We have a serious language barrier at work.
Our chef is Greek. Or possibly Spanish, I'm not sure.
Our cooks and busboys are Turkish.
Our dishwashers are Mexican.
Our waitresses are American.
This is fine. Most times I can speak slowly, with lots of hand motions and get my point across. It's not offensive, I promise. Or maybe it is, I don't care.
What bothers me is our one busboy does not even try to make us understand! I will ask him for something and he will go off on a Turkish rant. Or he'll just see me and go off on a Turkish rant. And then laugh uproariously. He doesn't point at anything, speak slowly, give examples, draw pictures, send smoke signals, anything. He just doesn't care if I understand him or not, and he's probably cursing my family. I find that frustrating. And rude.
Sometimes the others will go off on rants in their own languages as well, but making it obvious they are talking about us. Also frustrating and rude.
My motto at work is usually "I don't understand what you're saying, so I'm going to go ahead and ignore you."
"Our chef is Greek. Or possibly Spanish, I'm not sure." This made me laugh - thank you. And I can empathize.
ReplyDeleteIf you can learn the curse words [especially pertaining to women] in their native language - then memorize the phrase "I understand you." Because they will be using that while on the foul language on their little rants and once they think/know you are on to them they will stop doing it front of you.
Trust me, eight years of Spanish put me in good stead with my coworkers.
[Not that you need eight years of anything, I was just fortunate, but you can google the words and that phrase.]
Good luck!