do!

I bring him over to that section, show them to him. He looks completely lost, and looks pleadingly at me. Darn, he's never bought these before. Okay, how to narrow this down delicately?

Me: Do you need big or small? (using hands to emphasize sizes, mini or maxi)
Him: Oh! Wiff (wife, I thought) dis big. (with hand about 5' off the ground)

I just grabbed the most popular brand, rang him out, and ran to the back to giggle uncontrollably for several minutes.

[wynjara]

My most fun was during my brief time at the shoe store. We essentially played charades, because the family spoke no English and I couldn't even place the language they spoke. I'm guessing it was perhaps Turkish (the credit card was bank of Turkey) but I could be entirely off. Still was one of the least difficult transactions I ever had, somehow.

[Primer]

I guess the girl didn't know the name of the fruit in english but it was bigger than an orange and I presume was somewhat close to an orange cuz he kept saying "narranja"

um, "naranja" IS orange. Maybe he was used to getting large oranges, and all you had were small ones?